07/03/2026
Sermon Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Scripture lesson: Matthew 11:25-30
Before entering upon our text, my fellow redeemed in Christ, let’s put on our corrective catechetical lenses. This exercise of knowing, memorizing, and reciting the Small Catechism is one indispensable part of our highly routine (though also unpredictable) lives in Christ. Our entry point for this week’s Gospel lesson will be the Third Petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” How is God’s will done? “God’s will is done when He breaks and hinders every evil plan and purpose of the Devil, the world, and our sinful nature which do not want us to hallow God’s Name or let His kingdom come. But when God strengthens and keeps us firm in His Word and faith until we die, this is His good and gracious will.” Moving on, then.
Our Lord Jesus Christ sets an example for us in prayer, first extolling His heavenly Father – and ours – with these words, that identify baptized believers as “little children”: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.” (Matt 11:25-26)
Exactly how the Father executed this plan of revealing and concealing, we have seen throughout the tenth and eleventh chapters of Mattew. Christ commissions His Apostles, telling them to go “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” (10:6-7) They are forewarned that rejection, persecution, and incalculable suffering await them at the end of their long roads – as well as everlasting rewards in heaven sealed by their Father, who will never cast them off to suffer body and soul in Gehenna (vv 26-33). You “will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” (v 22)
This suffering of the Apostles, suffering as a Christian, comes not from any sentimental feeling of “having been there” or merely the affection that accompanies close friendship, kinship, or romantic ties. That is human, earthly love, which, though good, is liable to fade or be withdrawn in a moment of crisis. But our Lord says: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (v 37); however, “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” (11:6) Faith and faithfulness to Christ do separate; however, they more tightly bind people together who are willing, like Christ, to lay down their lives for their friends. That’s divine love fueled by the Holy Spirit.
After all, as Blessed Martin Luther rendered it, “The love of men finds that which pleases him. The love of God does not find, but creates, what pleases Him.” Faith is a gift, a power received no less than we received our bodies and souls; eyes, ears, and all our members; reason and all our senses, etc., etc., and God still takes care of that faith He bestowed on us through our rebirth. Creation and salvation follow the same order. They are ordered by that same will: God’s will.
Let’s unfold that promise given in creation as it bears on our vocation. All who are baptized and believe, all born of water and the Spirit, are one in Christ Jesus. We have various vocations and are sent to varying arenas; however, even in the hidden treasures that are uncovered in service of Christ’s Church are shared. “The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward.” (10:41) Heaven is open to all through faith in Christ.
How is this possible? We have it from the mouth of Christ: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (v 27) Here Christ holds in view both those who would reject Him, trusting in their works and false religious systems; as well as those who through the apostles’ Word and Church’s ministry come to Him and receive rewards. We’ll return to the example of the apostate, the unbelieving, “Chorazin” and “Bethsaida” (11:21) and all those who refuse to repent. But regarding us who have received the saving Word –
Love that found me – wond’rous thought!
Found me when I sought Him not. (LSB #611)
Indeed, not that we first loved God, but that “God loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) To whom does our Lord send His apostolic Word? To the “lost sheep”. To whom does God reveal Himself, giving the Holy Spirit so that under His enlightening embrace we may resolve that seemingly impossible puzzle: being at once able to see God our Father in His Son and recognize His Son to be the Father’s exact image (Heb 1:3; Col 1:14). “I believe that I cannot, by my own reason or strength, believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him…”
If anyone should think this central testimony from the Catechism is an innovation, or exaggeration, take this testimonial from eleventh-century abbot St. Bernard of Clairvaux, “Last of the Church Fathers of the West”. Before he quotes from St. Paul, “I have no power to do good” (Rom 7:18), Bernard builds his case most beautifully in this eighty-fourth Sermon on the Song of Songs:
"All night long in my little bed I sought him whom my soul loves (Sg 3:1). The soul seeks the Word, but she has first been sought by the Word. Otherwise, one she had gone out from before his face, or been cast out, her eye would not look to see good again, if the Word did not seek her (Jb 7:7). Our soul is no different from a wandering spirit which does not return (Ps 77:39) if she is left to herself. Hear a fugitive and wanderer who grieves and pleads, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant” (Ps 118:176). O man, do you wish to return? But if it is a matter of will, why do you plead? … For where does she get this will? Unless I am mistaken, it is from the visitation of the Word who has already sought her. That seeking has not been in vain, because it has made the will active, without which there can be no return."
Of course, once our will has been empowered and our reason enlightened, it is a mere matter of repeatedly coming to Christ. That very word “return” implies familiarity, a home already welcoming. So Christ’s invitation takes this form: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (v 28)
“Easy?” “Light”? we rightly ask. Given everything our Lord said about following Him, taking up one’s cross, denying ourselves and not even seeking consolation from our neighbour if it is not grounded in the greater glory of God – after Jesus promised persecutions, trials, and Anfechtungen to those who come to Him; after reading chapters 10-11 from St. Matthew, who would dare to go within a hundred kilometres of Christ? His is the way to death, not life!
But we know differently. We, who have been brought low by the undeserved Word of Gospel, whom St. James calls tapeinos, “poor” or “lowly,” come to Christ because we have been made like Him. Our sinfulness reminds us of His sinless sacrifice that takes away the world’s sin. We know His “burden” to be anything but, given the unspoken yet deeply-held grief by those striving to redeem themselves. I’m most moved to pity by would-be theologians who downplay the gifts Christ freely gives – given in Holy Baptism, the Absolution, and the Holy Sacrament – saying, instead, that the onus is on us to imitate Christ’s death. There may be glamour in that; may be; but try standing on your own two feet, on that cross, and you’ll find the weight of sin to be unbearable.
No false Saviour for me! As Ignatius the martyr said against the Docetist heretics who denied Christ had a human body, so I say against the modern Gnostics: I require a real Savior from real sin. Because my sin – I don’t know about you, Pharisee, but my sin is real; and truly cleansed by the Lord of heaven and earth who suffered hell to redeem me, a lost and condemned creature. And I’ll not be treated like an equal partner in salvation – as Christ assures us, “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.” (Matt 18:3-4) (Can we not believe that that child Jesus took up in His arms was none other than St. Ignatius?)
Tapeinoō – “to be humble,” “make” or “recognize oneself to be lowly” – isn’t that what St. James, the Lord’s brother, entreats us to do? “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” (Jas 4:10) Forget your brother’s holiness. Forget your own claims to having lived an upright life; whatever makes you swell with pride, consider loss for knowing Christ. In the words of the forty-fifth Psalm, “consider and incline your ear; forget your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him.” (Ps 45:10-11)
Praise Him alone. To tie these threads together, Christ asks the Pharisees as a class: “have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” (Matt 21:16) All denials that infants should be brought to the font come here to die. The world will not have us hallow God’s name or let His kingdom come, after all, because – why? The obvious answer: it is a threat to the world’s dominion. Leave the devil and our sinful flesh out of the question. We’ve dealt with that arrogance and glory-seeking nature that, when fully grown and standing on its own, becomes a parent to death (Jas 1:15). As for the devil, for our purposes today, he’s a defeated and bound foe. There’ll be no praise or acknowledgement of him! All glory to God alone.
“Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to you name give glory” (Ps 115:1).
