Fifth Sunday in Lent
April 2, 2017
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love and with Him is plentiful redemption. And He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
Psalm 130:7, 8 (ESV)
This penitential season of Lent, which began on Ash Wednesday and is rapidly drawing to a close, is not a particularly "upbeat" season of the year for most people, perhaps especially for those in the Church. In fact, a lot of people don't like Lent at all precisely for that reason. They think of it as a real "downer," as they say. I suspect it is in a sense, but that's okay. Lent isn't supposed to be "upbeat." It's supposed to be a time of sorrow and gravity as we focus our attention on the sufferings and death of our Savior as well as on the cause of it all, which is our sin. All is not lost, however. While Lent may be a sorrowful time in the church year, it is not by any means a hopeless time. On the contrary, Lent is a time that abounds with hope, because all the while we are focusing on the cross of Jesus, we are also looking forward to His empty tomb. No matter how rough things may get as we observe the somber realities of our Lord's Passion, we know that just beyond these realities lies the joyful reality of Easter.
I suppose the exact same things could be said about repentance. It's not by any means a joyful or pleasant experience, nor is it a particularly popular practice. It can be embarrassing, shameful, humiliating, and whatever other adjectives you can come with to describe the feelings of a person whose darkest secret sins are laid bare before the scrutiny of a God of perfect righteousness and justice. I can't help but think that there must be a connection between the prevalent negative attitude toward repentance and the fact that private confession and absolution has for the most part fallen into disuse among Lutherans, and is viewed by many of them as a specifically Roman Catholic practice. Be all that as it may, repentance, like Lent, is a hopeful experience, because it prepares us for the joy of forgiveness. As the season of Lent, with its emphasis on repentance, reaches its climax during these next two weeks, we consider this morning how both Lent and repentance help us to focus on what people really need and what God graciously provides for them.
One thing that all people need is love. Now, let me assure you that I'm not becoming a throwback to the sixties. No, I'm not going to start singing "All You Need Is Love." I'm talking about and real and genuine love. Most people today (and I must confess that men are probably more guilty of this than women) think it's a sign of weakness to crave love. And yet they all do crave it. Just take a look at some of the ridiculous and even repulsive things that people will do in the pursuit of what they think is love. Look at the great lengths that people will go to in order to win the "love" of other people. The sad thing here is that there are a lot of people out there who are really hurting--people who have literally made a mess of their lives--all because they are not loved (or at least they don't feel loved). They have let their desire to be loved dictate to them everything that they should say, do, and think. Many of them don't even know who they are anymore, because they are so obsessed with trying to be what they think others want them to be.
Our misguided pursuit of love has created another need for us: the need for redemption. We have entrenched ourselves so deeply in counterfeit love that we can't pull ourselves out of it. It's an irony when you think about it. The Moral Law of God, as revealed in the Ten Commandments, can be summed up in one word, and that word is love. The Ten Commandments are nothing more or less than ten specific applications of God's command that we love. And yet, in the pursuit of something that we call love, we have made it our business to violate and oppose every one of those commandments. We have despised what is real in favor of something that is false. And that is precisely the essence of every sin. There is no question that we need to be redeemed--from sin, from death, from Satan, and perhaps most of all, from ourselves.
But God's Good News for us is that the redemption that we need so badly has been given to us freely by His grace, revealed in the perfect life and innocent suffering and death of His Son Jesus Christ. So great is God's redeeming grace in Christ that our Savior has literally traded places with us before the judgment throne of God, as the apostle Paul makes very clear in his Second Letter to the Corinthian Church, when he writes: "God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV). In our Baptism the perfect righteousness of Christ has been credited to us and our sin has been placed upon Him. The power of this redeeming grace of God in Christ is proclaimed also by John the evangelist in his First Letter, when he writes: "the blood of Jesus, [God's] Son, cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). The promise of Scripture is a sure one: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1).
Not only does the Savior bless us with redemption; He also supplies us with all the love that we could possibly need or want. We look for love from others in the things that they are willing to give us or do for us, but the almighty God who created and rules heaven and earth and everything in them shows His love for us in His willingness to stoop down to our level and to be born in our world of sin, living in it as One of us. And if that weren't enough in itself, He willingly carried our guilt as He bore the cross and suffered God's righteous judgment against our sin. That's how much He loves us. There is no love we can know or experience that could possibly exceed, match, or even come close to the depths of that redeeming love of God in Jesus Christ.
No, Lent is not a particularly joyful season, but that's okay. It isn't supposed to be and it doesn't need to be. It is a time for us to reflect--to reflect on our sin as we see in the sufferings and death of our Savior how offensive our conduct is to God--to reflect on our Savior's love for us as we see in His sufferings and death how far He was willing to go in order to redeem us--to reflect on our completed redemption as we look beyond the cross to the empty grave in Joseph's garden. These Lenten days can be for us a time when God's Holy Spirit leads us to a greater appreciation for what our Savior has done for us and a greater desire and commitment to serve Him in thanksgiving for His redeeming love. Through the Gospel, that same Spirit strengthens and encourages us with the assurance that we are God's dear children--redeemed from sin and death and reconciled to our heavenly Father, who accepts us and our efforts to please Him for the sake of our slain and risen Savior. This and this alone is the hope of God's people.
Amen.
May the One who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, making us kings and priests before His God
and Father, lead you to a life of repentance and trust. May He also be glorified in the lives of you, His people. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.