Sermon for Easter 5B, May 3, 2015

Text: John 15:1-8

            Beloved in Christ, living a godly life is not optional. It is absolutely necessary. Or to put in terms that our Lord used, bearing fruit is not optional. If we believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, we will show it in the way that we think, talk, and act. Our thoughts, words, and deeds will be the fruit of a living faith. We will delight in His Word and call upon Him in prayer. We will strive to love God wholeheartedly and our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. We will gather with other Christians regularly in worship and support one another with our burdens. Our genuine trust that Christ is our Savior will show itself in the way that we live our lives.

            Where that is altogether missing, faith too is missing. The fruit of faith naturally follows wherever faith is present. People can talk all they want about their faith, but if there is no fruit of faith, they have no faith in God. You see, godly living and the whole fruit of faith follow faith as naturally as a tree produces fruit.

            Now when I talk about bearing fruit, I know that some people get their hackles up. They assume that we are talking about being perfect people, and they want to insist that there is no such thing as a Christian who is perfect. But there is a big difference between saying that Christians don’t always bear the fruit they should and saying that Christians don’t have to bear fruit at all. Of course, I acknowledge that we will not become perfect in our lifetime. In fact, our Lord indicates as much. He notes that we will be pruned again and again because He wants us to bear even more abundant fruit. That hardly sounds as if we had achieved perfection. But just because we will never become perfect in this life, it doesn’t follow that we don’t have to strive to grow in faith and in its fruit, godly living. If we think so, we’ll find ourselves judged and removed from the living vine, Jesus Christ.

            So, then, bearing fruit is not optional. How do we do it, though? After all, just because we want to do something doesn’t mean that it is going to happen. People envision doing all sorts of things—and many of their plans never come to fruition. So, just talking about bearing fruit doesn’t mean that we actually will do so. And Jesus Himself agreed with that assessment. In fact, He went further and said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” Whatever you do, whatever you plan and carry out, is nothing apart from Him.

            Now that sounds a bit of an overstatement to many. Can’t people do something good without Christ’s help? Aren’t there plenty of people who do good things and never believe in God, let alone in Christ? Here it is helpful to distinguish between what is good in human eyes and what is truly good in God’s eyes. There are plenty of things that are good in human eyes, but aren’t in God’s eyes. People are content with someone who doesn’t cause any trouble and occasionally does something nice for a neighbor. But God’s standard is higher: we are to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. People are okay with someone holding a grudge, as long as they don’t do anything violent toward that person. But God doesn’t countenance our selfish rage. The world will pat us on the back because we aren’t criminals, but it never understands that we haven’t even come close to the standards that God has set for us.

            You see, the world sees people putting aside crass sins and adopting subtler sins. The world is content with that, but God isn’t. Three-year olds have learned that temper tantrums don’t work and begin trying flattery instead. We praise the children for improving, but they are still trying to manipulate others to get their way. So it is with all our moral reformations. What God really wants—what He counts as the only thing worthy of being called “good fruit”—is that we fear, love, and trust in Him above everything else. And we cannot do that by our own will power.

            The great news of the gospel is this: God does what we have been unable to do. We could never love God with even half our heart, but God loved us wholeheartedly and still does. It was no half-baked love, but a love that demanded the greatest sacrifice. Someone had to march into the very abyss of death and hell. Someone had to enter into the mess of the world that we had created by our sin. And that someone was none other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Father and the Holy Spirit also delighted in this mission and they did everything they could to bless it and support it. But it was Jesus Christ, the Son, who undertook the mission for our sake.

            We could never give God the reverence and fear that He deserves. He is holy, and should be respected just for His holiness. He is our creator, and deserves honor for that. But we are too selfish to give Him that honor. But God dispenses honor. The Son honors His Father and is obedient to Him, even when the cost was great. The Father and the Holy Spirit honor the Son. And, marvel of marvels, the three Persons of the Trinity honor us by choosing to go to these great lengths for our redemption.

            In short, every virtue that a Christian should excel in is exhibited by God, and especially by the Son of God incarnate, our Lord Jesus Christ. If we are going to grow in godliness, it will not be enough for us to imitate Him. No, He must work in us. He must be the vine that sends His sap coursing through us His branches. For just as branches do not have life in themselves apart from the vine, so we too do not have life in ourselves apart from Christ.

