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While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?” They said to Him, “The Son of David.”

This passage introduces a simple topic that always bears review. Who is the Christ? What is this title and role emerging from the Old Testament? Jesus’ question to the Pharisees demonstrates that “the Christ” was most certainly a “thing,” that is, the idea of a “Jesus Christ” wasn’t some new thing that would have surprised the Jewish people. God had been preparing the way for Christ since, well, since already in Genesis.

But let’s refine this thought a bit. When exactly did the Lord first begin preparing the way for Christ? Well, there’s the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus, and the Christ, and each of those have different preparations in Genesis. You could say that the first specific prophecy about Jesus, as a Savior sent to rescue us from sin and death, is in Genesis 3: 15. The first reference to the Second Person of the Trinity is the first word of the Bible (in Hebrew), which is In-the-beginning. In Revelation says, “I am the…beginning.” And then we see Him again right away in the phrase, “And God said, ‘Let there be…’” Jesus is that Word.

The entire cosmic story is a Jesus show. Again, Jesus isn’t the backup plan for Plan A in God’s work. Everything centers on Him, to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given, and who fills all things in heaven and on earth.

That being said, certain titles of Jesus emerge through various revelations in the Old Testament, and among those is the title, “the Christ.” And yes, this goes back to Genesis.

Specifically Genesis 49: “Judah, you are he whom your brothers shall praise; Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; Your father’s children shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion’s whelp; From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He bows down, he lies down as a lion; And as a lion, who shall rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes; And to Him shall be the obedience of the people. Binding his donkey to the vine, And his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, He washed his garments in wine, And his clothes in the blood of grapes. His eyes are darker than wine, And his teeth whiter than milk.”

This is the prophecy of a king to arise from the tribe of Judah. We get hints of Jesus riding His donkey into Jerusalem, hints of communion in the “blood of grapes,” and this figure “Shiloh” who is a messenger and was seen as a messianic name. In any event when Samuel anointed David, this prophecy began to be fulfilled. “Anointed one” in Hebrew is “messiah,” and in Greek, “christ.”

The critical prophecy serving as the basis for “the Christ” is from I Samuel: “When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his Father, and he shall be My son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. But My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever.”

Here we learn that the Christ will build a temple, and His throne would last forever. He would be chastised, but the Lord’s mercy would remain with Him.

When the Davidic dynasty fell, the promise remained. So people awaited an “anointed one” who would fulfill this promise to David. Truly, as Jesus demonstrated in this week’s passage, the Christ is a “Son of David.”

Very often, when suppliants (blind men, the Canaanite woman) cried out the Kyrie, “Lord have mercy,” they began “Son of David.” Of course they would! As the above prophecy said, the Lord’s mercy would not depart from the Christ. We also see a more refined understanding, among these suppliants of “great faith,” what the messianic reign looks like. It’s not about golden crowns and rule over land. It’s about reigning over sin, death, and the devil.

The “Hosanna to the Son of David” of Palm Sunday is the prayer beautifully working with both the names “Jesus” and “Christ.” The word itself means “Please save us” and builds off the same root word that roots the word “Jesus,” that is, “to save.” “Hosanna” turns Jesus’ name into a prayer, something like, “Please be Jesus, our Savior, for us!”

But it’s not just “Hosanna,” but “Hosanna to the Son of David” on Palm Sunday. They knew what the Messiah meant for them. It meant being saved. Those on Psalm Sunday were likely unclear about what they were being saved from – the Roman Empire? taxes? – but the blind men and the Canaanite woman knew what they were being saved from. And Matthew’s Gospel also reminds us, “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

The Sanctus nicely ties everything together in a high-protein canticle. Beginning in heaven with the “Holy, Holy, Holy,” we’re with angels and archangels. We end in the mouths of children and child-like suppliants begging that the Lord of heaven would descend to us in the Person of Jesus Christ, and be that Person for us, be Jesus (Savior) for us, and be Christ (the anointed king and champion against our enemies, sin, death, and the devil) for us.

And that’s exactly what He does for us, in what follows the Sanctus, Holy Communion.

 

Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Love is a summary of the Law, but there are two ways to understand this, one right and one wrong.

The first way sees love as transcending the Law, almost as if love is a higher level of relating to God and neighbor than that outlined in the Law. This way of love trumps what the commandments teach. It’s almost antithetical to the commandments. That is, love is seen as antithetical to the “legalism” of the moral code. This way of understanding love is observed in those who understand “Pharisaism” as legalism, as a rigid adherence to rules, even moral rules. By contrast, they suggest, love is about tolerance, forgiveness, and a general easy going attitude toward the supposed “rules” of the Ten Commandments.

This in fact is antinomianism, and a false understanding of both the Law and love. It’s rooted in Gnosticism, in which the “age of the Law” is seen as the Old Testament world and its God, whereas the New Testament is a cosmic revolution in the way of being, in which “rules and regulations” come to an end and “love rules the world.”

