12 July 2026 • Trinity 6 • Matthew 5:20-26
“Leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” (Matt. 5:23–24)
In the holy Name of + Jesus. Amen.
Picture yourself approaching the altar with your gift in hand. You’ve brought what God asked for. You’re doing exactly what He commanded. Then Jesus stops you. Not the devil, not your conscience, not some scruple of your own — Jesus. “If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matt. 5:23–24). Put it down. Turn around. Go home. There’s a man out there who has something against you, and until that’s made right, God will not accept what’s in your hands.
Ouch. We think of worship as the one place we’ve got squared away. Whatever else is a mess — the marriage, the money, the grudge we’ve nursed since Easter — at least on Sunday we show up, we give, we sing, we commune. At least here we’re finally right with God. And Jesus says, “No.” Not while your brother has something against you. Leave the gift. He would rather have your mercy toward your neighbor than your offering brought up with a heart after his blood.
You heard the commandment this morning: “You shall not murder” (Ex. 20:13). And you’ve kept it, haven’t you? No bodies. Your hands are clean. That is exactly how the scribes and Pharisees kept it — hands clean, hearts full of wrath. So Jesus pushes you to where you actually live: “Whoever is angry with his brother… Whoever says, ‘Raca!’… Whoever says, ‘You fool!’” (Matt. 5:22). The Large Catechism doesn’t let us wriggle out of it either. It says we keep this commandment “neither with hand, heart, mouth, signs, \[nor\] gestures” — the cold shoulder, the eye-roll across the sanctuary, the name you call him under your breath in the car on the way home. God means to pull up the diseased root, the source of the heart’s embitterment against your neighbor. By that measure, no one here comes to the altar with clean hands. We are all standing there, gift in hand, with a brother somewhere who has something against us.
Why would God stop the very worship He commanded? Because He will not be divided from your neighbor. You cannot love God here and hate the man in the next pew, handing Him both halves. Love toward God and love toward your neighbor are one service, offered at one altar, and God will not accept half a sacrifice. That memory that surfaces as you kneel — your brother and what still divides you — is God’s own hand on your shoulder. He will not let you think you can buy Him off with an offering while you keep the grudge. Anger cancels the gift. Your prayers, your giving, your service, the whole show of your religion — all of it comes to nothing in the hands of a man who will not be reconciled.
And then He tells you it’s urgent. “Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him” (Matt. 5:25). You are already walking toward the courthouse. The clock is running. Settle it now, out of court, before that grudge hands you over to the Judge, the Judge to the officer, and you land in a prison you will not leave “till you have paid the last penny” (Matt. 5:26) — which is to say, never. That debt nevergoes away.
So leave your gift and go — but first hear why you are able to go at all. You can approach your brother for one reason only: God did not leave you standing in enmity with Him. Remember: you had something against Jesus. Every day you have had anything against Him — you have been the angry one, the Raca-sayer, the one holding a grudge against heaven. And God did not fold His arms and wait for your apology. He left the altar. The Son came down from the Father’s side, came all the way down to where you stand with your fists clenched, and reconciled you by His own blood while you were still His enemy. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor. 5:19).
Now look again at that altar. There is a Gift lying on it — the Lamb of God, His body given, His blood poured out. Christ is the Gift left before the altar, and Christ is the reconciliation. He went and paid your last penny, down to the bottom of the debt, and there is nothing left owing. The prison door stands open. The Judge is your Father. Your Father in heaven has nothing against you anymore, because His Son, your Brother in the flesh, carried it into His grave and left it there.
So don’t hear Jesus driving you away from His gifts until you have settled your own quarrels. Hear where He sends you first. This altar faces the opposite direction from the one He was talking about. There you carried a gift up to God; here God carries His gift down to you. Before you ever reach this rail, He has you kneel and confess — “I, a poor, miserable sinner” — and He drowns that anger, that Raca, that contempt, under the absolution spoken into your ears. That is God going and being reconciled to you. Then He sets you at the rail and puts the body and blood of His Son into your mouth — the very reconciliation He made, given to you to eat and drink. You are not kept from this Supper until you finish reconciling with your brother. You are given this Supper so that you can.
There is only one man who dares not come: the one who will not let the grudge go — who clutches his hatred as his right and refuses to be reconciled even by God. He eats and drinks judgment on himself (1 Cor. 11:29). But that is not you if the grudge grieves you and you would give anything to be free of it. Then this is your medicine. Come and receive.
And now go to your brother. Not to buy back a God who is angry with you — He is not; He has forgiven you more than you could ever forgive in ten lifetimes. Go because you have already been forgiven. If God came down from His throne to make peace with you, you can walk across the parking lot to make peace with your neighbor. Forgive him as you have been forgiven. That’s you offering your gift — yourself, your whole reconciled life, laid down in thanks and in love for the brother.
And now it can be said that your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees — not because you finally cleaned up your own heart, but because Christ’s clean heart is reckoned to you and He gives it to you again today. A new and clean heart that forgives and reconciles.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School — Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin