Worship Helps for Pentecost 3

Artwork: The Calling of Matthew

Artist: Giovanni Paolo Panini

Worship Theme: The Holy Ministry is filled with people who God called out of his boundless mercy. Nothing else could explain the choices for ministers that God made! He calls such sinful and weak men to fill this office. Only mercy can explain the men he chose in this Sunday’s lessons: a despised tax collector, an exiled killer, a persecutor of Christians. How poignant these lessons are, when we remember that each lesson was penned by the unworthy minister called into service by God’s boundless mercy!

Old Testament: Exodus 3:1-15

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. ³ So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight-- why the bush does not burn up." ⁴ When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!" And Moses said, "Here I am." ⁵ "Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." ⁶ Then he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. ⁷ The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. ⁸ So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey-- the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. ⁹ And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. ¹⁰ So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt." ¹¹ But Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" ¹² And God said, "I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain." ¹³ Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?" ¹⁴ God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'" ¹⁵ God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers-- the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob-- has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.

1. Was Moses a good choice to be called as leader of God’s people?

2. What can we learn about our callings from the call of Moses?

Epistle: 1 Timothy 1:12-17 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service. ¹³ Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. ¹⁴ The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵ Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners-- of whom I am the worst. ¹⁶ But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life. ¹⁷ Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

3. Was Paul a good choice to be called as the Apostle to the Gentiles? What can we learn about our callings from the experience of Saul/Paul?

Gospel: Matthew 9:9-13 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. ¹⁰ While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. ¹¹ When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" ¹² On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. ¹³ But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

4. Why were Jesus’ actions so repulsive to the Pharisees?

5. What did Jesus want the Pharisees to learn?

Answers:

1. The pre-incarnate Christ calls Moses into service by his mercy. What else could explain the choice? Moses had already proven himself a failure at delivering God’s people from bondage. He was an exiled killer, living in the wilds of Midian after fleeing the court of Pharaoh. No wonder Moses asked, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh?”

2. Everyone called into God’s service asks this question of themselves again and again. It comes from knowing that only mercy can explain God choosing us to serve him. But when the minister stops marveling at God’s mercy and instead starts questioning God’s choice, then God’s answer rings out loud and true: I. Not you. I. Thirteen times in the NIV God uses the first person pronoun. Can the point be clearer? Your call is by my mercy, and the ability to perform the service I give you comes only from me, the great I AM. What comfort for both preacher and parishioner!

3. Paul tells the end result of a bright light on the Damascus road—Christ had come to call Saul to service by his mercy. But what an astounding choice! Such a man, to such an office! Only mercy could explain why Christ picked Paul, the worst of sinners. Could there have been a more unlikely man to call as Apostle to the Gentiles? The reason had nothing to do with Paul. It had to do with us: Jesus wanted us to know that the call to ministry is not based on merit, but on mercy. Here is the example par excellance of ministry based on Christ’s mercy and not human merit: Saul, the persecutor, is called into ministry as Paul, the Apostle. When he reflects on God calling him to ministry, Paul cannot help but sing the praises of the King of mercy.

4. They couldn’t believe that Jesus would eat with tax collectors and sinners.  Neither could they believe that Jesus would call a tax collector to be his disciple.

5. He wanted them to learn what the Lord meant through the prophet Hosea when he said: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  Jesus’ meaning is this: God has been merciful and forgiving to us, and he wants us to be merciful and forgiving toward one another.  Jesus was showing mercy to these “sinners,” something the Pharisees didn’t want to do.

The call of Matthew manifests the mercy of God. The Pharisees knew the Scriptures and walked the walk. They left no sacrifice undone. Their outward righteousness and place of respect among the people were the mirror opposite of the man sitting in the tax collector’s booth. Despised as a quisling and swindler, the publican’s only companions were the other “sinners” who lived beyond the pale of Jewish Law. Yet the call of Christ to faith and apostleship did not come to these outwardly righteous Pharisees, but to the tax collector. So powerful was the call that Matthew left his station and his old life behind and followed. Jesus bypassed the Pharisees because they knew sacrifice but were blind to mercy. When they questioned Christ’s acts of mercy, Jesus tells the teachers of Israel to go and learn Scripture, to see the difference between mercy and sacrifice…to see that their claims of righteousness were nothing but more whitewash on tombs. Can they really be healthy when they are blind to mercy for their brothers, blind to the prophets, and blind to the Messiah? Christ wanted different ministers than these. He wanted ministers who knew the mercy of God and would share the mercy of God. So he turned to the sinner, Matthew, and called him from his life of sin to a life of ministry with those merciful words, “Follow me.”

Putting your faith into action

It sounds so simple. Jesus said, “Follow me,” and “Matthew got up and followed him.” As a tax collector, job and money meant a lot to Matthew. But when confronted with the choice of keeping his job with its good income or following Jesus with his gospel of forgiveness and life, Matthew left behind all that had been dear to him. Following Jesus means our Savior, not our money, is our priceless treasure. Keep it that simple.

A reading from the Book of Concord for Pentecost 3

Here we hold that the Law was given by God, first, to restrain sin by threats and the dread of punishment and by the promise and offer of grace and benefit.  All this failed because of the evil that sin has worked in humanity.  For by the Law some people were made worse sinners, those who are hostile to the Law because it forbids what they like to do and commands what they do not like to do.  Wherever they can escape punishment, they do more against the Law than they did before. Those are the unrestrained and wicked, who do evil wherever they have the opportunity.

The rest become blind and arrogant.  The scholastic theologians conceive the opinion that they are able to keep the Law by their own powers.  From this come the hypocrites and false saints.

The chief office of the Law is to reveal original sin with all its fruit.  It shows us how very low our nature has fallen, how we have become utterly corrupted.  The Law must tell us that we have no God, that we do not care for God, and that we worship other gods —something we would not have believed without the Law.  In this way, we become terrified, humbled, depressed.  We despair and anxiously want help, but see no escape [Romans 7:21–24].  We begin to be an enemy of God and to complain, and so on.  Paul says, “The law brings wrath” (Romans 4:15). – Smalcald Articles, Third Part, Article II, The Law (paragraphs 1-5)