Trinity 13

 Luke 10:23-37- Trinity 13- September 18, 2011
Blessed Are the Eyes that See
the law Fulfilled in Christ

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is probably the best known parable that Jesus ever told.  But I would first like to re-read that portion of this morning’s Gospel lesson that we do not ordinarily associate in our minds with it:  “Then turning to the disciples [Jesus] said privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.’”  So begins the text which we now consider. 

What exactly was it that they saw?  Well, obviously they saw Jesus.  They saw the eternal Son of God who had taken on flesh and blood and who performed countless miracles and acts of mercy before their eyes.  And they heard Him too.  Jesus taught them by opening up Scripture to them.  In the things that they had the privilege of witnessing Jesus do and say, the disciples learned about the kingdom of heaven, and of the Father’s love for all sinners.  They were taught that the purpose and fulfillment of God’s countless promises in the Old Testament were found in Jesus Christ who had come to earth to bear the sin of the world. 

Certainly this is what so many prophets and kings longed to see and hear.  But they couldn’t.  They weren’t born yet.  Just as Moses only got a glimpse of the Promised Land, but was not permitted to enter it, just as King David received instructions on how to build the Temple, but was not permitted to construct it, so also all the prophets and kings had to wait until long after they had died to see the day when God became man.  St. Paul says in Galatians 4 that it was not until the fullness of time had come, that God sent forth His Son to be born of a woman.  The fullness of time… It was a specific point in history that God chose for Jesus to earn our salvation from sin, death and the devil.   It was this specific point in history that the disciples were privileged to witness.  No doubt many of you have considered how awesome it would have been to be able to walk and talk with Jesus.  And it was!  Blessed are the eyes that saw what they saw and the ears that heard what they heard. 

Now of course the truth of the Gospel was most certainly available to all the prophets and kings despite the fact that Jesus had not yet been born.  It was through them, after all, that God wrote the Scriptures that testify of Christ.  Jesus Himself said to the Pharisees, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.”   Abraham, with all true prophets and Old Testament believers, saw his redemption with the eyes of faith, trusting in the coming Christ.  Blessed are the eyes that see what Abraham saw. 

It is not, therefore, the gulf of time that prevents eyes from seeing, and ears from hearing today; it is not people’s inability to be there – walking and talking with Jesus – that prevents them from being blessed by God.  No.  It is sin.  It is impenitence.  It is the rejection of the Gospel of Christ.  It always has been.  Consider the lawyer in our Gospel lesson for this morning.  He saw what the disciples saw: a flesh and blood man performing miracles and teaching with authority.  But he did not see with the eyes of faith.  His eyes were not blessed because he did not see his righteousness in Christ, but instead he saw his righteousness in his own ability to obey the law. 

To continue the statement that we heard from St. Paul earlier, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law.”   If we do not understand the purpose of the law, and our place as sinners under the law’s condemnation, than we cannot understand the gracious promise of the Gospel.  If we do not know the relationship between the Law that threatens and the Gospel that pardons, then our eyes are blind and we do not see.  The proper distinction between Law and Gospel is the key to understanding all of Scripture because it is the key to understanding who Jesus is and what He has done to save us. 

The lawyer in our Gospel lesson did not understand the purpose of the law.  He asked Jesus, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  Now, I’d like you to notice two words in this statement that make it such a bad question to ask Jesus: do, and inherit.  “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  There’s nothing you can do to inherit anything.  That’s not how an inheritance works.  A son inherits his father’s wealth simply by being his father’s son.  He is born into it.  Before he has any strength or even any will of his own, an heir becomes the future recipient of everything his father possesses. So how do you inherit eternal life?  You must get yourself out from under the law, and become a son of God.  Once again, I would like to continue with that sentence from St. Paul which I have already begun to read twice: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive the adoption as sons.” 

Eternal life is a gift from God who became a Man in order to live an obedient life under the law and to die an obedient death as the law required in our place, so that we who had transgressed the law might freely inherit everything that Christ earned as our substitute.  This is the Gospel. 

But Jesus did not respond to the lawyer’s question by asking him, “What is promised in the Gospel?”  No.  Instead Jesus said, “What is written in the Law?”   The lawyer asked a law question, and he got a law answer.  “What shall I do?” “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” That’s what you should do.  “Do this,” Jesus said, “and you will live.” 

These are the two tables of the law: love for God and love for neighbor.  The first table of the law requires that we love God above all things – with everything that we have and with everything that we are.  It requires what is impossible for us because it requires what we are by nature and in our own experience unable and unwilling to give.  And so the Law accuses.  It shows us our sin.  That’s what it’s for.  We cannot even get through the first three commandments without concluding that we are poor miserable sinners in desperate need of God’s mercy. 