The second way of understanding that love is a summary of the Law is that love animates each commandment and indeed explains why the commandment was given. It’s a “wax on wax off” approach to ethics (see, Karate Kid). That is, God uses the training wheels of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament to train His people in what right looks like. The Law is a “pedagogue,” as St. Paul said, a child’s teacher training God’s people at the “child” time of His history, like a mother teaching her children how to say “please” and “thank you,” though they don’t know why.

But when Jesus comes, we see how love fulfills and animates each commandment. That doesn’t take away the specific meaning and importance of each commandment. Training wheels guide a bike to go smooth, straight, and upright; when they come off, nothing about what they trained goes away. So also the Ten Commandments.

So we see, each commandment shows us what love looks like. Love of God looks like (a) worshiping a particular God with a name and day above all others – Jesus is the revelation of God’s name and day, so that means worshiping Jesus; (b) love of neighbor looks like honoring earthly authorities, protecting one’s body, marriage, property, and reputation.

Notice, the alternative (Gnostic) understanding of love takes the opposite view of what love looks like according to the Ten Commandments. Love supposedly doesn’t “exclude” other Gods and religions. Love says God transcends names. Love is about rebelling against earthly authorities. Love transcends marriage. Love means forced sharing of property. Love operates by narratives transcending reality, in which particular individuals are seen as two-dimensional characters of the governing narrative psycho-drama – their reputation be damned. (See, Brett Kavanaugh.) Love means divinizing desire (covetousness). In other words, love is everything the Ten Commandments are not.

This is not what Jesus teaches. “Love makes the world go around” means something, and looks like something, and what it looks like is the Ten Commandments. Love is not articulated through a vote, through pressing buttons at social media sites, through declarations of fuzzy abstractions, or through an embrace of some overarching ideology.

Love looks like specific actions related to God and neighbor. How do we worship the true God as opposed to the other gods? How do we love neighbor? There are answers to these questions, and the Ten Commandments show what those answers are.

Jesus teaching that love fulfills the Law is not about Him ending the Ten Commandments, but about Him teaching how each commandment is fulfilled in Him. He is the God above all other gods. His name is the revelation of the Lord’s name. (See John 12: 27-28.) He is the Sabbath Rest, to whom the weak and heavy-laden come. He honored His father and mother, and even the authorities nailing Him to a tree. He could have rightfully killed His enemies, but turned the other cheek, and was never angry at His brother, but forgave them. He taught marriage more strictly than just about anyone. He taught giving of one’s property, not the taking of it under the assumption that property ownership is a social construct. He only and ever expressed the truth about others, and taught due process of Law, requiring the witness of two or three to verify a claim. And He clearly taught against covetousness, teaching rather contentment.

In each case we could explore how He sublimely taught the Ten Commandments and took things to a higher level. We see this explicitly with the fifth and sixth commandments and murder and adultery. If He does not keep the sixth command regarding faithfulness to wives, what guarantee do we have He will be faithful to His bride, the Church? If He doesn’t turn the other cheek to His enemies’ abuse, what does this to do us when we are His enemies because of our sins? If Jesus isn’t content with His cross, my goodness, what does this to do us? If He doesn’t honor His Father’s desire for our salvation, but rebels, what does that do to us? If He bears false witness about our sins – testifying they aren’t forgiven as He intercedes for us – where then do we stand? If He denies us our rightful and blessed claim to “inherit the earth” as our possession, and steals that claim, how is He not a liar?

The Ten Commandments show us what love looks like. Jesus fulfills each of these commandments. But He’s not a rebel showing us some fuzzy abstraction about “love.” No, He shows us how He fulfills and amplifies each commandment.

Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”

Since the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the Pharisees had been trying to play “gotcha” with Jesus, and here once again, they hoped they would get Him. They tried to corner Jesus by making Him settle on an oft-disputed question: What is the greatest commandment in the Law?

But that’s a bit like asking, “What’s the most important doctrine in the Christian faith?” In fact, many play with this very question all the time as they consider our relations with other Christians. They’ll say, “What is the most important thing? Isn’t it that we all believe that Jesus is Lord?”

Typically, Christians will say that belief in Jesus as Lord is the most important teaching. Differences over the Lord’s Supper, Holy Baptism, the office of the ministry, even the doctrine of the Holy Trinity…these are all but trifles. The most important thing you must believe is that Jesus is Lord.

This falls into the Pharisee’s trap. It’s the lawyerly way of thinking.

Jesus shatters the very premise that any of the teachings of the Law have rankings, or by implication, that Christian teaching should have rankings. Notice, where the Pharisees asked for one law which topped all others, Jesus doesn’t fall for their trap. He teaches the whole Law in two simple teachings: Love God and love your neighbor. That’s the whole Law and Prophets.

It all boils down to love. Love of God and love of neighbor. Love sums up the Law. As both St. Paul and St. James say, “Love is the fulfillment of the Law.”

With this teaching, Jesus disarms the Pharisees’ ranking system, and He also disarms all any attempt to rank what is most important in Christian doctrine. If one truly loves God, after all, how can this allow one to rate His teachings on a scale of least important to most important? Which exactly are God’s “least important” teachings?

