Epiphany 7C 2025

Text: “34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” (Luke 6:34-35)

What is it that you think you deserve from God?

How do you phrase it? When you’re all tied up in knots, insisting that what is happening to you— what God is doing to you “is not fair”— how do you phrase it? What do you point to as evidence that you deserve better? You love your wife/husband; you try to be a good parent; you are taking care of your parents. Is that not how your list goes (or something along those lines)? You deserve better because you are a good spouse, a good parent, a good son/daughter.

Except sinners do that. Have you not heard of Dennis Rader? You may not recognize the name, but you almost certainly recognize his nickname: the “BTK” killer. His daughter reported that he would give her bear hugs. He would call her to make sure that she had checked the oil in her car. She loved him, she looked up to him— up until he admitted killing 10 people.

That’s an extreme case, but you see the point. Sinners do that, too. Not all, of course— there are many who have left a trail of wreckage in their wake. More than a few marriages have been ruined, more than a few families have been destroyed, more than a few children have grown up with deep scars that may not ever heal. But there are at least as many who are just as good and faithful a spouse as you are. There are many who put even more effort into being a good parent than you do. After all, it’s relatively easy: you love those who love you.

Even sinners love those who love them. What benefit is that to you? (Luke 6:32)

What is it that you think you deserve from God?

I imagine that you are proud to live in a community where people watch out for one another. And for good reason. You help them, they help you. Life is better when everyone looks out for one another.

That is nice, as far as it goes. But when those other people stop holding up their end of the bargain, things start to be not so nice. It probably starts with gossiping. Then it moves on to just being left out of things. That is as far as doing good for others goes.

And even sinners do that. Even sinners do good to those who do good to them. What benefit is that to you? (Luke 6:33)

What is it that you think you deserve from God?

This is a generous group of people, is it not? There is no question about that. So is the Sebewaing Sportsman’s Club. So is the VFW. In fact, if you really want to be involved in helping people in need, would it be more useful to be a member of St. Paul Lutheran Church or to be a member of the Sebewaing Sportsman’s Club?

You and I might feel like Christians are uniquely generous, but even sinners do that. What credit is that to you?

Do you want to prove how loving you are? Love your enemies.

Do you want to prove how good you are? Do good to those who can not offer anything in return.

Do you want to prove how generous, how giving, you are? Give without expecting anything in return.

Then you can consider yourself a son or daughter of the Most High. “35 [L]ove your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil” (Luke 6:35). By that standard, how many sons of the Most High would we find in this building right now? We do not even need to talk about the ways that you and I have failed to be good spouses, good parents, good children; the ways you have been slow to do good for your neighbors; the ways you have been selfish with your money. Leave all that aside for a minute. Simply by that standard of loving your enemies, of doing good and lending without expecting anything in return, what do you deserve from God? Can you really claim to be a son or daughter of the Most High?

Jesus makes it that simple. That is who they are because that is who God is and that is who His true children are, too.

Yes, it’s a lot to ask. How can He expect you to actually love your enemies, to do good to those who hate you? Here’s the really annoying thing: not only is He God— which means that, on that basis alone, He can set whatever standard He likes— but, even by our own standards, He’s perfectly justified in expecting you to do it. You’ve heard it said, “Put your money where your mouth is.” There are plenty of people who are willing to tell you what you need to be doing and how you need to be doing them. And so you might tell that person to put his money where his mouth is. If he knows what needs to be done and how, then he can start by doing it, himself. It’s only fair. Even by that standard— arguably, especially by that standard— God is justified in demanding that you love your enemies. He’s done it for you first.

He says He loves you. And He shows His love for you in that, while you were still sinners— while you were still enemies of God— Christ died for you (Romans 5:8). “While we were enemies we were reconciled to god by the death of His Son” (Romans 5:10).

Jesus pulled no punches, so to speak, when He condemned the religious of His day. In one parable, He used the image of a vineyard that a man rented out to tenants. When the time came, he sent one servant after another “to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard” (Matthew 21:34; Mark 12:2; Luke 20:10). The tenants responded by beating the servants and sending them away empty-handed (Matthew 21:35; Mark 12:3; Luke 20:10). Others they treated shamefully, and others they killed. He even decided that he would send his son, saying “They will respect my son” (Matthew 21:37; Mark 12:6; Luke 20:13).

