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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Joel 2:12-19
2 Peter 1:2-11
St. Matthew 6:16-21
Grace to you and peace. (1 Thess 1)
Jesus speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard,
saying:
“For where your
treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
it is easy to put these words of Jesus off as one would read
a pre-printed “thinking of you” card and then toss it aside. They sound nice,
they make us feel nice for a second, and we’re sure the sender meant them in
some sort of comforting and sincere way.
Its just that its hard to pull those words off of the paper
and make them real, especially when we need them, which isn’t always when we’re
reading the card. While Jesus’ words can have the same feeling to our sinful
ears, Faith lets us know that there is something more behind them and one way
the Holy Ghost does that is by leaving us in tension.
What I mean by tension stems from our Gospel reading this
evening. You see we just publicly imposed ashes upon our foreheads,
voluntarily, in the biblical reminder of the dust and ashes we sit in daily,
because of our sins. Yet, we hear Jesus saying to do these things in secret so
that no one sees.
So what are poor Lutherans to do?
Well, we are divinely inspired to live in that tension,
especially since God leaves us there. Do, do not. Free, bound. Required,
Adiaphora. The Christian lives his life stunted by sin and yet redeemed by the
Almighty. This life consists of prayer, meditation, and suffering or bearing
the cross.
While all this can be done in secrecy, Faith can not help
but overflow into our lives. We can pray in secret, but our lives will reflect
that time spent in prayer and people will notice. We can read God’s Word in
secret, but it will make our lives anything but conspicuous. We can bear our
crosses and hold our hand as close to our chests as we can, but sooner or later
things become public.
Look at our Old Testament reading. Verse 15 says to blow the
trumpet to announce the fast and to congregate together. Make sure everyone
knows that its time to fast and time to go to God’s Service. That is not very
secret of God to do.
But look again and we find that the secret comes immediately
after everyone has gathered. Its all well and good to gather up, fast and have
Church, but how? You blew the trumpet what next? We all hold hands and sing
Kumbaya? The secret is, what comes after the gathering.
This is where St. Peter comes to teach, from our Epistle,
saying, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith
with virtue, and virtue with knowledge” (2 Pet 1:5-7).
That “knowledge”, there, is revelation from God, not what we
are to do, but what He is going to do in front of us and on our behalf, in His
Solemn Assembly. “Come, and see the works of God”, says Psalm 66, “terrible
work on behalf of the children of men.” Knowledge that we must wait for and
knowledge that must be revealed to us.
the secret is how God is going to act. The mystery is that
He acts through means, even His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. There is no secret
or mystery to be discovered in us. It is all in waiting on the Lord and
watching His acts.
And act He does. But when He does, in His crucifixion, it
becomes sort of an awkward, tense moment. All hail the King of kings and Lord
of lords victorious…suffering and dying. It was a strange and dreadful strife
when life and death contended, and yet backwards to all observation, the
victory remained with life. Jesus rises from the dead.
He rises to distribute His Word and Sacrament among us, for
through those means, He draws near and fulfills His promise of being with us
forever, even today.
It is His act of drawing near to us that causes us to gather
and see what He will do. It is His work of calling, gathering, and enlightening
people which causes us to congregate. It is His work of declaring people holy
through Word and Sacrament, which causes us to tell others of what God is doing
in order that they participate.
The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, purchases our
seat at the Table of God’s action. It completely buys us in to the treasure
house that, heretofore, God had kept behind angel and flaming sword. In Christ,
the guard is retired and the flame extinguished.
No longer is there a question as to what God is doing and
who’s side He’s on. It is glaringly apparent that He is on our side and will go
with us all the way in order to get us all the way there. Now that He has told
us, revealed this to us, we can have confidence in His love and dwell with
boldness in His forgiveness found only in Jesus.
And yet the tension remains, in that we remain with sin in
our lives. If there is such evil and sin running rampant, how can God have won?
This is where faith trusts in the promises God has made, receiving Word and
Sacrament as pledges of that victory. God has chosen this way and faith keeps
us on that narrow path with Him.
These Wednesdays in Lent, I hope to go through this tension
with you and discover what it really means to be a witness of these things.
Both to ourselves and to others around us. We’ll go through 5 things you can do
to witness Christ. They include witnessing to Christ where He speaks and works,
witnessing using Law and Gospel, using Justification in Word and Sacrament,
witnessing with our own lives, and being on the front lines of defending the
faith.
Even there, the tension remains, so that when it comes to
including others, or telling others about such wonderful acts of God, it is not
a “have to”, but a “get to”. Just as fasting is not a “have to”, but a “get
to”. No good work, done in faith, is a “have to” as in “God can’t do it without
me” or “If I don’t do these things, God’s kingdom won’t expand on earth”. God
can spread His own Word just fine, with or without me.
It is a “get to”, as in now that I am found secure in the
wounds of Christ, I get to spread His Word. Within His love, I love His Word
and Sacrament so much that I get to tell others, I want to tell others, so that
they can share this same love.
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