The Pharisee’s ranking game speaks to a certain idolatry going on, the projection of some criterion onto the Lord’s Word which serves as the basis for determining “least important” teachings. Where do those criterion arise but from the human mind? And what do those criterion reflect but some sort of desire on the part of man?

If, say, one had a mind which was boastful, he might cherish a criterion that propped up the laws which could be used to look down upon the leper or the Gentile. If one took pride in the office of the ministry, he might prop up the laws about priests. A moralist or one who takes pride in his own righteousness would of course prop up the moral teachings of the law.

Jesus doesn’t play this game. Every jot and tittle of the Law, as He said, is important and should be taught. It should be taught as fulfilled in Him, but that doesn’t take away from the supreme importance of every single teaching of the Law. So also with Christian doctrine. We don’t skip over the inconvenient parts of Scripture on our way to the cross, or to forgiveness, or to the resurrection, because these are the “most important” teachings of Jesus.

And we don’t apply a criterion onto the Gospel in order to determine “what really matters.” Now, this isn’t to say that Jesus Himself doesn’t apply teachings which is the center of gravity exerting a gravitational pull on other teachings. Certainly He does that here with love – love summarizes the commandments.

Likewise, when it comes to the teachings of the Gospel, clearly love continues to have that gravitational pull, a love manifest in the Father’s love for us in Christ, in His cross, and in His last supper. But to have a gravitational pull is not the same thing as to declare which teachings are “important” and which ones are not, as so often happens, particularly in the ecumenical movement but also in the hearts and minds of the faithful, as they determine which doctrines they can tolerate from a heterodox church in order to justify attendance there for some reason.

Ironically many will cite “love” as their reason for doing so. Doesn’t love trump doctrinal strictness? No, says Jesus. Love summarizes all teaching of the Law, and of the Gospel. And true love of the Lord would never dismiss what He says as irrelevant. That’s more like…well, not love.

 

But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees,…

We can’t let this little comment slip by. It alludes to one of the most fascinating and paradoxical teachings of Jesus.

The comment alludes to Jesus’ discussion with the Sadducees about the resurrection. Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the body. So they challenged Jesus with a challenging situation. Say a woman had a husband, but then he died. According to Levitical law, the man’s brother had to take the woman into his home and marry her. But say he died too, and say all seven of the brothers died to this black widow. In the resurrection, to whom would she be married?

Jesus chastises the Sadducees on two fronts. First, they don’t know the “power of God,” which is able to lift our relationships on earth into something far greater in heaven. Interesting the parallels here with the “new wine into old wineskins” theme woven throughout the Gospel. Heaven’s promise regarding marital relationships cannot be contained by Old Testament ideas about marriage. No new wine in old wineskins.

Second, they don’t know the Scriptures. And here’s where things get interesting.

Jesus says, “But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

At first sight this looks like a sly argument on Jesus’ part. How can God call Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob unless there’s an afterlife? Therefore Jesus proves His point.

But what’s the point of contention again? It’s not whether there’s an afterlife or not – the Sadducees believed in that! – but whether there’s a resurrection – something the Sadducees did not believe.

So, Jesus uses the statement of God at the burning bush, that He is the God of Abraham, to prove that Abraham is… resurrected? Yes!

Remember what “living” means, as laid down by the creation of man: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”

We are not incarnate souls, but animate bodies. So, to declare that God is a God of the living, as when He said He’s the God of Abraham, is to say that Abraham in some way was in a resurrected state.

How can this be?

Well, let’s look what Jesus says about Abraham. In the same section where He teaches that the one who keeps His word will never “see” death, He says of Abraham, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.”

What is “Jesus’ day”? It’s the day of His return, the “last day” of resurrection. This is also the “last day” of the new week, the eight day week, when Jesus rose on Sunday, but eschatologically it’s the last day when Jesus returns and raises all the dead.

Including Abraham.

And Abraham lived to see this day. He never “tasted” death, as Jesus promised would be the case for them that keep His word. No, he transitioned straight from his life in ancient Canaan to his resurrected life.

How can that be? That can easily be, if Jesus is the “I Am,” which is exactly what He says shortly after, “Before Abraham was, I Am.” He transcends time, and His Gospel transcends time. This is how it can be said that He was slain from the foundation of the world, and how the Gospel was established from the foundation of the world, from eternity. Jesus and His work transcends time.

So, in “eschatological time,” Abraham lives, in his resurrected body, in lieu of the coming day of the Lord Jesus. This is likely the status Moses and Elijah had in the transfiguration. Jesus wasn’t appearing with ghosts. He was appearing with Moses and Elijah, in body. So yes, God is the God of Abraham, not just an immortal soul floating around heaven – that’s not what Jesus was trying to prove against the Sadducees – but as a resurrected body.

Again, a fascinating answer. So often people bypass Jesus’ retort based on assumptions, when the text has everything plain as day. To prove the resurrection, Jesus quotes the Lord saying, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” And then He says, “He is not a God of the dead, but of the living.”

