Deuteronomy 10:12-21; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; St Matthew 22:34-46
Rite of Transfer/Profession of Faith for New Members
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Public debates can make for good political theater. Test out each side. See where the other stands. Whether they can hold their own and defend there positions. I’m not talking about what you’re thinking. I’m referring to today’s Gospel reading. Jesus has just silenced the Sadducees by proving from Scripture that the dead will indeed rise again. Have you not read what was said to you by God? “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Mt 22:31-32). The Sadducees made had no response. No moderator was going to bail them out.
And the Pharisees would’ve thought that was pretty cool. They taught that too. And so they gather around Jesus to quiz Him a little more. To test Him. We don’t have to hear that as trying to entrap Him. They may have honestly been intrigued and wanted to know how orthodox His teaching was. His practice left them scratching their heads at times. So they ask the question about the big commandment in the Law.
This is sort of a softball question. A conversation starter. They wanted to talk about the Law, so they tossed Jesus an easy one to let Him ruminate and set the terms for debate. Now our Lord had been to catechesis. He learned His lessons well. So He gives them the stock answer. The one that every little Jewish boy learned at his father and mother’s knees. You shall love the Lord your God with all your being. And without being prompted, He adds the second, which is like unto it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments, our Lord says, depend all the Law and the Prophets. That’s a pretty strong statement. It means that everything in God’s revelation to mankind up to that point, everything in the prophetic Scriptures, as the new members will confess, literally “hangs” from these two commandments: love God with your all and love your neighbor as yourself.
The Pharisees were puzzled at the way Jesus could disregard their traditions. They were shocked and even scandalized at the way He treated the Scriptures as His very own. But they couldn’t argue with His orthodoxy. Out of the myriad of laws that fill the pages of the Torah, the command to love God with one’s all and the neighbor as oneself simply tower as the twin peaks of God’s revelation of His Word and will for mankind. That’s what you heard from Moses again today in the first reading. Jesus was teaching the same truth that they themselves held and taught.
And that’s the point of public debate and public confession. That’s the point of Rites of Transfer and Profession of Faith. To hear where one another stands. Do you hold all the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures to be the inspired Word of God and the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, drawn from them and confessed in the Small Catechism, to be faithful and true? Because if we’re going to have a discussion about what you believe, then we need to know what you believe.
They asked. He answered. Now our Lord takes His turn in asking a question. And His question, when understood properly, illumines the inner connection between the two great commandments. He asks the Pharisees, What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?
The Pharisees must have looked at Him like He had some cognitive deficiencies. Everyone knew whose Son the Messiah would be. God had promised Him to the House of David. He was David’s Son. And that’s what they answered, wondering what on earth He was up to, asking such a simple question. Then comes the second, How is it then, that David, in the Spirit, calls Him Lord, saying, “The LORD said to My Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, until I put Your enemies under Your feet’’? If then David calls Him Lord, how is He his Son?
Hmm. Okay. They’re looking for help from the moderator. Maybe a teleprompter. Nope. They have to think about that one.
To us who know the answer, it seems so obvious. But they’re still grappling with Whom they were talking. An orthodox rabbi? Or was their more there than met the eye? I mean, what other rabbi did the things this Rabbi did? Who is it that meets us in this Man, Jesus of Nazareth? Who is He?!
We sing it during Advent, perhaps we should’ve sung it today: “Then stepped forth the Lord of all from His pure and kingly hall; God of God yet fully man, His heroic course began” (LSB 332:4). This is God’s Son and yet David’s descendant too. Both together. Jesus is not one or the other. Our Lord is both God and Man in One Person.
We confess this in all three creeds of the Church, but most precisely in the Athanasian. “He is God, begotten of the substance of the Father from before all ages; and He is man, born from the substance of His mother in this age: perfect God and perfect man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh; equal to the Father with respect to His divinity, less than the Father with respect to His humanity. Although He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ.” That’s it. The two natures. Since His Incarnation. Now and forever. Maybe we should’ve used that today too.
This, dear Christians, is not academic discourse. This is not for debate. Not for theological theater. This is the deep inner link between these two great commandments. The God who is to be loved with one’s all shows up as a neighbor whom we are to love as ourselves! But that’s still to be at the base of these towering twin peaks of the commandments and think we have to climb them. Impossible. You’ll die before you summit.
The shocker, dear Christians, is when you realize that the deeper inner link between these two commandments also runs from God to us. That Psalm Jesus quotes? That great Psalm of David? Psalm 110? That’s a psalm of the Incarnation, Atonement, and Ascension. The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind, “You are a Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 110:4).
