Be Reconciled

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Very often, when a doctor wants to make a diagnosis, he has to look at your insides. Thankfully, we have come a long way since the days when the only way to do that was “exploratory” surgery, where he literally went in just to take a look around to see what was going on. That’s how surgery was invented, and thanks be to God, things have progressed far beyond cutting you open just to take a look inside. Today there are a variety of means at your doctor’s disposal, everything from ultrasounds and X-rays, to various kinds of CAT scans and MRI scans that can deliver a picture of what’s going on inside you.

 

That is what is going on in today’s Gospel reading and this part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is taking the Law into His own hands, literally into His own mouth, and explicating in such a way that you get a good look at your insides. There is a line from a famous Lutheran hymn that goes:

The Law is but a mirror bright
To bring the inbred Sin to light
That lurks within our nature.

Jesus is delving into the depths of your hearts to assess your internal condition. Not simply your hands and eyes, but your hearts. Not simply the external symptoms we call sins, but the internal condition called Sin that necessitates your being baptized in Christ and being born again from above. Not just the outward action here, but the inward orientation and attitude.

 

Our concern is with the outward stuff. How do we look to others? How are we acting toward others? And if you are living pretty generally decent lives, you imagine that you are doing well. You are basically “symptom free.” But being symptom free does not mean you do not have the disease; it just means you are not showing it very much at the moment. If you were to look at your heart from God’s perspective, from the inside, you would see all sorts of things that would shock you: Murder, lies, theft, adultery, immorality, greed, lust, idolatry, hatred, envy, prejudice, pride, covetousness. It is all there lurking in your hearts where the disease of Sin lives. The outward sins we do all begin with Sin hidden in our hearts. You cannot see that; it has to be revealed to you, by a spiritual scan, an MRI from above, so to speak.

 

To push the analogy a bit further, even if you have an X-ray or an MRI to look at, you probably would not recognize much of anything anyway. Or the doctor says you have a suspicious spot on an X-ray and points to this thing which looks like a piece of dust got into the picture. But his trained and focused eye sees what you and I would overlook.

 

Likewise, even having an inner look through the Law is not enough for us who eyes have been made blind by sin. Even when you are staring at it face to face, you are not prone to recognize it. That is why you need the word of Jesus here. Over and over again, Jesus delivers the diagnosis on the basis of His own authority – “But I say to you.” Jesus has no need to refer you to a specialist. He is that specialist. His specialty is death and life, sin and grace. Jesus knows Sin when He sees it, and He sees it to the depths of your own heart with the full force of His “but I say to you.”

 

Who is He to talk like this? He does not reference a single authority before Him. In fact, He seems to overturn all the authorities that came before Him, those “men of old” who handed down the tradition of their wisdom.

 

Their diagnosis was too superficial, too shallow. They only looked at the outward action and thought that by doing those things, by keeping the commandment outwardly they would be doing the righteousness of God.

 

Now I am not saying that this would not be a good start. You can only imagine a world with no murder, with no adultery, with no divorce. A world where debts were reconciled quickly and peaceably, where everyone spoke the plain and simple truth in love. You would not need policemen or prisons or courts or lawyers or judges. And yet, even in a world that externally ran by the Law of God written in our hearts, the law that every human being has available as part of human hardwiring, even if everyone kept the Law written in their hearts perfectly, it still would not be heaven on earth. The condition would still be there. Oh, you would be basically symptom-free, but not disease free. And sooner or later, the symptoms of Sin in your hearts would emerge with the first angry word, the first lustful look, the first little lie.

 

No amount of external discipline can change the inward ways of the heart. Go ahead and cut off that offending hand; you will still have to deal with the other hand. Go ahead and poke out that offending eye; you will still have to deal with the other eye. And while it is certainly preferable to enter the kingdom of heaven with one eye and one hand than to be thrown whole hog into hell, cutting off hands and poking out eyes will not get you into the kingdom of heaven.

 

The entry ticket is this: Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, unless your righteousness exceeds the religious traditions taught by men, unless your righteousness flows from a heart uncorrupted by Sin, the kingdom of heaven is closed to you.

 

And what are these members you might cut off? While it seems like Jesus is talking about your own physical body, can you cut off your neighbor and throw your fellow-member in the Body of Christ into the fire? When you rage against him, that is exactly what you are attempting.

 

That is the deep diagnosis, and you do not like it one bit. And what do you do when you dislike like the doctor’s diagnosis? You get a second opinion. The world of religion is full of second opinions, and quack cures, and superficial treatments. When you get a second opinion, which one do you go with? That is easy. The optimistic one. The one that says, “Oh, it’s nothing to worry about.” That might make a great inscription on a gravestone: “The doctor said it was nothing to worry about.” Which would you rather take – chemotherapy or a sugar pill? Which would you rather hear – your condition is terminal, or there is nothing to worry about? So much of what passes as religion is a sugar pill, a topical salve, a band-aid on behavior, a second opinion that says, “There is nothing to worry about.”

 

Trust instead the word of our Lord Jesus. He is an expert in you. He knows your humanity better than you do. He knows the spiritual condition of your heart much better than you. He can read the details of the Law’s MRI. The condition is terminal, damnable, incurable. You may not have murdered anyone but you have harbored the hatred and anger that goes down that same road. You may be faithful to your marriage vows, but your eyes and heart have wandered. You may be truthful, but the truth always comes with a little spin. The fish you caught is always a little bigger than actual measurement. You are always more brilliant in the retelling than the first run.

 

The diagnosis: You are a Sinner. Not because you sin, but because you have this condition called Sin. It is fatal. The wages of Sin is Death. Whoever murders will be liable to judgment. Whoever commits adultery will burn. Whoever despises his neighbor will be despised by God. There is nothing you can do about it. There is no religious trick, no spiritual discipline, nothing in your bag of religious tricks that can change a heart infected by Sin. Because you are already dead in sin. The dead do not take pills.

 

Here is the good news. The cure has been worked. On a good, dark Friday between nine and three when this same Jesus who is speaking here in the Sermon on the Mount went the mount called Calvary not only to pay for your sins but to become your sin. To take up the disease called Sin and have it kill Him. To conquer it for all of humanity by dying with it.

 

It sounds strange, I know. Bizarre even. But this disease is unlike those diseases that affect the body but cannot harm the soul. Sin affects body and soul right to the core of your humanity. It calls for a drastic cure, extreme measures. The Son of God must become a human being born without Sin and take on this invader lodging in our humanity. He must die and rise. And you must die and rise with Him.

 

You will not find the cure for Sin in self-discipline, in religious traditions, in commandment keeping, in any of the things you do. The cure for Sin is dying and rising in Jesus, being joined to Him through Baptism into His death and resurrection. Eating and drinking the fruits of His death and resurrection in the Lord’s Supper. Hearing the Word of forgiveness from Christ to you, a word that drowns Sin with forgiveness.

“So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

 

Offer the right sacrifices not of blood and meat or of gold and silver, but of a contrite heart and a broken spirit. Come to God not with a perfect heart, but with a reconciled conscience.

 

You have been reconciled to God the Father by the same blood of Jesus that was shed to redeem you from sin, death, and the devil. You are reconciled to God, and so what have you to charge against God's elect? Go and be reconciled with your brother, just as your Brother and Great High Priest has reconciled you to the Father.

 

“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.” Death and evil in your hearts infected with Sin; life and good in Jesus who came to be Sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. There is hope for every sinner, for you in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Enter into the Lord's presence with thanksgiving, with the Name of the Lord upon you and the forgiveness of your sins ringing in your ears and in your heart.

 

In the name of Jesus. Amen.