Boy, and then Luke adds, “and all live to Him.” What’s going on with that?!

This week’s is a glorious Gospel. Matthew takes his stab at a theme we’ve seen quite a bit in Luke, that is, the idea that you can’t put new wine in old wineskins. We went through several Gospels in Luke where you begin in the Old Testament world (the wineskins), with its laws on clean and unclean, with its protocols for dealing with leprosy, and with its sacrificial system, but then Jesus lifts us into His world of fulfillment. He doesn’t destroy the Law, but fulfills it.

In Luke we deal with many of the ceremonial aspects of the Law. It was the priest and Levite avoiding what looked like a dead body to them. It was the lepers running off to the priest to be declared clean. It was the widow and her throng outside the city gates. These occurrences all arose from the ceremonial teachings of the Law.

In Matthew this week, we get the heart of the Law, the Ten Commandments, or the moral Law. “Which is the great commandment in the law?” Most likely they weren’t expecting to get in a discussion about leprosy. It was a legitimate legal issue for lawyers. Which law is most important? This itself is an interesting abuse of theology, that parlor game of “Which doctrine is most important?” That leads to an attitude of, “What are the really essential teachings we need to worry about.” And that is profane – who are we to declare which of God’s words are truly important? The lawyer theologian is among the great pitfalls we should always avoid.

Jesus gives the summary we all have learned. The Law is about love. Yet, we should keep in mind, the love is not an abstraction of the Law, but a summary of the Law. That is, love doesn’t trump the Law, but permeates it. Very often people confuse this distinction. “We shouldn’t get caught up in the legalistic specifics of the Law; just as long as we love each other.” No! We love our neighbor, and the Law shows us what that looks like.

Worshiping the Lord and calling on His name; honoring the authorities He sets up; protecting the body, property, and reputation of others; keeping the marriage bed sacred; being content with what one has; this is what love looks like.

But if we end the discussion at that – which indeed is a fascinating discussion to have (and we will) – we’d have a great Jewish or Muslim sermon, or great “spiritual” teaching. However, Jesus doesn’t end the discussion there. He takes things out of the old wineskin discussion about the Law, and takes presents a new wine that bursts those old wineskins.

He asks a question of the Pharisees that presents a paradox. If the Messiah is David’s son, how does David call him “Lord” in Psalm 110 when he wrote by the Spirit, “The LORD said to my Lord”? Good question. Of course, we know the answer. Jesus is both David’s son and David’s Lord. That’s the mystery of the incarnation.

But Jesus was doing more than just turning the tables on the Pharisees and “one upping” them. He was, as we stated at the beginning, introducing a new world, a world of new wine, which could no longer fit the old wineskins.

Notice, Jesus taught that He is both God and man. And how did He sum up the entire Law? Love God and love man (our neighbor). He has taught us to see Him in our neighbors, as when He said, “Whatever you do to the least of these my brethren, you’ve done it to Me.” I happen to believe He’s talking mainly of the apostolic ministry here, but by derivation, He’s talking about the whole Church, and ultimately all the world, for He fills all things, and all things are created in Him.

He is our neighbor, and when we love our neighbor, we love Him. He is our Lord and God, and to love the Lord God is to love Christ. Jesus fulfills the greatest commandment, to love God and love neighbor, so the greatest commandment is really, “Have faith in, and love, Jesus Christ as true God and true man.”

That’s not where the Pharisees were expecting that discussion to go.

Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

To be exalted is to have glory. The glory we give to the name of the Lord, then, is due to its exalted status. The connection between the Lord’s name and His glory is a tenet of the liturgy and has deep roots in Scripture. “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.”

This fulfills the prophecy of Psalm 102: “So the nations shall fear the name of the LORD, And all the kings of the earth Your glory.”

For those who are looking for “Where does the Bible say we have to…?” bases for liturgical elements, we have this: “Declare His glory among the nations.” Doing the Gloria Patri in gentile lands is not an option, I guess.

Here are some other verses:

From Psalm 29: “Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.” Evidently there is a beauty to worship.

From Psalm 148: “Let them praise the name of the LORD, For His name alone is exalted; His glory is above the earth and heaven.”

And here is a passage from Isaiah 42, one of the chapters about the Lord’s Servant (Jesus). The passage nicely brings several themes together from our Gospel for this week: “I, the LORD, have called You in righteousness, And will hold Your hand; I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, As a light to the Gentiles, To open blind eyes, To bring out prisoners from the prison, Those who sit in darkness from the prison house. I am the LORD, that is My name; And My glory I will not give to another, …”

This passage is about Jesus. We know this because previously it describes the “Elect Servant” saying, “A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench.” This is one of the prophecies used to demonstrate that Jesus is not a revolutionary.

So, Jesus is the one called in righteousness. Indeed, for His baptism fulfilled all righteousness; to hunger and thirst for righteousness is to hunger and thirst for Him; to seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness is to seek Christ as well.

