The Fourth Sunday after Trinity – Historic Lectionary – Luke 6:36-42 – July 14, 2019
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Our Lord doesn’t want you to walk around this world with a 2×4 sticking out of your face. At the same time, neither does He want your brother stumbling around in the dark with a speck in his eye. Both the speck in your brother’s eye and the plank in your own are problems, both are dangerous, and both our Lord mercifully comes to remove.
The point today is not to mind your own business, it is not to live and let live, or to just be more tolerant. Those things have nothing to do with the Lord Christ and His kingdom.
For His mercy, and you and I should know this, does not mind its own business, but rather his mercy comes right to you, it invades your space, it invites, it clothes you and sets you at his table, it fills you up and makes you part of the family. And His love does not just live and let live, but His love seeks us out, it comes to find us, to save us from where we were going, it does not just let us live in the dark or get lost, it returns us. And most of all, the Lord is not tolerant. Tolerance has nothing to do with Christianity. Our Lord does not tolerate us, He forgives us.
And in the same way, which is the point today, the Lord has not set you into the church or into this world to be tolerant with your family, your fellow saints, or you neighbors. You are not to tolerate them, you are to forgive them. You are to be merciful as your Father is merciful.
This Word of God today is one of the most misunderstood passages of Holy Scripture. Our world has taken six words of it as its seemingly invincible trump card and motto: Judge not, lest you be judged. Our world seems to think that these words mean that the Christian should never be critical of anyone or anything, that we should all just mind our own business, keep to ourselves, and never point out what might be wrong.
That is not our Lord’s mercy though, that is not His love. He does not keep to Himself, He does not tolerate our brokenness and disease. Rather, He deals with it, though not in rage and terror, but in grace and forgiveness. Noticing the speck in your brother’s eye does not make you hypocrite. It makes you a Christian. The problem is not your noticing, it’s whether you notice also the plank in your own eye.
You are not a hypocrite if you confess and believe in something that you also struggle with and fail at. The Christian is not a hypocrite when he confesses that the Holy Law of God is good and righteous, and yet also fails and sins against that same Law. He is not a hypocrite for that. That makes him a sinner, and that should not be so surprising to us.
Rather what makes us hypocrites, and what is to be avoided because it is dangerous and destructive to faith, is when the sinner then believes that he is justified in his sin, when he believes that the law doesn’t actually apply to him, when he says that this is for you, but not for me, that your sin is serious and offensive, but mine makes perfect sense if only you would just see it this way. That makes us hypocrites. That is to be avoided. That is absolutely destructive to faith and life.
Our Lord has not called us to tolerance, he does not brow beat us with our sins so that we would leave our brother alone, He has called us to mercy, He comes to deal with us, to deal with our sin, He has called us to forgiveness.
This is what we find today in St. Joseph. Joseph doesn’t tolerate his brothers’ sins, he deals with them. He doesn’t tell his brothers, “I’m fine, don’t worry about it, it’s no big deal.” Because of course, it actually is a big deal, it is no small thing that Joseph is betrayed by his own flesh and blood, tossed into a pit, sold into slavery, abused by the Egyptians, and left to rot in prison.
That is no small thing. And it is not mercy to simply toss it aside as if it doesn’t exist. Rather it is mercy, it is your Father’s mercy to deal with it.
If Joseph were to say to his brothers, “I am fine, don’t worry about it,” then he fails to give to them the very gift of God. He robs them of mercy.
This is no small thing. When you and I fail to forgive each other, and fail to speak clearly the word of forgiveness, we do rob something of one another that the Lord would have us give. When we say, “I’m fine, don’t worry about it, it’s no big deal, I’m over it, or there’s nothing you can do about it,” that is not the mercy that your Father would have you give, in fact it’s the opposite of mercy, it’s tolerance, and tolerance has nothing to do with Christ.
You are a Christian, what you are learning are not the words, “I’m fine, it’s no big deal, I’m over it.” You are a Christian, you are to be merciful as your Father is merciful. You are to judge as He judges, you are to give as He gives, and He gives always graciously.
We ought to remember that speaking forgiveness is always a gracious and gentle thing. Absolution is careful, even surgical. That is how Joseph deals in mercy and love with his brothers. He does not simply wave away their sins, but he recognizes them for what they are. He calls a spade a spade, that what they meant for evil, that they actually did mean evil. They meant to betray, they even meant to murder him. But what they meant for evil, Joseph recognizes that God meant and has used for good.
In forgiving his brothers, Joseph tells the truth, but he tells the truth with the Lord as judge, jury, and executioner. And so he is quick to absolve, quick to point them to the Father who is merciful, to the Lord who saves even sinners.
Forgiveness is not an earthly thing. It does not make good sense. Forgiveness is seeing with the eyes of Christ, and speaking to the brother as if speaking to the Lord. May the Lord grant us such eyes and such awareness as we deal with one another.
For it is our joy that our planks have been removed in Christ Jesus. This is not sad. This is joy. For He has had mercy on such rebels who hated him, who threw him in the pit of our sins, who sold him into slavery to the cross, who left him for dead, who meant all of this for evil, and yet, He has meant for the highest good, and more than that, precisely for us. And by this, He keeps many people alive.
He comes to us now in Confession and Absolution, and He does not tolerate us, He forgives us. Through His Holy Law He drives us to call a spade a spade, to be kept from falling into hypocrisy, that what we have done is not just unfortunate, and that what we have done we are not just sorry for because we got caught, but what we have done has truly offended God Himself, that it has hurt our neighbor and ourselves. We call a spade a spade, we confess the truth as is.
And in the same, He is the One who restores us with the greatest gentleness and mercy. He lifts us up in the Absolution, He gently feeds us in the Holy Supper, He restores us to the family. For all of that, it is the discipline of our flesh, but the joy of faith, that we can give what He richly supplies us. That we can be careful and yet quick and precise to forgive our family, our neighbors, and especially our church. That we can, together, as His children, put away the words, “I’m fine, don’t worry about it, it’s no big deal.” And embrace what He gives. I forgive you.
You are not condemned. The Lord lives. He has overcome evil with the greatest Good.Beloved, you are the Father’s children, your cups really do runneth over.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.