            We receive two things from Him: forgiveness and new life. We are forgiven, first of all. Our guilt is no longer charged to us but has been given to Christ, who carried it all the way to the cross and dealt with it once and for all. Instead He credits His righteousness to us. This is not based on anything we have done. We are not forgiven because He has seen some progress in us. He doesn’t give us time off for good behavior. No. It is completely a gracious gift on His part—and at great cost to Him. It isn’t even given because He thinks we’ll turn out all right in the end and so He’ll give us an advance based on how He thinks we will perform. No, it is purely a gift. It is a gift He longs to give to all people, no matter how wicked they have been, for Christ died for all people, not just for those who will embrace the gift in the end.

            With this forgiveness of sins comes new life. Christ doesn’t forgive us because of what we have done, but He doesn’t want us to continue doing the same old things that have brought grief to ourselves and others. Christ loves us as we are, but He loves us too much to leave us as we are. By that I mean that we don’t have to become lovable people before He steps in and reaches out to us. He forgives us before we have even thought of Him. But He doesn’t want us to continue to live in ignorance of Him and in the miserable ways of sin. And so He gives us new life.

            Through His Word He makes us clean. He makes a new creation. He makes us a branch on His vine. Then the Christian life that follows consists of us drawing our strength from Him. A branch needs the sap that comes from the vine. The branch doesn’t produce the sap itself, but totally relies on the vine to do that. In the same way our power to live a godly life comes from Christ working in us. That is why we need to abide in Christ, and that comes about by abiding in His Word.

            In this new life, though, we will be trimmed back from time to time. We would like to think that once we become Christians, we get our act completely together and we don’t have any more difficult times in our lives. Our Lord points out that we will need to be trimmed back again and again. Healthy branches require sap, but they also require trimming back. If you let your tomato plants grow wildly, instead of culling branches here and there, you are not going to get as many tomatoes as you would like. Instead, the branches will keep growing longer without producing as much fruit. It is essential that branches be trimmed back so that they can focus on producing fruit. That is why God trims us back from time to time. Sometimes we are just growing wildly and instead need to focus on the most important things. And so He brings suffering into our lives to help us focus on Him and His kingdom. This is painful, but over time it helps us deepen and mature as Christians and produce more abundant fruit.

            This is what the Christian life looks like. It is not optional for us. May God “who began a good work in you…bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Midweek Lenten Sermon (March 11, 2015): Fruit of the Spirit: Patience

Texts: Exodus 34:5-6 and 2 Timothy 3:10-16.

            Beloved in Christ, I don’t know who coined the phrase, but I love it: “God is always fashionably late.” He doesn’t show up exactly when you think you need Him, but sometime afterwards. Add to His tardiness the fact that God works sideways. You think that you know exactly how He is supposed to handle a particular situation, but He doesn’t. He does something you don’t entirely want Him to do. Only in retrospect do you discover that He has given you something better than you had originally want.

            It takes a lot of patience, therefore, to be a Christian. But, to be fair, it also takes a lot of patience to be God. Therefore, before we look at the reading from 1 Timothy, which tells us Christians how to be patient, let us look first at the passage from Exodus, which tells us how God Himself is patient.

            A little bit of context is necessary. The LORD God was not completely unknown to Moses at this point. He had first appeared to Moses through a burning bush. He had repeatedly given instructions as the plagues unfolded against the Egyptians. He had commanded Moses and the Israelites to march through the Red Sea. He had thundered from atop Mount Sinai, as the whole area was covered in a thick cloud of smoke. And then He had invited Moses to spend forty days with Himself on Mount Sinai. If anyone should have known God, it was Moses. But Moses had been sent back to the Israelites because they had built a golden calf and began worshipping it. Moses had put a stop to all that nonsense and prayed for God’s mercy. God had heard him and not blotted out the Israelites. It was only after this experience that Moses at last asked to see the LORD God in all His glory. The LORD had said that was humanly impossible, but nonetheless He promised to show as much of His glory as Moses could handle.

            That was why “the LORD descended in the cloud and stood with [Moses] there.” And whenever the LORD comes, He never stands silent. Thus, He did more than just descend and show off His glory. He proclaimed loudly who He was: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” You could say that all of those phrases are really God’s name. Yes, He usually goes just by “God” or “the LORD,” but you really need the full expression to understand completely who He is.