The Lord will hold Christ’s hand. Indeed, for even as Jesus just taught, who would not go down into a pit to save that which has fallen into it on the Sabbath? And when did Jesus “fall” into the pit, joining man in his fall, but on the Sabbath? The Holy Spirit, so to speak, took His hand and raised Him up.

And then, Jesus Himself became the “firstborn” of a new creation, and He Himself became a light to the Gentiles in a dark place, in the pit. He brought out prisoners from the prison, the prison house of Sheol and Hades. Jesus will lift them up, just as He taught. He will exalt those humbled in the pit.

But then, look what it says, “His glory He will not give to another.” This seems to contradict what Jesus promised of those who are exalted, namely, that “you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you.” It seems this is exactly what God will do, that is, share His glory with us. How do we make these ends meet?

We begin with Psalm 115, a Psalm about idols, which begins, “Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, But to Your name give glory.” The Psalm lays the foundation for something we’ve been meditating on, that idols are merely projections of human desire wed to material things. As it says, “Their idols are silver and gold, The work of men’s hands. …Those who make them are like them; So is everyone who trusts in them.”

So, to claim glory for self is really the original sin, the idolatry of the forbidden fruit, whose esteem in the mind of Eve was amplified by her Satan-triggered desire. “I can be like God!” The proper confession is, “Not unto us!”

But yet, again, to them that begin with this premise, God indeed will “give” or at least “share” His glory, just as Jesus teaches. God will not share His glory with us on our terms, as we play our games of self-projected idolatry. But to them that confess, “Not unto us!” He will share His glory with them.

This is the picture we get from Revelation. On one hand the twenty-four elders, representing Jews and Gentiles brought together in Christ, sit on thrones. As Jesus promises, “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” We share His glory.

On the other hand, the twenty-four elders throw down their crowns before the Lamb, symbolizing the confession, “Not unto us!” That visionary idiom marks the Christian life. Humble, but exalted.

Back to the liturgy, which puts this visionary idiom into formal practice. A big part of the liturgy is doing exactly that, saying, “Not unto us!” We confess our sins. We beg for mercy. We ascribe glory to the Triune God. We confess a God who does all the action, and in which we are passively acted upon. Truly, “Not unto us!”

But then what happens? We are drawn “up” to the altar, to the table of the Lord. And then what? “Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you.”

“So He told a parable to those who were invited, when He noted how they chose the best places, saying to them: ‘When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him; and he who invited you and him come and say to you, “Give place to this man,” and then you begin with shame to take the lowest place.’ But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’ Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you.”

Isn’t this little parable the theological foundation of the entire Bible?

It relates to the cosmic battle between Michael and Satan. Satan’s first temptation was, “You can be like God!” Michael’s name is a question which asks a very interesting question that’s both paradoxical and illuminating, “Who can be like God?” The answer to that question is, on one hand, “No man,” and on the other hand, “The man who is God,” which is to say, “Jesus.”

It’s paradoxical because it seems to have an answer and its opposite at the same time – “no one” and “someone.” It’s illuminating because at one time it takes our focus off ourselves but at the same time directs them to our Lord Jesus, the man who is God. In Adam we are “no one,” but are born again in Christ, our “some one.”

In any event, Jesus’ parable sets up a similar cosmic contrast.

Satan chose the best place, and wanted to sit there. Isaiah prophesies Lucifer saying, “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.”

There it all is: the exaltation, the sitting, the claim to be like God. It’s the path that ends up in hell, as the prophecy continues, “Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, To the lowest depths of the Pit.” Or as Jesus teaches, “then you begin with shame to take the lowest place.”

There’s the pit we find the donkey and ox in, where the high ones end up, but where the low ones begin. Yes, it’s where we ought to begin, as Jesus teaches, “go and sit down in the lowest place.” Go where the ox and donkeys are, fallen, in a pit. Go there, confessing that you are among them and need help. Join the prayer, “Lord, have mercy!”

It’s at the lowest place where the one who invited you calls you “friend.” Indeed, Jesus is the friend of tax collectors and sinners – He justifies them, as we learned from the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector.

He calls you “friend” and says “go up higher.” That’s the exaltation. Ascend. Or, join the ascent of the One Who “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant,” Who “also first descended into the lower parts of the earth” and “ who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.”

St. Paul uses this truth as the foundation for the new life: “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Yes, you died. You confessed yourself as “in the pit.” You joined Christ in the crypt of His manger, where the ox and donkey gathered around. Why? So that your life could be “hidden” in Him, to be revealed at His second coming.

That’s the lowest place – death. It’s the confession of Christ on the cross (from Psalm 22), “I am a worm, and no man; A reproach of men, and despised by the people.” Forsaken by God, the place of cursed man; the lowest seat in the house! Where Jesus sat.

But from there, we “go higher” and “have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you.” With whom do we sit at the table with?

With the one we eat in Christ’s kingdom. This theme flows throughout the Gospel of Luke. In the kingdom there is a feast. Jesus, after giving out His body and blood in bread and wine, says He won’t eat of it again until His kingdom comes. Well, He eats bread three days later in Emmaus, where they recognize Him. Clearly the Eucharist is the place of feasting with “those who sit at the table,” namely the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we have glory.

