Bible Text: Matthew 8:1-13 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Epiphany 2020 | “Many shall come from the east and the west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens, but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Jesus is speaking here of the gentiles, the nations of the world, becoming Christians, and the Jews, the nation of Israel, the chosen nation of God, rejecting the Christ and being cast into the darkness of unbelief, which ends in hell. He says what He does here because He’s just witnessed a gentile, a non-Jew, a Roman display a living faith, that clings to Him, to Jesus, a faith that could sing what we just sang and mean it – Jesus priceless treasure. And Jesus will, of course, and Jesus knows this – he’ll be rejected by the leadership of the Jews, crucified at their instigation. He’ll weep over their unbelief and their destruction. So the contrast here between believing gentiles and unbelieving Jews. Of course, Jesus is speaking in generalizations here, it’s not as if all the Jews would reject him, in fact the first converts and Jesus’ own disciples were all Jews. But there is this terrible irony, that Jesus comes to His own people, and the majority reject Him, and the nations, who had no reason to expect Him, are surprised by joy in Him.
Now there are two reasons why we in our day rarely talk about this contrast. The first is because of the Nazis and Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jews. We’re extremely sensitive in our day, as we should be, to giving any impression of racism against Jewish people. So here we have to make a distinction. Hitler was a racist. Christians cannot be racists. We treasure the God who created all races in his image. Our God became a man, and when He did, He joined the Jewish race. Our God died for all races – as Jesus says, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all nations, all races, to myself.” Hitler was a racist – he hated Jews and blacks, even Italians and Japanese, ironically – precisely because he wasn’t a Christian. There’s something they’ll never teach you in the public schools. But it’s true. Hitler was devoted to the theory of evolution, believed that other races hadn’t evolved to the height of his master race. He completely rejected the Jesus who died for all peoples, and instead was inspired by the teaching of the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously declared, “God is dead,” and by that he meant the Christian God was dead along with all the Christian God stood for, including love for all people, all races. And this should remind us of just how important the Christian religion is for the world. It has been the force that unites races all over the earth, that breaks down the barriers of race and culture and declares that all of us are created by the same God and bought by His blood, equal – as St. Paul says, therefore we are all one in Christ Jesus, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, but we are all one.
The second reason we don’t talk about this contrast is because it’s history, and by that I mean, it’s largely in the past, it already took place. Jesus said the Gospel would go out to all nations, and it did, and we’ve simply grown used to it. It’s been almost 2000 years since the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, since the majority of the Jews rejected the Christ, and Paul famously shook the dust off his feet and said, “From now on, I will go to the Gentiles.”
So let me give you a few reasons why we should continue to talk about the contrast that Jesus speaks of today. The first is because it’s everywhere in the New Testament. Just read through the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus says it all the time. He weeps over Jerusalem and mourns their destruction. He tells parable after parable to the Jews that clearly teach the Jews will reject him and the Gospel will go out to the Gentiles, who will believe it; he makes it so clear, in fact, that a couple times they try to kill him for saying it. The Gospel of Matthew, as we’ve seen, records the Magi coming from the East to worship Jesus, and it ends, as we all know, with Jesus’ command to his disciples to go out into all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In other words, this isn’t a minor point. It’s the point of the New Testament. Jesus came first to the Jews, to the nation of Israel. They were God’s chosen people. But He made it clear from the start that He came for all, Jews and all people. That His mercy and His love extended to the whole world – God so loved the WORLD, that He gave His only Son.
And this isn’t simply a matter of the past. We need to understand this today. And if you get nothing else out of church today, get this, that God has revealed his Son to us, that we can sit here today and hear that our sins are forgiven, that God has become a man to win us everlasting life, this is the greatest privilege and honor imaginable, and it should be unthinkable to us ever to take it for granted.
And this lesson applies especially to us Lutherans. We have the pure truth. We confess exactly what the Bible teaches. We have the Gospel in all its fullness, we have the right administration of the sacraments, we have all the riches our Lord Jesus died to give us. We’re like the Jews of Jesus’ time. St. Paul asks the question, “What then is the advantage of being a Jew,” and he responds, “Much in every way, for to them were delivered the oracles of God,” that is, they had the truth, they had God’s presence in the sacrifices and in the Temple, they had the promise of salvation, as Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, “You worship what you don’t know, but we worship what we know. For salvation is from the Jews.” We could say much the same of the Lutheran Church today. What’s the advantage of being a Lutheran? Much in every way. We have the true body and blood of Christ on the altar, we have the truth of God’s Word preached in its fullness, we have the Gospel clearly and constantly proclaimed, the forgiveness of sins continually given. God has blessed us more than any others. The Jews took it for granted and ended up losing it all. They took it for granted and ended up having Jesus praise the faith of outsiders, like the centurion. And we Lutherans risk doing the same. We do. And frankly it often happens that the faith of other Christians, who aren’t Lutheran, who belong to sects and denominations that teach falsely about Baptism, about conversion, about the Lord’s Supper, these Christians often put us to shame, because their faith shines, they live their lives for Christ, and ours we so often take for granted. God help us.
