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Matthew
8:1-13
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When he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean." And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, "I will; be clean." And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a proof to them."
When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, "Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly." And he said to him, "I will come and heal him." But the centurion replied, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my servant,'Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, "Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." And to the centurion Jesus said, "Go; let it be done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed at that very moment. (ESV)
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A Life-Giving Image
Thursday of Lent 5
21 March 2013
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What a beautiful picture King David paints of the merciful God. He sets the image of the merciful God before our eyes and places it over against God's wrath and anger against both sin and sinners. What a different picture of God this is than the one we conjure in our own minds. Our imagined God is wrathful against sin and sinners and cannot be appeased in any other way than by our own efforts and works. We are sinners. He is God. The gap is unbridgeable. The crisis brought on by the perception of our transgressions is deep and devastating. No matter how we try, we shall never recover ourselves in the face of that wrath and anger. God will become for us our enemy if we continue to think Him to be so. We have created the worst idol of all by thinking God to be wrathful against us. Because in this way He becomes what we think. Woe unto us if we have thought into being such a God; an idol raging against our sin.
The God whom David knows is placated by the works of another, that is, His own eternal Son, Christ our Lord. This is why Martin Luther says we must learn to distinguish between God and God. What a strange statement this is. He means that we need to distinguish between the idol of our imagination and the gracious God who is revealed to us in the divine Word. In our perversity it is easy to slip into believing our idol. And then we have precisely what we have believed: a God who is our implacable enemy who uncovers our sin and hurls the thunderbolts of His wrath upon us. We believe this God because He is half right. We are sinners! However, David knows another God. One who is tenaciously merciful to sinners and who approaches them in His Son who offers himself to them and for them. He reaches into their misery and has mercy on them by granting them full remission of sins and freeing them from death and from the power of the devil. He covers over all their sin with the cloak of His righteousness and the spattering of His precious blood. The divine wrath He has taken on Himself that we might not bear it, but fling it into the corner, as Luther says. It doesn't apply to us. We send it to stand in the corner as easily as a naughty child, because Christ is the God who has mercy on sinners. God's wrath cannot stand against us because Christ has borne that wrath.
Reason cannot know this God. Reason only knows and sees our wickedness and it only knows and sees that God cannot stand this wickedness. We must look away from this God, looking toward the image of the gracious God painted in the Word of God. A theology of the Word of God accepts the truth of God's mercy against all the caviling objections of human reason, hopes for the full grace of God against all human definitions of hope, and believes what it is told cannot and should not be believed: that God is gracious to sinners like me. This is the God we should be looking upon every day as Christians: a life-giving image. |
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Martin Luther
"This image of God being gracious and having mercy is a life-giving image, by which he shields the pronoun 'me,' and casts into the corner God's wrath and says, 'God is gracious.' This is not the theology of reason, which advises desperation in the midst of sins. David feels sin and the wrath of God. However, he says, 'Have mercy on me, O God' (Ps 51:1). Reason does not know this doctrine, but passes over these sacred letters, which you see in this first verse of the psalm. Each of these words is purely and chastely placed, but they are words of the Spirit, having life, from which we learn to distinguish between sinner and sinner, between God and God and learn also to pacify the wrath of God or reconcile a wrathful God with sinful man.
"But you ask, 'These things cannot be so, because having been taught by your word, I learn to think that these things are this way with me.' It must be stated that as you believe so it shall be unto you, because this faith is not arrived at by your own judgment, but is drawn from the word of God. Therefore, if you are able to apprehend and state that God is pleased with those who fear Him, then so truly it pertains to you. If you do not apprehend this you are not under the blessing, but under wrath, according to what Christ said: 'Let it be done for you as you have believed' (Mt 8:13). This thought about the wrath of God itself is false, because God offers his mercy. Such a false consideration would become true, because you have believed it to be true for you. Against this there is another thought that God has had mercy on sinners who feel their sins. This is simply true and stands on its own. Therefore it is not what you should think, nor should you ever think this way in the future or believe it. Therefore in this statement the matter is by itself certain and true, and becomes more true when you so believe. As to the opposite, if you believe God to be angry certainly He will be angry and your enemy. But this is a diabolical, idolatrous, and perverse thought. Rather you serve God if you fear Him and apprehend Christ, who is the object of mercy."
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Prayer
O Lord, send us Your Word that we might believe that You are a gracious God who has mercy on sinners like us. Preserve us from being overwhelmed by Your wrath, through keeping our eyes fixed on the image of Your Son, who through His crucifixion has mercy on us, taking away the sin of the world. Amen.
For Christian congregations in crisis, that the Lord Jesus would bring them again to confess the liberating truth of His Word and restore the harmony which He wants His people to exhibit
For all those who travel professionally, that the holy angels would attend their travels
For Anita Markwardt, that the Lord would send her healing |
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Art: GRÜNEWALD, Matthias Isenheim Altarpiece (1515)
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 © Scott R. Murray, 2013
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