 

Then He answered them, saying, “Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” And they could not answer Him regarding these things.

A donkey or ox fallen into a pit. That’s us in this little parable. Not a lion, a spider monkey, or a horse; not some proud animal with great assets, but a donkey or an ox, an animal which was helpless in a pit. That alone tells us something about fallen condition.

But there’s more going on here than a simple metaphor about our fallen condition, although that is clearly the starting point, even as the text outright uses the word “fallen.” Look at the first two verses of Isaiah:

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! For the LORD has spoken: “I have nourished and brought up children, And they have rebelled against Me; The ox knows its owner And the donkey its master’s crib; But Israel does not know, My people do not consider.”

After the Christ child, the most enduring element of nativity scenes in Christian iconography, even more enduring than Mary, is that of the ox and donkey. This verse is one of the reasons why. Only the ox and donkey ultimately knew their owner, and their master’s crib. Only they knew the Father and the Son.

Beyond that, the ox was a clean animal, and the donkey was unclean, possibly symbolizing the coming together of Jew and Gentile over the feeding trough where the bread of life was in the “house of bread,” Bethlehem. That is, Jew and Gentile brought together in the Eucharist.

As St. Paul writes, “For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”

Some note how the manger in Christian iconography often has the form of a tomb, the Christ child is often seen wrapped in His swaddling cloths much like a wrapped body, and the place where Jesus born is often depicted as a cave, with the light from the star above shining into its darkness.

Our Gospel for this week brings some of these symbols together. In the pit is the donkey and ox. That’s where we – both Jew and Gentile – have fallen. Jesus, the light from heaven, descends into the pit, to its cavernous depths, in order to save us. He dies to get there, for He must invade the realm of death (the pit) in order to save we who are cursed by it. And as we’ve been focusing on this week, He does it on the Sabbath, fulfilling our Sabbath Day rest.

But already at the nativity His mission began. The manger was a feeding trough, the place where ox and donkey fed. Another word for “manger” is crib, so with much justification the early iconographers would work the Isaiah prophecy into their icons – surely the donkey and ox were recognizing their owner and master in that crib; surely they were present there at the manger scene. This week’s Gospel gives justification for the comparison of the crib to a crypt, or a sarcophagus. It’s where Jesus entered the pit in order to save us.

We should note here another parallel from the Gospel of Luke with this week’s Gospel. Jesus heals an woman with an infirmity for eighteen years. The ruler of the synagogue gets indignant and tells Jesus He has six days a week to heal, why heal on the Sabbath? Jesus says, “Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall [manger], and lead it away to water it?”

Here, the donkey and ox are loosed from the manger, the tomb-like crypt, and led to water. Yes, this is the same “loose” that Matthew uses to describe the power of the keys; yes, this is a power that the powers of hell (the pit) have no power over; and yes, there’s water here. And who cannot see the baptismal imagery going on there?

But then this takes us away from the Eucharistic symbolism, for why would we be loosed from the trough where the bread of life lay, in the house of bread, Bethlehem?

So back to the Eucharistic symbolism. Some also note how, while eating the flesh of a lamb is a clean thing to eat, drinking blood is not. As ox (clean) and donkey (unclean) come together, so do these two elements come together.

What we have going on here is a passage rich in symbolic nutrients. It’s almost like God’s Word has multifaceted depths, like a diamond, to explore!

Well duh. Bottom line, the text from the Old Testament straight to Jesus takes good care of the donkey and the ox, a company among which we are happy to claim a place

 

And behold, there was a certain man before Him who had dropsy. And Jesus, answering, spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” But they kept silent. And He took him and healed him, and let him go.

It is lawful to heal on the Sabbath. That’s the answer to Jesus’ question. It is lawful to do good and to save life, in the words of Jesus when dealing with the same question in the Gospel of Mark concerning the man with the withered hand. To heal, to do good, and to save life, such things are perfectly appropriate for the Sabbath. Indeed, one could argue that’s the point of the Sabbath.

If the Sabbath is made for man, and if the Sabbath is truly a day of rest, then it’s not really a Sabbath if you’re sick, lame, or blind. In fact, technically, God’s work is not “finished” insofar as you lack of that perfection He intended for Adam. The Sabbath day caps off a creation in which everything was “very good.” So, whatever the Sabbath Day was for the Jewish people, whatever it pointed to, it was insufficient as is, if you were wandering around with dropsy. It needed a fulfiller of it, someone to make it the cap off a truly finished product.

We have been contemplating how Jesus spoke of the Sabbath in the Gospel of John. It’s interesting. Let’s look at the passage in full: “For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had [healed a man] on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.’ Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.”

Jesus testifies that the Father never really rested. “My Father has been working until now.” Yet, it says in the beginning, “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”

So, is the Father “working until now” or resting? Did He come out of retirement after Adam and Eve sinned? It’s not an awful way of speaking, but it seems to accept the premise of the “Jesus as Plan B” understanding of salvation history. What does this mean? We’ve meditated on this before. The idea is that God made the earth intending it to be perfect. When man fell, He had to come up with a “Plan B,” which was the Jesus plan, to save man. If Adam hadn’t sinned, Jesus would not have been needed.