By all rights, He could have simply destroyed them and given the vineyard— given the Kingdom— to others. But what was the point of the parable? The point of the parable was that the Son had come for the purpose of being betrayed and killed so that He could give them the Kingdom.

He had everything and chose to empty Himself, taking on the form of a servant. While in the form of a servant He had nothing, yet He gave unsparingly what He had: sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, strength to the paralyzed, life to the dead. More importantly, He gave Himself for you. He suffered and died in order to raise you up with Him and seat you with Him in the heavenly places so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward you in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6-7).

Love your enemies? Do good and lend, expecting nothing in return? What He commands you to do is unthinkable. And it is exactly what He, Himself, did first. And He did it for you.

So that He would not have to deal with you according to your sins or repay you according to your iniquities.

So that He could give to all “12 ...receive[d] him, who believed in his name, ...the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13).

So that, just as by a man death came to all men, so also, in Christ, life might come to all men— to you.

So that He will raise you from the dead on the Last Day, making your lowly body like His glorious body when the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality.

So that, on judgment day, you will hear Him say, “Well done,” because, ever since the moment that you were given new birth by water and the spirit, it has no longer been you who live but Christ who lives in you.

He did it because He is the true Son of the Most High—He is every bit His Father’s Son, just as gracious and merciful as He is—in order to declare you to be a true child of God. That’s who you are now, doing for others as He has done for you—being merciful, just as He has been merciful to you.

You truly have no idea what you deserve from God.

The answer to the question “What do you deserve from God?” is now bound up in another question: “What does Jesus deserve from the Father?” On account of His perfect life, His faultless suffering and death, the Father raised Him from the grave on the third day. He ascended back to the right hand of the Father in power, glory, and majesty, resuming His place as the eternal, beloved Son of God (Hebrews 12:2).

You truly have no idea what you deserve from God.

In Christ, even your suffering is preparing for you an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as you look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).

If you’ll forgive the mixed metaphor, He has made you “a kingdom and priests to our God.” And that is the sort of sermon that He has give you to preach. To warn of God’s judgment, but also to witness, in both word and deed, to His grace and mercy. Even when they hate you; even when they persecute you; even when they curse you, when they strike you, when they take even your most basic possessions from you, He has called you to pronounce forgiveness from God—and from you.

What will your reward be? Christ’s death and resurrection turn that question on its head. He assures you of the answer first, then addresses you, sons and daughters of God, saying: “36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

So go. Your Heavenly Father will not fail to reward you for your imperfect attempts to love and to give. Love even your enemies. Do good and lend, even to people who can not offer you anything in return. Love and give with the confidence that, right now, there is laid up for you the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to you on the last day. And not only to you, but to all who have loved His appearing (2 Timothy 4:8).

On that day, when you receive that crown, you will join the prophets and the apostles and all of the saints in laying down your crown at the feet of Jesus. Because it has never been about what you deserve from God. It has always been and will always be about His bleeding and dying love for you. It has always been and will always be about His gift to you.

That will be just the beginning of a song of praise and thanksgiving that lasts for eternity. But you don’t need to wait until that day to begin.

The hymn was just sang is an amazing hymn. I don’t think that it is very familiar to you, but I hope it can be. One of the biggest reasons for that is the last stanza of the hymn.

I don’t know if you understand why we stand to sing the last stanza of some hymns but not others. We do it because those particular hymns end with a ‘doxological’ stanza. That is just a fancy way of saying that, in those stanzas, we praise God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit by name.

Well, we stood for the last stanza of the hymn we just sang. But, if you notice, the stanza does not, technically, praise God by name. Please look at that stanza again. It’s hymn #834, “O God, O Lord of Heaven and Earth.” Please look at the last three lines of the hymn. What did you just sing? You sang— you prayed that God would ‘Breathe on His Church once more’…

That in these gray and latter days There may be those whose life is praise, Each life a high doxology To Father, Son, and unto Thee. (LSB #834, “O God, O Lord of Heaven and Earth”)

The doxology— the praise— does not actually come in that stanza. It comes in your life. That is what today’s reading is about. Replacing the question of what you deserve from God with the assurance that the Son of the Most High has made you children of the Most High. So go and give and love. Make your life a hymn of praise to Him for that gift.