            In His name we see hints of His great patience. First of all, He is described as “merciful and gracious.” Someone who is merciful bears with someone who is weaker. Someone who is gracious bears with someone who is less deserving. God is both. He pities us in our weakness, and He pities us trapped by our sin. Neither form of patience is easy. It is not easy to bear with people who aren’t as fast as we are or who need extra help. It is especially not easy to bear with people who are defiantly sinful. And yet He does.

            The LORD God adds that He is “slow to anger.” People like to criticize God for His judgment upon people, especially in the Old Testament but also in the New Testament. But you have to admit that God has an awfully long fuse, much longer than ours. We would have given up on the Israelites as soon as they had built a golden calf, especially when we had just told them to do no such thing. We wouldn’t have patiently borne with the sins of the Amorites for seven centuries, but would have blotted them out immediately. In fact, we would not have allowed the world to have grown so corrupt over the millennia, but would have abandoned the project long ago.

            Finally, God describes Himself as “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” He is so steadfast in love and so faithful that He cannot help being patient. He is more committed to our cause than even we are. But it isn’t that God is merely patient, just biding His time until He can give us our just desserts. No, He loves us despite our insolent treatment of Him, despite our love of sin. Therefore, He did more than just put up with us. He atoned for our sin. He sent His beloved Son to earth, to be mistreated and crucified by us, all so that we could be reconciled to Him. So God has a level of patience that far exceeds ours.

            And yet we too ought to be patient with one another, even as God was patient with us for Christ’s sake. In the reading from 1 Timothy we are reminded of the importance of being patient, especially when things are going badly. Paul talked to Timothy about all the things that might have tried his patience: his “persecutions and sufferings” that didn’t happen in only place but in several: “at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra.” Far from thinking that these awful sufferings were unique to him, he knew that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse.” In other words, to be a Christian requires patience.

            One of the things that allowed Paul to be patient is that he could boldly and truthfully confess: “The Lord rescued me” from all those trials and tribulations. It wasn’t that he never suffered, but that he survived them and went on to thrive elsewhere. As we go through various bad experiences that test our patience, it helps us to remember that God is delivering us. If we face opposition for our faith, God will not let their stratagems prevail against us, for He has promised that the church will break down the gates of hell. If we have people who mistreat us for no particular reason, we know that God will keep us from being overwhelmed by them. We have the testimony of the psalmists, who cried out to God frequently because they were oppressed by evildoers, but in the end they were delivered. If we suffer from some physical affliction that tries our staying power, we know that God in the end will vanquish disease and death when Christ returns in glory.

            What helps us to grow more patient is to get to know God better. That is why Paul pointed Timothy to the Scriptures. Yes, Timothy was supposed to imitate Paul’s behavior and had done so. Paul commends him for doing so. There certainly is a place for us to learn from godly brothers and sisters who have lived longer and more deeply in the Christian faith. But Paul also pointed Timothy to the Scriptures. Not only did they lead Timothy to faith in Christ so that he could be saved, but they also could daily help Timothy with “teaching…reproof…correction…and training in righteousness.”

            We grow in patience as we are taught more about God and learn who He is and what He has done for us and what He expects out of us and why. But this is no idle knowledge. It strikes home a lot of times for us as “reproof,” as admonition, as we are shown just exactly how impatient we have been with one another and with God. But we should bear this reproof patiently, for it works godly sorrow and repentance. Then the Scriptures unfold for us the “correction,” all that God has done to forgive our sins and get us back into His good graces. And then there is “training in righteousness” that naturally follows, as we learn to be more patient from Him who excels in this virtue.

            Beloved in Christ, may you follow the examples of the saints who have gone before us and, above all, of our Lord. And may you also delve deeply into the Scriptures so that you might know the God who is patient with you and then grow in patience with Him and others. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Midweek Lenten Sermon (March 4, 2015): Fruit of the Spirit: Peace

Texts: Romans 15:1-5 and John 14:25-28

            Beloved in Christ, we are now ready to look at the third aspect of the fruit of the Spirit, namely, peace. To help us understand peace better we have these two passages, one from Romans and the other from John. Let me begin with the second passage, since there Jesus explains the role of the Holy Spirit in a Christian’s life. After all, we have been talking about the fruit of the Spirit for the past couple of Wednesdays, but we haven’t really explored who the Holy Spirit is or how He works in us to bear this fruit.

