God’s grace, peace and
mercy be with you. My sermon is entitled Didactic, Disciples, Doing. My focus
is on Matthew (13:44-52). Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I
rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”
Now that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we
listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply
as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
Jak szybko mijają chwile, jak szybko płynie
czas,
Za rok, za dzień, za chwilę razem nie będzie
nas.
How swiftly moments are passing, how swiftly
time goes by.
A year, a day, a moment from now, we’ll not be
here you or I.
I open my sermon with
the lyrics from a traditional Polish song to emphasize the point that time is
passing quickly. This week, we will turn our calendars, and say to ourselves
something like: “Wow! It’s already August?!” or “Time flies.” Most of us can look
back and realize how quickly time has passed – months, years, decades.
Generations have come and gone as new ones arrive. I will soon observe the 70th
anniversary of my late parents. My brother turned 65 this month. Cindy and I
will celebrate our 10th anniversary next month. Our oldest
granddaughter will soon enter first grade.
How does this relate
to Didactic, Disciples, Doing? Well, didactic is a philosophy that adheres to
the notion that texts should be instructional as well as entertaining. The
ancient Greeks used didactics through plays, poetry and prose to teach moral
lessons. You may have read the famous didactic works of Pilgrim’s Progress,
To Kill a Mockingbird or Rudyard Kipling’s poem entitled If. So,
to answer how my Polish ditty relates to didactic works, know that learning is
a lifelong process. Whether you are entering first grade or your ninth decade, you
never stop learning, and to a greater degree, you never stop learning from our
Triune God.
Many of Jesus’ parable
often involve a character who faces a moral dilemma. Sometimes the character
makes a bad decision, and sometimes a good one. The defining characteristic of
the parable is the suggestion of how a person should behave or what he should
believe. Aside from providing guidance and suggestions for proper conduct in
one's life, Jesus’ parables frequently used language that engaged people to
discuss difficult or complex ideas. His concrete stories are easily understood
despite our separation of 2000 years and 6000 miles.
As we turn to our
text, we see that in the first two, the initial problem is to decide whether
the point is the priceless value of the treasure or the pearl, or the behavior
of those who sell all to possess the object found.[1]
Prior to these, Jesus
addressed the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven to the crowds. Here,
he addressed the treasure and pearl parables to his disciples. The stress on
the earlier ones was on what God was doing. Here, it is on the human response
to what God is doing. Like buried treasure, God’s activity is hidden and must
be discovered. It must be sought in order to be found. In short, the emphasis
is not on the finding through diligence or accident, but on the overwhelming
response made to the discovery. The finder sells all to possess the finding.[2]
The parables instruct
us that our response to the gracious gift of participation in God’s rule must
be total. Those whose eyes have been opened to see what God is doing in Jesus
must commit themselves wholeheartedly in faith and obedience.[3]
We should not
interpret these parables literally because they can be misconstrued as teaching
that the kingdom of heaven is an individual possession that must be earned
through the renunciation of material things.[4]
The kingdom is not a
possession but a sphere one enters. As Jesus says in chapter 18, “Truly,
I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter
the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest
in the kingdom of heaven.”[5]
Yet, we cannot
overlook the childlike joy one experiences when realizing the richness of the
kingdom. It is such a priceless treasure that a wise man would gladly give all
for the chance to seize it; it is the chance of a lifetime. Hence, half
measures will not do for the kingdom of God.[6]
Both characters in the parables appreciated
the outstanding value of what they had found and after careful consideration
decided it was worth more than the sum of all their other possessions. Single-minded
and prepared to sacrifice absolutely everything in order to gain their found
treasure, their actions portray how one is to respond to God’s kingdom.
These didactic parables yield four lessons
about the kingdom and discipleship. First, the value of the kingdom is not
apparent to the untrained eye. Just as the treasure hunter and the merchant had
special insights that revealed the value of their discovery, so Christ’s
disciples must be able to recognize the kingdom when they find it.
Second, the kingdom requires searching out.
The valuable items discovered in the parables were not apparent to everyone. It
is only to those who have trained themselves to discern the signs of God’s
kingdom that it will be apparent.
Third, acquiring the kingdom requires a
certain audacity. The treasure hunter and merchant were ready to take
significant financial risks to achieve their goals. Just so, Jesus charged his
disciples to be similarly fearless in their response to God’s call.
Fourth, sacrifices express hope in a future
joy. Throughout Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus emphasized the material and spiritual
abundance that result from the adversities of discipleship. Many people would
undergo hardship for financial gain. Jesus invited his disciples to do the same
to attain the kingdom.
Now that I have dovetailed didactic and
disciple, let me move onto my second point. The word disciple comes from the
Latin word discipulus meaning learner. We understand it as one who
accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another. In religious
contexts, a disciple is one who is associated with a teacher who has a
reputation or a particular view on life.
Jesus has indeed been discipling his
disciples, and his teaching itself is a true treasure, but who are the scribes
and what is the new and old? Well, when Jesus ended his sequence of parables by
asking his disciples if they understood all he taught them, they answered yes.
So, he ended this sequence of parables with a new one: “Every scribe who
has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who
brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”[7]
A scribe is a person
learned in Scripture and tradition. The wisdom of the Hebrew Bible is the old and the wisdom of Jesus is the
new. “New and old” is
Matthew’s way of giving new applications to old traditions about Jesus.