God loved us with His all. He loved us by giving us His all. That is, He sent His Son into our flesh so that He could love His neighbor as Himself. That is, so that He could love you! He came among us who had categorically failed in keeping either of these twin commandments. For it’s one thing to know the right answer to the catechism question. Its quite another to live it. You pledge and intend to do it only with the help of God. And you never do it perfectly.
But He did. He lived the commandments perfectly. And He continues to show them to us to be the way of life and of love.
This was His conviction: He lived a life that was total love; a life over which death could have no power. The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the Law (1 Cor 15:56). When there is no sin because the life was wholly love the sting of death is drawn and death itself crumbles. That’s what St Paul says at the end of this letter to the Corinthians.
You see, the Law and the Prophets depend on love. But the Gospel is crucified on love. YHWH in the Flesh, David’s Son and David’s Lord, Love Incarnate, Jesus the Christ, true God and true Man, is crucified, in love, for you.
The crucifix is the highest manifestation of His love. He loves His neighbor - you! - even to the point of letting His neighbor’s sins be His! And this is how He loves God with His all. It is from His death on the Cross that death itself loses any claim on those who are in Him.
When you were baptized, you were enfolded into Him. He reached out and wrapped you up in His perfect love that cannot fail. Those are gifts He gave you and still gives you in your baptism! That’s why St Paul writes in the Epistle, You are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You. Guiltless. Because you have been wrapped in Christ, clothed in Him whose perfect love fulfills the twin commandments. You are in the fellowship of Christ our Lord.
And that fellowship, that koinonia, that Communion of Christ is given you today in His Body and Blood. Here He, in perfect love, goes on loving you. Being a neighbor to you. Giving you forgiveness and the guaranteed promised that in Him God loves you with His all.
And so He sets you free to love God, your Strength, your Tower, your Hope, your Joy, but also to learn to love your neighbor as yourself. The one who is under the same forgiving Blood. For He gives you His Body and Blood, saying,
“Child, you are loved totally, completely. I have made you My own in Baptism. I feed you with the Bread of Life. Let that love live now in you, mold you. Love your neighbor. Forgive him. This is how you will be changed from one degree of glory to another. My glory shines the brightest from the Cross where I go on loving those who hate Me and seek My destruction, granting them forgiveness. Join Me in that forgiveness, in a a life and love that never end. Come, child! This is yours. My gift to you. Live in it. Grow in it. One day, as you abide in Me and I in you, your life too will be nothing but love. And that life will be eternal.”
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Rite of Transfer/Profession of Faith for New Members
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Public debates can make for good political theater. Test out each side. See where the other stands. Whether they can hold their own and defend there positions. I’m not talking about what you’re thinking. I’m referring to today’s Gospel reading. Jesus has just silenced the Sadducees by proving from Scripture that the dead will indeed rise again. Have you not read what was said to you by God? “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Mt 22:31-32). The Sadducees made had no response. No moderator was going to bail them out.
And the Pharisees would’ve thought that was pretty cool. They taught that too. And so they gather around Jesus to quiz Him a little more. To test Him. We don’t have to hear that as trying to entrap Him. They may have honestly been intrigued and wanted to know how orthodox His teaching was. His practice left them scratching their heads at times. So they ask the question about the big commandment in the Law.
This is sort of a softball question. A conversation starter. They wanted to talk about the Law, so they tossed Jesus an easy one to let Him ruminate and set the terms for debate. Now our Lord had been to catechesis. He learned His lessons well. So He gives them the stock answer. The one that every little Jewish boy learned at his father and mother’s knees. You shall love the Lord your God with all your being. And without being prompted, He adds the second, which is like unto it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments, our Lord says, depend all the Law and the Prophets. That’s a pretty strong statement. It means that everything in God’s revelation to mankind up to that point, everything in the prophetic Scriptures, as the new members will confess, literally “hangs” from these two commandments: love God with your all and love your neighbor as yourself.
The Pharisees were puzzled at the way Jesus could disregard their traditions. They were shocked and even scandalized at the way He treated the Scriptures as His very own. But they couldn’t argue with His orthodoxy. Out of the myriad of laws that fill the pages of the Torah, the command to love God with one’s all and the neighbor as oneself simply tower as the twin peaks of God’s revelation of His Word and will for mankind. That’s what you heard from Moses again today in the first reading. Jesus was teaching the same truth that they themselves held and taught.
And that’s the point of public debate and public confession. That’s the point of Rites of Transfer and Profession of Faith. To hear where one another stands. Do you hold all the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures to be the inspired Word of God and the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, drawn from them and confessed in the Small Catechism, to be faithful and true? Because if we’re going to have a discussion about what you believe, then we need to know what you believe.