            In fact, you may ask, “If we are Christians, then what does the Holy Spirit have to do with anything? We are not Holy Spirit-ians, after all, but Christians. So why don’t we speak of the fruit of Jesus Christ instead of the fruit of the Holy Spirit?” Well, we are taught by Scripture to acknowledge not only Jesus Christ as God and Lord, but to acknowledge the Father and the Holy Spirit as God and Lord, too. And yet there are not three Gods, but one God. There are three distinct persons in the Trinity and none can be blurred with or equated with another, but they remain distinct. Furthermore, each person is fully God, not just part of God. But in an awesome mystery beyond our ability to explain, there is one God. And so just as we acknowledge the divinity of the Father and of the Son, so too we acknowledge the divinity and authority of the Holy Spirit.

            Of course, we acknowledge the special role that the Son has played in humanity’s salvation. That is why we are rightly called Christians rather than Father-ians or Holy Spirit-ians. Unless the Son of God had taken on our human flesh, we would have been ignorant of God’s truth. All our theology centers around Jesus Christ. His words are the absolute standard of the Christian faith. His very existence as God in human flesh and His work of holy living, dying, and rising for us teach us all we need to know about God.

            I am not saying that the only part of the Bible that is authoritative for us is the four gospels and then only the words printed in red. After all, Jesus pointed to the prophets of the Old Testament as people who knew of and foretold His ministry. He cited them as authoritative, and well He should, for He, the Word of God, also spoke to the prophets before His incarnation. Moreover, Jesus commissioned His twelve apostles to preach and to write down words for the next generation and made their witness authoritative. Thus, throughout the entire Bible we see the words of our Lord.

            But there was something unique, we have to admit, about those three years that our Lord conducted His ministry with the apostles. As He concluded His earthly ministry, He said, “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you.” There was nothing that our Lord failed to teach His disciples that they or we need to know. Yes, there are some things He didn’t reveal, such as the exact day when He will return in glory. But everything that was necessary for our life here on earth and for our eternal salvation He has revealed. There is no need of new revelation to supplement what Christ has spoken. In fact, Jesus makes this point clear: “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” Notice how the Holy Spirit works. He teaches us by “[bringing] to [our] remembrance all that [Christ has] said.” The Holy Spirit brings no new revelation, but gets us to believe what Christ has already taught us.

            Do not despise the Holy Spirit because He seems to have a subordinate role, as if the Son is the teacher and the Holy Spirit is merely the teacher’s aide or a tutor. Every person in the Trinity delights in the work of the others and honors them for it. The Son does not reveal any truth other than what the Father has given Him. The Holy Spirit reminds us only of what the Son has originally taught. The Father glorifies the ministry of the Son and the Holy Spirit in bringing mankind back to Him.

            Wherever the Holy Spirit does His work of reminding us of our Lord’s words and convincing us to believe them, He not only brings about faith in God but also godly fruit. One aspect of that fruit is peace. Our Lord says four things about that peace. First, it is His gift to us. He is the one who leaves that peace in our midst. This peace is not something we can acquire on our own, but He must give it to us—and He freely does so.

            What exactly that means is illustrated by the next thing He says: “Not as the world gives [peace] do I give to you.” In other words, Christ’s peace is different from the world’s peace. How does the world give peace? First of all, it knows of peace that is based on external circumstances. If we can get all the warring parties to lay down their weapons and cooperate like grownups, then we will have peace. Or if life is going well for us, then we might have a feeling of peace and contentment inside of us. But Christ acknowledges elsewhere in the gospel of John that the world will hate us and fight against us. So the peace that He gives cannot be based on our external circumstances. Moreover, the world knows peace only as a temporary thing. It lasts for a while, then disappears. Historians have analyzed every peace treaty that they could find, and pretty much every one of them has been broken, in spirit if not in letter. Peace, as far as the world is concerned, is just a delay of war until one or the other party thinks that it has become strong enough to defeat the other side. But the peace Christ gives lasts forever.

            That leads us to the third point: Christ’s peace helps us not to be troubled or afraid amid a troubled and scary world. That is because Christ has conquered all the forces of evil. He atoned for our sins that could have separated us eternally from God. He has defeated the devil, who has been raging against us from eternity. He has forced death to surrender its hold on humanity by His own resurrection from the dead. He has overcome the world, even though the world had condemned Him to die.