I don’t like this, because it makes Jesus, well it makes Jesus a Plan B! Jesus is not a Plan B! If we start with that premise, we understand that in God’s wisdom, man was not fully formed until redeemed in Christ. Man’s fall and Christ’s redemption were the plan. God introduced the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – as He did – because it was in the plan that man would eat it. Not that God was the author of evil, but something about man being in His image required him going down this path.

I like this better because the alternative story is that God “let things get out of control” and had to come up with a backup plan. That simply doesn’t seem right, not for a God who is “almighty.” According to the second, what I think better, view, Satan is a tool of the Lord. His actions are completely managed by the Lord.

So if we go with this second view, the finishing of creation referenced in Genesis 2, and the subsequent rest, was really a type, or prophecy, of what happened on the cross on the sixth day followed by the seventh. On the sixth day, Friday, Jesus said, “It is finished,” speaking of the creation, and then He truly rested on the Sabbath. What happened at the creation was a mystery, a foreshadow of the cross, unveiled finally when Jesus caused the mystery to be revealed. Note also the creation of the new Adam’s bride, the Church, from Christ’s side, on the sixth day, like Eve. It’s all there.

That would give us understanding of what it means that the Father was working along with Jesus until the day of Jesus. Think of the period between the creation of Adam and Eve, and the death of Christ, as one long process of the Lord forming man in His image. The gathering of dust from the ground, combined with the mists arising from the ground and the Spirit, was just the beginning (indeed, another foreshadow). Needed net to happen was man’s predictable eating of the forbidden fruit, his fall, everything in the Old Testament, the advent of Christ, His death, resurrection, and ascension. This is all “sixth day” stuff, God still working the ground to bring about a creature made in His image.

This need not take away from the six day creation at all. The types and foreshadows are truly real. The six days are as real as the sacrificial lambs or the tabernacle. But it’s to say that the sixth day has an eschatological fulfillment, a fulfillment in Christ at the cross (administered ultimately in time at our own resurrections), which was intended from the beginning.

According to this view, the fall is not an evil in the sense of an aspect of creation that got “out of control,” but something God in His wisdom realized needed to be worked out before man could fully be said to be made in His image. Again, as I’ve brought up several times in this devotions, God is the one who introduced “and evil” in the creation. He introduced the concept – it gave a name to everything that was not of His “very good” creation. And for whatever reason, in His wisdom, He realized man needed to explore this forbidden territory before he could be fully formed.

Prior to Christ’s advent, the Sabbath too was a foreshadow of a fulfilled day, when there would be a true rest. As Hebrews tells us, “For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God.” Whatever rest the Sabbath testified of in the Old Testament, it wasn’t a fulfilled rest.

But yet, in a sense it was. What we’re dealing with is the “now, not yet” aspect of the mystery of faith.

So, on one hand, the plan was in place. Christ’s death was all but established, even as Revelation describes Jesus as slain from the foundation of the world. And as St. Peter writes, “[you were saved by] the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.” And so Hebrews can also say, “the works were finished from the foundation of the world.” And God indeed rested.

But there was a “not yet” aspect to this rest as well, an administration of the eternal rest, incarnation, and death of Christ in time. This is what was “manifest in these last times for you.” Not everyone entered into that rest, as Hebrews makes clear. It remains for us in time to make that entrance.

So, the sixth day in Genesis introduces the “now” aspect of God’s rest, the completion of creation, the fullness of everything, perhaps even the fully formed man in His image. But the “not yet” aspect of creation is what Jesus in time had to fulfill. He and the Father were still working. The rest was not yet fully in place. The creation wasn’t finished until He died. And only with His resurrection do we get the fully formed “new creation,” the second Adam, the “firstborn” of creation.

Keep in mind something else, even already in Moses, within his life span, we see a development in his revelation of the Sabbath rest. At Sinai he taught the third commandment as a remembrance of the creation and the seventh day rest then. But in Deuteronomy, when he re-teaches the Ten Commandments, he taught the third commandment as a remembrance of Israel’s redemption from Egypt. It’s as if God is casting forward the meaning of the Sabbath. Yes, it causes us to look back. But yet, by connecting it to the Exodus event, it also leads us to see in it an image of our final redemption.

So, this all being said, Jesus’ question of the religious leaders, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” could be seen as bringing all these issues to the fore. Here’s a man with dropsy. He’s unformed. He is a “deficiency of good” that is the mark of an unfinished creation. So what’s it going to be? Does the Law lay down a foreshadow of a redemption to come, as Christ manifests the Father’s final work on His creation? Or does the Law freeze in time things as they are, so that this man with dropsy just has to accept his unformed person?

Jesus knows the answer to that question, as do the religious leaders, as indicated by their silence. So Jesus gets to work. He’s making manifest the eternal rest He and His Father enjoyed, in time, to complete what He had begun when He first formed Adam from the dust. The man with dropsy knew Jesus was this manifestation; perhaps he heard Jesus’ words, “Come to me you who are weak and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”

Indeed He will.