This is the lesson the centurion teaches us today. He was an outsider. He wasn’t a Jew. He had obviously heard of Jesus, but he couldn’t have had the advantage the Jews had, of having Scripture after Scripture teaching them that the Christ would come, that He would be God in the flesh, that He would bear their sins and carry their diseases, he didn’t have this advantage, because he wasn’t a Jew and so he didn’t have church or the Bible. But he heard enough to know this Jesus must be God, he heard enough to know that he himself was unworthy of this God, he heard enough to put all his trust in this Jesus, knowing that He would be merciful, that He cared for him, that He had come into the flesh to defeat sin and pain and death and disease, that He would answer his prayer. He knew that much.
And this is what faith does. It expects everything good from Jesus. Look at this centurion. He knows one thing of himself and two things about Jesus. What does he say about himself? I am unworthy that you should enter under my roof. We mimic these words in our confession. I a poor miserable sinner… I’ve heard LCMS Lutherans, including LCMS Lutheran pastors, criticize this confession, as too somber, too depressing. That’s total nonsense. Unless you can confess with the centurion that you’re totally unworthy of Jesus, you’ll end up denying him altogether. The Pharisees thought they were worthy of Jesus, the tax collectors knew they weren’t. I have come, Jesus said, to call sinners to repentance, to save the lost. We should admit this not only every Sunday, but every single day. We get sick of saying “I a poor miserable sinner,” we get embarrassed by it, or we simply mouth it because that’s what Lutherans do but don’t speak it from our heart, then not only is all this an embarrassing spectacle, but Jesus can’t be priceless, can’t be a treasure. But when we know that we are unworthy, then we can turn to Jesus as He really is, as the God who wants to help us.
There are two things the centurion’s faith knows. One that Jesus is God in human flesh. I too am a man with authority, he says. I say to my soldiers, go, and they go, come, and they come, to my servant, do this, and he does it. And Jesus has authority. Not just over people, but over creation. He can tell the wind to stop, as he’ll do later in this chapter. He can touch leprosy and heal it. And not just over creation, but over death itself, he can speak the word, and the centurion’s servant will be healed. When the centurion comes to Jesus and calls Him Lord, he knows what he’s saying. Jesus is God. He has all power in heaven and on earth.
But all this power wouldn’t matter unless this Jesus is also merciful. And that’s what faith trusts and knows. What the centurion knows, what gives him boldness to ask the world of Jesus. That Jesus is love. That he is kindness itself. That He actually wants to help him, that He’s come to put an end to sin and pain and death, to answer his promise, Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will glorify me. And He’s come for all, for the unworthy, for the Jew, for the Gentile, for all. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
And this is what our faith clings to. We who are unworthy and know it are also the ones who have needs, like the centurion. We have sins we can’t cleanse ourselves from, we have loved-ones sick and suffering, we have pain, we fear death, we have divisions and fights in the family. Jesus comes to the unworthy. He comes to those in need. That’s the nature of His love. This is who He is. He healed the centurion’s servant with a word. He cleansed the leper with his touch. He said, I am willing, I want it. And He says the same to us.
He is willing. He came willingly to this world of sin and death. He happily took on our human nature. He willingly lived for us. He went willingly to the cross to die for us, to take our sins on himself and cleanse us by His blood. And He remains willing today. Willing to forgive our sins. He wants it. To put His body and His blood in our mouths to unite us to Himself forever. To answer our prayers. To give us all we need, until He takes us from this valley of sorrows to Himself in heaven, to raise us up on the Last Day and give us everlasting life.
Never take it for granted. What Jesus gives us here is beyond compare. You take His body and His blood. You hear the Word of the God who made you and died for you. You have been baptized into His death and resurrection. You are His child. You have Him totally. You have the whole comforting and powerful truth, what angels desire to look into. The Father grant us His Holy Spirit that we always treasure His Son, our Savior. Amen.