            We know that we can put up with all sorts of things on a temporary basis if we know that there will be something good coming thereafter. We have all moved into an apartment or house that we really love. We put up with boxing everything up for a week or more before the move and with living out of those boxes for a week or even a month afterwards. We do this because we know that there will be something good that results, if we can be a little patient. In fact, we might be so excited about being in the new place that we don’t even think of how bad it is to be living out of those boxes. In the same way, we know that Christ has gained the victory and so we don’t need to worry and fret because of our circumstances now. As our reading from Romans tells us, God wants us to live so that “through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” The Bible encourages us, which leads us to endure the bad things, so that we might have the hope that peace gives.

            The last thing Jesus says about the peace He gives is that it causes us to rejoice in Christ’s exaltation. Because Christ has conquered evil in this world and given us an inner peace to deal with the troubles of this world until He comes in glory, we can actually rejoice that He has triumphed. Yes, even when things are difficult for us, the fact that He is exalted gives us peace and joy.

            Having looked at length at the second reading, I would like to look more briefly at the first reading. You might say that in John we learned what the peace of God consists of, while in Romans we learn how that peace looks like in practice. If we have peace with God and a peace within ourselves despite what is happening on the outside, we are free to live in peace with one another. That sort of peace will show itself through the strong “[bearing] with the failings of the weak.” The world teaches us that those who are strong should force the weak to do their will. Might makes right, or so we are told. But those who live at peace will strive to bear with the weak and to build them up.

            That is because we do not strive “to please ourselves.” Those who war do so because they want the world to be more to their liking. They want weaker powers to obey them. They want the lowly to build them up. But if we are at peace with God and others, then we are free to love and serve our neighbors.

            That is true even if the world around us is very ornery and hard to please. As Paul reminds us, our Lord Himself was scorned and cursed. But He sought the world’s good, not His own, and so He let the world’s scorn roll off of Him. He, the Giver of all peace, couldn’t have His peace disturbed, not even by the most unruly of people.

            And so, beloved in Christ, turn away from your warring impulses and submit to the Prince of Peace. Let His peace cast out your selfishness. He has battled the forces of evil and conquered them so that He could establish a lasting peace. Enjoy that very peace that He has come to give you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Midweek Lenten Sermon (February 25, 2015): Fruit of the Spirit: Joy

Texts: Galatians 5:22-23; Jeremiah 33:4-11; and Hebrews 12:1-2

            Beloved in Christ, “I don’t care if we are looking at the fruit of the Spirit,” many Christians would say, “This is not the time to talk about joy. Don’t you realize that we are in the middle of Lent? Lent is a gloomy time. Lent is a time to walk around with somber faces. Lent is the time to wring out every last drop of joy from our lives and embrace a level of grief and despair such as is known only to those who have just lost a loved one.”

            Says who? Not our Lord. Lent may be a time to fast, but our Lord warned us last week in Matthew 6 about going around all sad and grieving. If you embrace a spiritual discipline, and it pinches you a little, don’t let the pain show, for it isn’t about the hurt but about your relationship with God. And if you are fasting, it is not supposed to be about grieving a decline in your relationship with food, but about rejoicing in greater fellowship with God. Spiritual disciplines may be serious business, but none of them are gloomy. They are laden with joy.

            So too is the Christian life. There are Christians who believe that it is their divine calling to be killjoys, to make themselves and others as miserable as possible. But Paul knew different. He knew that the Galatians were laboring under the false impression that their men all had to be circumcised in order to be righteous before God. They thought that the truly spiritual thing to do was to undertake circumcision and other acts that left one howling in physical pain. But Paul argued in Galatians 5 that the Spirit produces joy. The Holy Spirit doesn’t push us to embrace a life of gloom and misery. Yes, we may have gloom and misery in our life, as we will talk about later, but the Holy Spirit is all about bringing joy—real, lasting joy—to Christians.

            Now we are easily confused about joy, as we are about many so many aspects of the fruit of the Spirit. People get confused about where true joy is to be found, just as they get confused about what real love is or what real peace consists of. People confuse joy and happiness, for example. Happiness is a fleeting emotion, here one moment and gone the next, and is based on our circumstances. When things are going well for us, we cannot help being happy; when things are going badly, we are naturally sad. But joy is something deeper. It can be present even amid great sorrows. To use an earthly example, we may rejoice that a loved one is getting married and moving across the United States where a better job offer awaits for the couple. But we may grieve because we know that we won’t see him or her all that often, anymore. In the same way, we Christians experience the same sorrows as other people do, but it is the love of Jesus Christ for us that enables us to find joy amid life’s ups and downs.