They asked. He answered. Now our Lord takes His turn in asking a question. And His question, when understood properly, illumines the inner connection between the two great commandments. He asks the Pharisees, What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?
The Pharisees must have looked at Him like He had some cognitive deficiencies. Everyone knew whose Son the Messiah would be. God had promised Him to the House of David. He was David’s Son. And that’s what they answered, wondering what on earth He was up to, asking such a simple question. Then comes the second, How is it then, that David, in the Spirit, calls Him Lord, saying, “The LORD said to My Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, until I put Your enemies under Your feet’’? If then David calls Him Lord, how is He his Son?
Hmm. Okay. They’re looking for help from the moderator. Maybe a teleprompter. Nope. They have to think about that one.
To us who know the answer, it seems so obvious. But they’re still grappling with Whom they were talking. An orthodox rabbi? Or was their more there than met the eye? I mean, what other rabbi did the things this Rabbi did? Who is it that meets us in this Man, Jesus of Nazareth? Who is He?!
We sing it during Advent, perhaps we should’ve sung it today: “Then stepped forth the Lord of all from His pure and kingly hall; God of God yet fully man, His heroic course began” (LSB 332:4). This is God’s Son and yet David’s descendant too. Both together. Jesus is not one or the other. Our Lord is both God and Man in One Person.
We confess this in all three creeds of the Church, but most precisely in the Athanasian. “He is God, begotten of the substance of the Father from before all ages; and He is man, born from the substance of His mother in this age: perfect God and perfect man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh; equal to the Father with respect to His divinity, less than the Father with respect to His humanity. Although He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ.” That’s it. The two natures. Since His Incarnation. Now and forever. Maybe we should’ve used that today too.
This, dear Christians, is not academic discourse. This is not for debate. Not for theological theater. This is the deep inner link between these two great commandments. The God who is to be loved with one’s all shows up as a neighbor whom we are to love as ourselves! But that’s still to be at the base of these towering twin peaks of the commandments and think we have to climb them. Impossible. You’ll die before you summit.
The shocker, dear Christians, is when you realize that the deeper inner link between these two commandments also runs from God to us. That Psalm Jesus quotes? That great Psalm of David? Psalm 110? That’s a psalm of the Incarnation, Atonement, and Ascension. The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind, “You are a Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 110:4).
God loved us with His all. He loved us by giving us His all. That is, He sent His Son into our flesh so that He could love His neighbor as Himself. That is, so that He could love you! He came among us who had categorically failed in keeping either of these twin commandments. For it’s one thing to know the right answer to the catechism question. Its quite another to live it. You pledge and intend to do it only with the help of God. And you never do it perfectly.
But He did. He lived the commandments perfectly. And He continues to show them to us to be the way of life and of love.
This was His conviction: He lived a life that was total love; a life over which death could have no power. The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the Law (1 Cor 15:56). When there is no sin because the life was wholly love the sting of death is drawn and death itself crumbles. That’s what St Paul says at the end of this letter to the Corinthians.
You see, the Law and the Prophets depend on love. But the Gospel is crucified on love. YHWH in the Flesh, David’s Son and David’s Lord, Love Incarnate, Jesus the Christ, true God and true Man, is crucified, in love, for you.
The crucifix is the highest manifestation of His love. He loves His neighbor - you! - even to the point of letting His neighbor’s sins be His! And this is how He loves God with His all. It is from His death on the Cross that death itself loses any claim on those who are in Him.
When you were baptized, you were enfolded into Him. He reached out and wrapped you up in His perfect love that cannot fail. Those are gifts He gave you and still gives you in your baptism! That’s why St Paul writes in the Epistle, You are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You. Guiltless. Because you have been wrapped in Christ, clothed in Him whose perfect love fulfills the twin commandments. You are in the fellowship of Christ our Lord.
And that fellowship, that koinonia, that Communion of Christ is given you today in His Body and Blood. Here He, in perfect love, goes on loving you. Being a neighbor to you. Giving you forgiveness and the guaranteed promised that in Him God loves you with His all.
And so He sets you free to love God, your Strength, your Tower, your Hope, your Joy, but also to learn to love your neighbor as yourself. The one who is under the same forgiving Blood. For He gives you His Body and Blood, saying,
“Child, you are loved totally, completely. I have made you My own in Baptism. I feed you with the Bread of Life. Let that love live now in you, mold you. Love your neighbor. Forgive him. This is how you will be changed from one degree of glory to another. My glory shines the brightest from the Cross where I go on loving those who hate Me and seek My destruction, granting them forgiveness. Join Me in that forgiveness, in a a life and love that never end. Come, child! This is yours. My gift to you. Live in it. Grow in it. One day, as you abide in Me and I in you, your life too will be nothing but love. And that life will be eternal.”
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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