“…they watched Him closely.”

Consider these Pharisees in the Gospel, led by one of their own rulers. Jesus joins them on the Sabbath to break bread with them, and the whole time they’re watching Him closely to see if, or to what extent, He would, in their minds, break the commands about the Sabbath.

Let’s set aside that Jesus is the new wine that doesn’t fit into old wineskins, so that whatever He does with the Sabbath is necessary, and something only to be understood by those with faith – so He’ll never please them on that score short of their having faith in Him. Let’s set aside that Jesus may have been by-passing their own manmade rules regarding the Sabbath and observing it in its original meaning, the way God intended it to be observed. And let’s set aside what Jesus actually ends up teaching them, that the Sabbath is made for man, and it’s intended for “mercy, not sacrifice.” Let’s set aside all this, and simply look at the psychology behind the Pharisees.

Who does that? Who considers their theological system or rituals in such a way? Why weren’t the Pharisees observing the Sabbath? Wasn’t there plenty to do with the Sabbath? Why were they worried more about someone not observing the Sabbath than they were about their own observing of it?

This is what I call the “heresy hunter” syndrome. It’s self righteousness applied to doctrine. The doctrine is not about any positive virtue or what its content does for us. Rather it’s about that satisfaction of “getting it right.” It’s like a student who smiles smugly at the A he gets on a history test, but quickly forgets, because he doesn’t care, about the history he’s just learned or its significance.

In traditions which emphasis “right doctrine,” the “heresy hunter” temptation is always stronger. It’s perhaps one of its by-products. Of course, Old Testament theology being right doctrine, this is definitely one of the by-products we see in the Pharisees.

Now some on the left side of Christian tradition see this as the reason for Christ’s antagonism toward the Pharisees, because they were too uptight about doctrine. Rather, so it goes, Jesus shows we shouldn’t be so strict about doctrine. So, for example, while some might get uptight about the doctrine of the Real Presence – that communion is Jesus’ body and blood – to be strict about that teaching is “Pharisaism.” Jesus would err on the side of mercy and tolerance, so it is thought.

This is a mistake. Jesus got quite strict about doctrine, and took quite a distinct position on doctrine which He presented as absolutely right. And for those who want to apply some idea of flexibility to Jesus’ own words, which words of Jesus are they suggesting we need not be strict about? About whether to have mercy rather than observe the Sabbath Day? About whether we should baptize and teach when making disciples? About whether we should reckon Him a giver of bread or our Savior? About whether we should make peace before going to the altar? About whether we should worry or not? Which teachings of Jesus do we get to be less strict about? I’d like to know.

But just because Jesus is strict about doctrine doesn’t justify heresy hunting. Heresy hunting is more about correctness than it is about Jesus. That has it all backwards. We love Jesus first, for what He does, says, and teaches – which by the way is correct – and then when confronted with something that goes against that, we defend against it. Heresy hunting begins with a posture of first seeking whatever goes against what is correct. And the motivation is not to defend the Gospel, but to satisfy some internal need to have ones ducks in a row.

So, for example, lets look at the doctrine of communion. We hold what Jesus teaches about it. “This is my body…this is my blood.” It’s clear, and St. Paul supports this teaching by saying the bread we break and cup we bless are a “communion” in the body and blood of Christ. Finally, Jesus says those who eat His flesh and drink His blood have eternal life. Pretty straight forward.

Now, those who love Christ and have faith in what He gives and teaches regarding communion joyfully receive communion as what it is, His body and blood given for forgiveness. It’s a great testament of His love and forgiveness, His death for us. It humbles us; it reminds us of His love; it teaches love; it brings us together with other sinners, all who share in this wonderful gift.

Who among them would be looking around to make sure everyone else was properly receiving it, looking to see if they cross themselves properly, or show enough reverence in receiving it, or wondering if they really believe what they are receiving? Communion isn’t a celebration of correctness; it’s a communion in the gifts of His death.

Yes, communion indicates public agreement on doctrine, but that is really the pastor’s job to judge that, and he will have to give an account of his performance here.

Eradicating the “heresy hunter” demon from our minds helps us to deal with other people or religious traditions as well. We receive them not in a “half empty” way, but a “half full” way. That is, if for whatever reason we find ourselves in a tradition we don’t agree with, we don’t sit there and wait to be offended, watching closely for their slip-ups so we can pounce. We can actually receive whatever is good in them as from the Lord, and if error comes up, we can testify to the truth. The former way presents us as being in love with our own sense of superiority; the latter way presents us as faithful to the Truth.

The Pharisees watched Jesus closely, when they should have been rejoicing in the glorious day the Lord had made for them. Again, this doesn’t mean we don’t have a concern about doctrine, or take a strict stance toward the truth, but the order is Truth first, defend when needed. The order for the heresy hunter is look for falsehood first, not for the sake of the Truth, but for the satisfaction of being correct. There is a difference.