            Because joy is grounded more deeply than merely on the surface, we have to make sure that we don’t try to find joy in all the wrong places. In fact, you could say that this is one of the major tasks we undertake each Lent. The world says, “Eat, drink, and be merry,” as if that is where joy is to be found. But we recognize that there is joy to be found even amid fasting. The world says, “Raunchy sex is all that matters,” but we learn the joy to be found in chastity and marital faithfulness. The world says, “Greed is good,” but we learn the joy to be found in contentment. The world says, “Let me tell you a juicy rumor,” as if joy were to be found in gossiping and lying, but we learn that true joy comes from the truth, especially God’s truth. The world says, “Laziness is particularly delightful,” but we learn the joy to be found in fulfilling our vocations. Therefore, if we reject certain practices or avoid certain things the world is pushing, it isn’t because we are against joy, but rather for it. We want to find joy where it truly may be found. And that means we have to let the law of God clear away the clutter. We have to learn what it forbids so that we may not find great despair and misery instead of joy.

            This point is made quite clear in the reading from Jeremiah. It is obvious that God wanted to build up His city and make it a delightful place for His people to live. But that clearly was not happening in Jeremiah’s day. Instead, houses were being torn down “to make a defense against the siege.” They needed bricks and anything else sturdy they could find in order to block the siege mounds that the Chaldeans were building. They were even stripping the royal palaces for material for the defense works. Jerusalem was soon going to be filled “with the dead bodies of men.” This would be no happenstance of history, but God Himself would “strike [them] down in [His] anger and [His] wrath.” God loved His people, but they had turned to all sorts of idols, and thus God had to clean out the city.

            But as He explained to Jeremiah, He did all this because He wanted His people to have a greater joy. He promised that the city would be re-inhabited. God would heal His people. He would “restore [their] fortunes…and rebuild them.” He would “cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin” and “forgive all…[their] rebellion.” Life would return back to normal. Groom and bride would laugh. Songs of praise to God would echo in the city streets again.

            It is in this light then that we gather as Christians during this Lenten season. We want to find true joy, and we find it in Jesus Christ alone. He certainly had to find the deep sources of joy, for there was much that happened to Him in His last few days that surely would not make anyone happy. And yet, as the author of Hebrews reminds us, He “endured the cross” “for the [sake of the] joy that was set before Him.” We are used to saying that Christ endured the cross because He was filled with great love toward us. That is true. But we usually don’t say that Christ endured the cross because He was filled with great joy. But that is equally true. Just as Christ’s love for us kept Him going during the difficult moments, so too His sense of joy saw Him through the dark moments.

            What sort of joy did He have? He delighted in God His Father and He delighted in us. He was giddy with the thought of honoring His Father and of reconciling us to Him. It didn’t mean that He was free from pain. In fact, He suffered more agony and suffering than anyone in human history. But He “endured the cross, despising the shame,” thinking it unworthy to dwell upon when He knew all the good things that would happen as a result of His work.

            That sort of joy isn’t just for Christ. We too go through our lives, enduring all sorts of unpleasant things and even scorning its shame, because we know what comes at the end. Just as Christ was seated at the right hand of God, so we too will be glorified in the end. That is why we are urged to “look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” and “run with endurance the race that is set before us.” And that is why joy is a fruit of the Spirit. If the Spirit is helping us genuinely to believe in Christ, then we will adopt His attitude. We will see that glory comes after the cross. And that glory, though sometimes dimmed by clouds in this life, shines through enough to bring us great joy.

            Therefore, beloved in Christ, may you be full of joy, not despite the Lenten season but because of it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Ash Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Text: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

            Beloved in Christ, something has gone wrong. That is why we are here. We are not the sort of people God would have us be. We are cold in our love toward God and toward our neighbors. If we are religious, it is often because we want to “be praised by others.” If we are going to do any good works, we want to “receive” the full credit of our “reward.” We are wicked all too often, and when we are not, we are often hypocrites. And so let no trumpet be sounded today. For we have “[laid] up…treasures on earth,” and “moth and rust [have destroyed]” them.