The disciples
represent Christian believers, for whom the parables function as revelations of
what God is doing. For them, the parables are not locked doors, but open
windows. As Christians, we have direct access to the mysteries of the kingdom
through Jesus’ parables and teachings, but we require assistance of “scribes”
to help us understand the wisdom of Hebrew Scriptures to see what God was doing
in the Church in 1st-century Jerusalem, Rome, Corinth, Ephesus and
other communities, as well as the 21st-century Church. We need
people like Paul, John, Peter, James, Timothy, Titus, Silvanus, and the stories
of the women who stood at the Lord’s Cross and went to His Tomb to help us understand
the impact of the Paschal Mystery. As Lutherans, we recognize the importance of
later “scribes” such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Athanasius, John
Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, and others through the first eight centuries of
the Church. These are all cited in the Book of Concord.[8]
As Missouri Synod Lutherans, we have needed the works of Walther and Pieper. As
a pastor, I rely on the works of LCMS theologians like Reed Lessing, Jeffrey
Gibbs. Arthur Just and others. In short, as modern disciples, we are constantly
learning from scribes who help us appreciate the new and the old.
Like the earliest disciples and the
parables two characters, we must appreciate the wonder of what we have
discovered – the Kingdom of Heaven. Half-hearted attempts to appreciate God’s
Kingdom and Christ’s Gospel have no place in our lives. As Christians, we are
not only in this together, we are all in together. Disciples count no cost at
embracing the Cross. Remember, we’re not about respectability. We’re about
winning. We know that a championship, and to a greater degree God’s kingdom, is
worth the wait, the labor and the sacrifice. The hardships are temporary, but
the reward is eternal.
So, now for my third point, Doing. The word
do has more than 30 definitions. I am not going to address all of them. Suffice
it to say that it means to act. In some of the parables of chapter 13, God is
doing something. In the parables of the treasure and pearl, disciples are doing
something. Again, in the parable of the separation of fish Matthew reminds us
that there is divine judgment. Finally, Jesus said to his disciples that “every
scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a
house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” So, what
are we to be doing prior to God’s final judgment?
Let me try to answer
this by asking a question. What are you looking for in life? Everybody is
searching for something. Children long for a special toy or game. Teenagers
look for a boyfriend or girlfriend or success at school. Working people might
be seeking out the next big career opportunity. People of any age could be
wanting financial security or peace of mind. We are all looking for something.
Today, the disciple walks across the same field as
everyone else, but somehow can see below the surface, and notice the treasure that
is just below the surface. The disciple wanders the market like all the other
jewelers, examining pearl after pearl, yet is the one who can pick out
the pearl of great price — hidden in plain sight and gets
it, while the experts fall for the fake and the cheap.
The disciple is like the fisherman who drags
in that great net full of fish, but sees that some are already
spoiled, and discards those while keeping what is really valuable – what truly leads
to God.
The disciple dares to hold together some
of the old and some of the new for faith is not for the passive. The
disciple has to be able to notice, see, assess, discern, and decide without
fear to go where faith leads.
The kingdom is God’s
activity received as a gift, and the disciple must choose how valuable it is.
For example, Cindy and I agreed to host our six-year-old granddaughter for two
weeks. We received her as a gift. At that point, we need to choose how to spend
our time that will involve us in child’s play and our granddaughter in adult
activities. One activity included making pierogies. So, last Sunday, Cindy and
Emma made pierogies. As adults, we could exclude her from the activity
reasoning it is easier to do it ourselves. Emma could have found an excuse not
to join the activity reasoning it is more fun to play in the mud or easier to
watch videos on her iPad. But together, we worked through the process. During
and after the process, we all found great joy – something not to be overlooked
by the experienced or invited disciple.
So, my friends, what
are we disciples to do? If being a disciple means learning and living the
teachings of Jesus, and as time quickly passes, I strongly suggest that we
continue prayerfully reading Scripture every day. Read all of Scripture through
the prism of the Cross. Invest some time reading printed or online Bible
commentaries or studies, many of which are free. Live in the Spirit. Ask the
Holy Spirit to come alive in you as you venture out each day. Pray for patient tolerance
and understanding, traits found in the seeker, merchant and scribe.
We should do this not
only for ourselves and our families, but also for other people who may stumble across the Good News
of the Kingdom without looking for it. Meeting you – a committed, loving,
caring Christian – may touch their hearts and open their eyes to the wonder of
God's Kingdom. They may be moved by the hope and sense of purpose Jesus has
given you, and realize that this is something they too must have. Gladly, they
will make any sacrifice to get it.
Friends, we conclude our parables today with the words Jesus
spoke after telling the parable of the Good Samaritan: “Go and do
likewise.”[9] As you go, may
that the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, keeps your hearts and
minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
[1]
JBC, 657.
[2]
HARE, 157f.
[3]
HARE, 158.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Matthew 18:3-4.
[6]
JBC, 657.
[7]
Matthew 13:52.
[8]
See https://lutheranreformation.org/history/lutherans-early-church-fathers/ and
http://cyclopedia.lcms.org/display.asp?t1=a&word=APOSTOLICFATHERS
[9]
Luke 10:37.
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