Scribes in the Kingdom
LSB Lectionary, Series A • Sermon • Submitted
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Text: “49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.“ (Matthew 13:49-50)
Others have commented on how the most important factor with regard to which animals we will eat and which we will not eat is not any kind of objective comparison of how they taste, but how cute the animals are. The cuter they are, the less likely we are to eat them. Case in point, if we go back a few years, many of us were around for the big controversy regarding dolphins that were getting caught in the nets that were intended to catch tuna. There was, in fact, quite a scandal: those poor, poor dolphins getting trapped in those nets. The irony, of course, being that we have no objection to the fact that tuna are, in fact, intended to be caught in the net. I recall, at the time, a few comedians pointing out that we might want to hold off on our outrage long enough to find out if tuna with dolphin meat in it tastes any better than regular dolphin meat. Others pointed out that, perhaps if a few tuna learned to jump out of the water and go through hoops or hit a ball, (if they started a “tuna show” to go with the dolphin shows at Sea World) then perhaps we’d care about them, too. The fact that we eat one and not the other seems to say more about us than it does about them.
I’m not entirely sure what brought that to mind, but it certainly casts the third of the three parables from our Gospel reading in an interesting light.
This parable of the net is fairly straightforward. A day of judgment will come when all of humanity will be gathered, as if a great net was let down into this creation, pulling up “fish of every kind”— pulling up every human being who has ever lived. And, on that day, the angels will collect the “good” and throw the “bad” into the eternal fires of hell. So how does God judge? Who is “cute” enough to be spared from God’s net? What ‘hoops’ do you need to learn to jump through in order to ensure that you stay clear of the fire on that day?
The explanation that Jesus gives doesn’t offer any comfort: “The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the fiery furnace” (Matthew 13:49-50). In this case, clarity doesn’t bring any consolation.
Of course, in a very real sense, He’s not telling us anything we don’t know. Even as secular as our culture has become, the awareness of the coming judgment is, arguably, growing stronger, not weaker. As we study scripture, it doesn’t take long before we begin to look down our noses at the Pharisees and the self-righteousness that enabled them to pray, “God, I thank you that I’m not like that sinner over there....” But are we any less self-righteous today? I would suggest to you that we are actually far more self-righteous. To paraphrase the Apostle John, how can we claim to love God, whom we can not see, when we do not love other people, who are right here in front of us?How easily could we rework the Pharisee’s prayer? It wouldn’t seem to take much: “God, I thank you that I’m not like those immoral liberals…,” or “I thank you that I’m not like those hateful conservatives....”
I occasionally joke that a clear conscience is only evidence of a poor memory (nothing more). But it’s actually worse than that. You and I are just as good as any Pharisee at coming up with reasons why “those fish” should be tossed into the fire, but not us. Except that’s not righteousness. That’s self-righteousness. And self-righteousness will not save you on the day of judgment.
This would be a disconcerting parable, if it didn’t come with the two others. The Kingdom of Heaven is, in fact, like a net thrown into the sea that gathers fish of every kind that are sorted and the bad are thrown away into the fire. By nature, you are one of those fish that are thrown away into the fire. You are, by nature, the same as them. The only thing that separates you from them is God’s patient kindness and His abounding grace, not any lesser guilt on your part.
And, at the same time, before He gathered you up in His net (along with the rest of humanity), He found you, went with joy, and sold all that He had for you.
Let me go on a short tangent for a second. We follow a series of readings that are carefully planned out and set for us. It’s a three year cycle of readings from the Old Testament, from one of the Epistles in the New Testament, and from one of the New Testament Gospels. So you heard these readings three years ago and you heard me preach on them three years ago. Now, you rarely, if ever, remember those sermons three years later. (Yes, I’ve tested that a couple of times— not often, but on a couple of occasions.) But I’m curious to see if you remember the last time I preached on these three parables from Matthew 13.
It was an outdoor service. (It ended up being a beautiful day, as well.) That day, I didn’t use our normal bulletin covers. Instead, we had a picture of a painting printed on the cover. My sermon focused on that painting.
The painting showed a green field. But it was not just any field. This field was dotted with headstones marking graves. And in the center of the painting, one of the graves is open and a man is pulling the casket out from the grave. And the caption on the picture is the first of the three parables in our Gospel reading: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44). The man pulling the casket out of the grave is Jesus. You are the treasure that He found hidden in the field, causing Him to go— with joy!— and sell all He has and buy the field.
Long before the net is let down into this creation in order to gather all of humanity to Him, Christ chose you. While you were dead in your trespasses, He found you, and then He went and sold all He had and bought the field of this world.
“He purchased and won you, not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood, and with His innocent suffering and death, that you may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom.” (Luther, Martin. Luther’s Small Catechism, “The Apostles’ Creed.” Explanation of the 2nd Article.)
It is the speaker, Himself, who offers comfort in this text. It’s true: the angels will come and separate the evil from the righteous. And “For [your] sake God made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that, in Him, [you] might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).
“Because of [your] sin, [you were] to be assigned to the unceasing, scorching flames of hell. But [He] boiled with the fire of love on the altar of the cross, setting [you] free from these flames. [You were] to be cast away from the face of the heavenly Father because of [your] sin. But for [your] sake, [He] chose to be abandoned by [His] heavenly Father. [You were] to be tormented forever by the devil and his angels. But [He], because of immeasurable love, gave [Him]self for [you] and [was] harassed and crucified by the servants of Satan.” (Excerpt From: Johann Gerhard. “Meditations on Divine Mercy.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/meditations-on-divine-mercy/id966417732)
God did not wait until the last day to act. Because the day will come when the net is lowered into this world to gather all of humanity for a final judgment, He came and chose you. He set you apart as one of His own. He has said to you what He said to the Children of Israel in the Old Testament lesson: “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession,” (Deut. 7:6) “[I]t is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery” (Deut. 7:8).
“29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:29-30). And if you want to know if you are one of those people, He points you to the cross. He chose you there.
To make that clear and certain for you, He commanded that you be brought to the waters of baptism where He chose you there. To make it even more clear and certain, He gives Himself— His very body and blood!— to you and, with them, the assurance that the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession.
On that last day, it will not be possible for the angels to cast away— even by accident— one that Christ has joined to Himself in baptism. It will not be possible for them to cast into the furnace— even in a moment of neglect!— one who has been conformed to the image of Jesus Christ by eating and drinking His body and blood.
No, God doesn’t judge like we do— deciding which animals we eat based, in large part, on how cute they are. The way He judges which will be kept and which will be thrown away is based on which ones have been made to look like the image of His Son. Would it be possible for you to mistake one of your own children for a stranger? It’s even less possible for God to mistake you on the last day. “A nursing mother will forget the child at her breast before I will forget you,” says the Lord. “Behold, I have engraved you in the palms of my hands.”