            But how do we get out of ourselves? It is tempting to look for new laws and new rules and new disciplines that will free us from sin and wickedness. We in America are particularly prone to this temptation. We have self-help books, life coaches, and the like, all of which claim to be able to set us free from ingrained vices. And the law and various rules and disciplines are not without their value. Our Lord spent the chapter before today’s Gospel exploring most of the Ten Commandments. Furthermore, our Lord commends the disciplines of almsgiving and fasting in today’s gospel. And so our Lord does not reject the law as useless, nor does He reject spiritual disciplines as something useless for Christians. But our Lord knows that more is required than just the law.

A medieval Fastentuch portraying the Passion of our Lord
(Fastentuch is a German word referring to a Lenten
shroud placed over the retable of an altar to indicate
that Lent had begun and it was time for all to fast)

            This is where we tend to go astray. We like to have seven easy principles or five simple laws. We try to reduce things to the minimum and then live our lives based on them. But Christ delved into the Ten Commandments. He didn’t just treat them as simple rules, but wise precepts that bear investigation and meditation. He knew that shallow treatment of each commandment makes shallow disciples.

            Similarly, our Lord knew that His disciples would adopt various spiritual disciplines. The Ten Commandments do not tell us in so many words to give alms or fast. And yet the phrase “You shall not murder” implies caring for our neighbor and the words “You shall have no other gods” implies avoiding gluttony. In that context, it would be natural to embrace such disciplines as almsgiving and fasting. But even these spiritual works are prone to be misused. There is no spiritual discipline that is so good and holy that it cannot be twisted into something wicked by our hypocrisy, love of attention, and other vices.

            The law will never make us perfect Christians. The only thing that can do so is the love of God in Christ Jesus. It is the gospel—the good news that Jesus Christ is God’s Son and our Savior—that sets us free from our vain selves. And so during this Lenten season our goal is not to strive harder to be holier, but rather to steep ourselves in the love of Jesus Christ. We will meditate upon Christ’s holy life and His innocent suffering and death on the cross. And we will prepare to celebrate His glorious resurrection from the dead that imparts His forgiveness to us and guarantees our own resurrection to life and holiness on the Last Day.

            Wherever this good news is proclaimed, the Holy Spirit is at work, creating faith in our hearts that trusts in Christ Jesus and all He has done. And wherever the Holy Spirit creates faith, He also brings other gifts. Just as a healthy tree bears good fruit, so the Holy Spirit’s presence in us bears His fruit. We call it the “fruit of the Spirit.” (This Lent we will be looking at the fruit of the Spirit in our midweek services.) Saint Paul talks about this in Galatians 5, where he warns his readers not to do “the works of the flesh,” but instead to enjoy “the fruit of the Spirit.” Notice the contrast between the two—and I mean more than just that the one is evil and the other good. The phrase “works of the flesh” is plural, but the “fruit of the Spirit” is singular. Wickedness comes in a variety of forms, but goodness is all related. And so when we think of the various items listed as “the fruit of the Spirit,” we should understand them as all facets of the same fruit.

            Furthermore, there is a contrast between “works” and “fruit.” We don’t say that an apple tree works to produce apples. Instead, we know that if an apple tree is healthy and is old enough, it is going to produces apples quite naturally. By the same token, wherever the Holy Spirit is at work bringing people to faith and steeping them in God’s Word, you naturally will see such things as “love, joy, peace, patience,” and the other virtues listed in Galatians 5. Far from being coerced by the law or pummeled out of us by our spiritual disciplines, these virtues flow naturally wherever we take the gospel seriously.

            Tonight, then, let us briefly consider the first aspect of the fruit of the Spirit, namely, “love.” It is the absence of love that creates all our problems. It is why we turn against God and others. It is why we prefer the road of hypocrisy, for we really do not want to love God. Even when we seek the approval of others, we don’t want to love them. No, we just want them to do good things for us without any obligation on our part to them. In fact, we don’t even necessarily want to receive their love, for that might mean we might have to love them in return.

            To break through our loveless attitude, God showed great love to us. He became as involved in humanity as He could be. The Son of God took on our flesh; the Father and the Holy Spirit fully approved of what the Son had done and blessed His ministry all the way. And when Christ had completed His dying and rising for us, God brought us near to Himself by baptism and communion. Lovelessness begets lovelessness; love begets love. And so those who have experienced God’s love in Christ Jesus and know the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit love. Love is the natural fruit of this gospel of love.

            And so, beloved in Christ, as we begin this Lenten journey, do so under the shadow of God’s love. And may that love shape you in the weeks to come to be even more loving. In Jesus’ name. Amen.