Thursday in the First Week of Advent, December 7, 2023

Matthew 7:21, 24-27

Jesus said to his disciples: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.  Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.”

Today’s Gospel Reading is taken from the conclusion to the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, which comprises chapters five through seven of St. Matthew’s Gospel.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”  When we read of the Apostles or others addressing Jesus as “Lord” we should think about how incongruous the title and the appearance were.  The title “Lord” (the Greek Kyrios) was used by the Greeks for one who owned slaves or for a ruler.  In Greek-speaking Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Scriptures into the so-called Septuagint version, they used Kyrios to translate the name God called himself when he spoke to Moses from the burning bush (cf. Exodus 3, 14) which we transliterate into English as YHWH and sometime write out as “Yahweh”.  For the Jews living at the time of Jesus, very many of whom spoke Greek or knew the Scriptures primarily from the Septuagint, Kyrios was a very common way for referring to God and addressing him.  The Hebrew/Syriac terms El and Adonai, both meaning something like “lord” and which the Israelites of the Old Testament used for the name of God (which was forbidden to be spoken) had fallen into disuse by then.  Thus, people who came before Jesus and addressed him as “Lord” were consenting to his claim of being the Son of Man — a claim backed by his powerful preaching and miracles.  At the same time, this One whom they addressed in this way presented no special appearance: “He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53, 2).  We can link to this the words Jesus himself places on the tongues of his fellow Nazarenes, when they doubt his power to cure, “Physician, heal yourself” (Luke 4, 23).  This is as of to say that they were challenging him to heal himself of some chronic illness or some visible deformity.  In addition, the One they addressed as Lord mostly slept outside and ate little.  His ordinary clothing must have appeared dirty and ragged.  In short, his appearance did not impress or seem to justify the title “Lord”.  And yet, this title came easily to the lips of the people who spoke to him.

Jesus accepted the title “Lord” when people addressed him with it and did not deny or disparage what it implied, but he insisted that only those who did his will should call him by it.  Otherwise, the use of the title became a mockery.  If we call him our “Lord”, then we are confessing that we are his subjects and that we owe him obedience.  Nor is he a Lord who can confer little or no protection on his subjects for this obedience: “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.”  He will protect them with great power from storms that would destroy those who relied on other “lords”, whatever these might be.  That is, all who called him Lord and treated him as Lord would be safe from even the worst threats, but those who heartened to other lords would lose everything.

When we pray and address God as “God”, we do but state an objective fact.  He is God, whatever we think of him.  But when we address him as Lord, we  say that we accept his dominion,  and if we have faith, we accept it with joy.