It is evident at this point that this young lawyer wanted to justify himself, because he did not appear phased at all by the law’s requirement to love God above all things.  He apparently thought that he had already sufficiently done that, and so he raced on through to the second table of the Law: “Who is my neighbor?” he asked.  Of course, the answer is obvious.  Your neighbor is the one next to you; that’s what the word neighbor means.  He’s the one whom God placed in your life for you to serve and love.  In fact, it is by serving and loving your neighbor that you serve and love God.  As St. John said in his first Epistle (4:20), “How can [one] love God whom he has not seen … [if he] does not love his brother whom he has seen?”  To despise our neighbor is to despise God.  To refuse him mercy, is to refuse God’s mercy. 

This is exactly what Jesus demonstrated when He told a parable to answer the lawyer’s question.  And Jesus chose His characters well – a Priest and a Levite.  The law required that the Priests and Levites be ceremonially clean in order for them to render their services to God in the Temple, which had to be done according to meticulous instructions.  They therefore knew the law very well.  They needed to.  The services they rendered consisted of offering sacrifices for the benefit of all those in Israel.  This was important work.  The entire sacrificial life of Israel, which pointed ahead to the promised Christ, depended on these men being obedient to the Law. 

And this is the irony of ironies.  These men, although it seemed like they obeyed the Law to the letter, had no idea what the Law truly required of them, because the law required that they love.  And yet they refused to show mercy to their neighbor for whose benefit the law was given.  The law did not require them to ignore this man.  It required them to help him.  But they were too preoccupied with obeying the law that they had no time or desire to fulfill the law. 

But a Samaritan did just that.  “As he journeyed, [he] came to where [the man] was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’”  Samaritans were unclean.  They had no part in the sacrificial and ceremonial life of the Jews.  The law could not help them.  But without concern for where he stood under the Law, this Samaritan nonetheless fulfilled it by showing mercy. 

This is how we are to show mercy too.  We consider the needs of those whom God has placed in our lives.  We don’t look for how to obey the Law in order to merit something from God.  That’s not why the Law was given.  The Law cannot help us.  Instead we look to the needs of those around us, and we show mercy as though we have nothing to earn and nothing to lose.  We do not need the law to see who our neighbor is.  We simply need two eyes to see. 

But the law most certainly will show you your own need for mercy, because the law reveals to you that you have not done what this Samaritan did.  The law tells you to love him who needs his good name defended.  But do you join the gossip?  The law tells you to love him who is being cheated and stolen from, but maybe you figure someone else needs it more than he does.   The law tells us not to covet what belongs to our neighbor, but we are not satisfied with what God has given us, and we figure he doesn’t deserve so much anyway.  The law requires husbands to love their wives, and wives to submit to their husbands.  But our wives haven’t earned our love, and your husbands haven’t earned your respect.  And so we refuse to others what God requires of us to give.  The law demands that we love our neighbor, and by so demanding, the law shows each one of us our failure to fulfill it.  

The lawyer asked who his neighbor was.  But instead Jesus described for him the neighbor he needed.  All instruction on how to obey the law will ultimately show us how we have disobeyed – because the law reveals our sin.  That’s what it’s intended to do.  What we need therefore is to see the law fulfilled.  We need Jesus – because when you have fallen into sin that has left you naked and half-dead and helpless to do anything to save yourself, the law will see you in your wretched condition, but it will not stop or slow down to help you.  No, it will continue to make the same demanding accusations that beat you even further down and leave you even more helpless.  And then like the Priest and Levite, the law goes on its way without lifting a finger. 

But then it is that Jesus your brother proves to be the neighbor you need.  Then it is that He comes to you and has compassion on you, because He loves you.  And He does not worry about how unclean you make Him.  No, He joyfully takes your uncleanness and all your sin upon Himself.  He wraps you in His own righteousness that He won for you by fulfilling the law in your place.  He anoints your wounded conscience with the word of forgiveness that cleans and sooths the most infected sores.  And He carries you Himself to where you will receive continual care, that is, He brings you to His Church where the word of forgiveness is preached and the sacraments administered at His own expense and by His gracious promise. 

The forgiveness of sins is not God telling us, “Forget about it.”  God’s Law is much more serious than that; and so is His Gospel.  The forgiveness of sins is God telling us to look at the righteous life of His Son Jesus Christ who lived perfectly obedient under the law in our place.  The forgiveness of sins is God telling us to look to the cross where our brother has borne our sins and suffered every righteous accusation of the law in our place.  The righteousness that God’s holy Law demands from us is the very same righteousness that God our Father credits to each one of us by faith in Jesus.  As St. Paul writes, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”  Jesus did not complete an arbitrary maze to save us.  No, He lived the life that we did not live, and He died the death that we will not die.  The love that the law requires of us is only a dim reflection of the great love our God has for us.  This love is always found in Christ alone.  

And so our eyes are blessed.  They are blessed when we by faith see Jesus fulfill the law for us and die to take away our guilt.  They are blessed when we receive the forgiveness of sins through the means of grace today – as we will soon be singing after the Lord’s Supper, “Lord now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace… for mine eyes have seen Thy Salvation.”  And through this Sacrament, these same eyes will be blessed when we stand before God in heaven.  There we will behold our risen and glorified Savior forever whose spotless robe of righteousness covers us even today. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.