The Law Kills

Death and Resurrection, by Full of Eyes

  

Midweek Lenten Vespers 1

A Reading from the Small Catechism of the Rev’d Dr Martin Luther:

The Ten Commandments, as the head of the family should teach them in a simple way to his household.

The First Commandment: I am the Lord your God; You shall have no other gods before me. What is this? We should fear, love and trust in God above all things.

The Second Commandment: You shall not use the Name of the Lord your God in vain. What is this? We should fear and love God so that we do not curse, swear, practice witchcraft, lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.

The Third Commandment: You shall remember the sabbath and keep it holy. What is this? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it.

The Fourth Commandment: You shall honor your father and your mother. What is this? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents or those in authority over us, but honor them, and serve and obey, love and value them.

The Fifth Commandment: You shall not murder. What is this? We should fear and love God so that we do not physically hurt or harm our neighbor, but help and support him in every bodily need.

The Sixth Commandment: You shall not commit adultery. What is this? We should fear and love God so that we live chastely and decently in our words and actions, and everyone loves and honors their spouse.

The Seventh Commandment: You shall not steal. What is this? We should fear and love God so that we do not take our neighbor’s money or possessions, or get them by deception or dishonesty, but help him to improve and protect his property and income.

The Eighth Commandment: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. What is this? We should fear and love God so that we do not lie about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or give him a bad reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.

The Ninth Commandment: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. What is this? We should fear and love God so that we do not seek to get our neighbor’s inheritance or house by deceit, or take it by a pretense of justice, but help and be of service to him in keeping it.

The Tenth Commandment: You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, servants, animals, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. What is this? We should fear and love God so that we do not alienate, force or entice away our neighbor’s wife, servants, or cattle, but urge them to stay and do their duty.

What does God Say about all these commandments? He says, “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

What is this? God threatens to punish all who break these commandments. Therefore, we should fear His wrath and not do anything contrary to these commandments. But He promises grace and every blessing to all who keep these commandments. Therefore, we should also love and trust in Him, and gladly do what He commands.

Here ends the reading.

Sermon:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Lent is a season of catechesis, a time when those preparing for Baptism at the Easter Vigil receive basic introductory instruction in the Christian faith. For our tradition, this typically begins with Luther’s Small Catechism.

The Rev’d Dr Martin Luther—monk, priest, professor, husband and father—alarmed by the lack of religious literacy in his day, penned two catechisms, the Large and the Small. The Small Catechism was and is intended for families. Luther called father and mother “the bishop and bishopess” of the home, responsible for the rearing of children in the faith.

The Large Catechism, while available to all, he particularly aimed at clergy, whose egregious ignorance pained him both personally and professionally. Yet even then, the purpose of instructing the clergy—that the Word be rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered—remained to empower the parents. Luther understood, quite rightly, that the faith practiced at home is the faith that stays with us for life.

He began his Small Catechism with the 10 Commandments, the core of the Law given unto Moses atop Mt Sinai, as recounted in the Book of Exodus, and again in Deuteronomy. For much of our history, Christians hadn’t given terribly much thought to the 10 Commandments. We were not bound, after all, to the ancient laws of Israel. But as private Confession codified in the later Middle Ages, the 10 Commandments became a tool—popular first amongst monks, then amongst the laity—to examine one’s sins.

That’s how Luther uses them here: to lay bare our sins.

The great Lutheran hermeneutic—the key to how we read our Bibles—boils down to what he called the Law and the Gospel. Now, by this Luther did not mean simply the Five Books of the Law of Moses on the one hand, and the four canonical Gospels on the other. No, his understanding proved far broader.

Law, for Luther, was any part of Scripture, indeed any part of life, that tells us the truth about our sinful state. The Gospel, meanwhile, is whatever gives to us the grace of God. So: the Law reveals to us that we have sinned, we have missed the mark; while the Gospel promises that in Christ we are forgiven. The Law shows to us our great need for salvation, that the Gospel then may give to us the great Savior for our need.

The Law, in other words, kills us, and the Gospel makes us alive.

They have to work together, you see, the Law driving us to the Gospel. Law without Gospel would be naught but condemnation; we would despair. Yet Gospel without Law would be milquetoast platitudes at best; we would remain complacent. But when they work in concert, these twin truths of humanity and God, then we read the Bible through the lens of the Cross. Yes, Law and Gospel is Luther’s cruciform interpretation of the Scriptures. It is death and resurrection, on each page.

“Thou shalt not murder” doesn’t sound so bad. We can handle that, right? I haven’t murdered anyone in days, weeks even. But then the Catechism reminds us that, for Jesus, murder includes any sort of harm against our neighbor, even the murder of her reputation. Also, crucially, murder covers any neglect on our part of our neighbor in her need. All of a sudden, we don’t smell so rosy. We might need forgiveness after all.

And mind you, the distinction isn’t always the same for every person. One cannot take a blue highlighter to all the verses that are Gospel, and a yellow to all the verses that are Law. The same Word can be at once both the Law and the Gospel. “Blessed are the poor,” for instance, is liberating Gospel to the destitute, yet harsh demanding Law unto the rich.

Of course, there is a second use of the Law for Luther, and that is for good order. Refraining from murder, lies, theft, covetousness, and homewrecking—respecting legitimate authority, making sure that people prosper, and that they get a break from all their labors—these things make good sense. They provide us, and all of us, with a better daily life. But the truth remains that we can never keep the 10 Commandments perfectly. Even our best efforts shall fall short; that’s just part of being human. So we’re right back to that first use, realizing the necessity of a Savior.

The Law reveals to us our sins, reveals our need for Jesus Christ. That is how we use the 10 Commandments: to point us back to Jesus, to drive us to His Gospel. And they’re all summed up, for Luther, in that First Commandment: that we are to fear, love, and trust God above all else. The other Nine are mere elaborations of the First. Jesus summed up the whole of the Law and the Prophets as: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Very simple. Not at all easy. But very simple. And when we fail, well, the Gospel is at hand.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

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St Peter’s Lutheran

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Nidaros Lutheran

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