Sermon Texts: Galatians 5:1-6, Luke 6:39-42 & 47-49, & Matthew 6:1-6 & 19-21
Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent. This is the church season where we reflect on our bondage to sin but, more importantly, the freedom we Christians now enjoy because of Jesus’ life, death, & resurrection. As such, during this season, when we ponder Jesus, our souls cannot help but marvel at our Lord’s unsurpassed love for us that is fully revealed on the cross & in the empty tomb.
For our sake, God’s Son left a place free of pain & death, a place saturated in heavenly beauty & love, a place full of perfect intimacy with the Father, to come to Earth & be God with & for us. He willingly embraced sorrow & suffering & He did this because He loves us so much that He would do anything for us; for you.
Yes, our Savior did all this just because He longs for us to be safe in Him & free.
God, in His infinite wisdom, knew the only solution to our bondage to sin & death was freedom. This is why, as Paul so boldly wrote in Galatians 5, He set us free. It is for freedom & freedom’s sake only that He did everything He did for you & I.
In this regard, this is why the Lenten season also begins with the tradition of ash crosses being placed on our foreheads. The raw material of ash represents the sobering old reality of human sin that ends in death while the symbol of the cross represents the joyful new reality of the new creation in Christ Jesus which brings eternal life & freedom to all of us whom God has chosen to be His Saints.
Yes, we can actually rejoice tonight my friends, because as God’s children, we no longer have to fear death. We already know that we live forever with Jesus in His heavenly kingdom because He’s revealed this truth to us already.
We have this certainty because of the Gospel promise first spoken to us in our Baptisms. In those waters, God said that everything that Jesus did to defeat sin & death & bring new life is all ours. Moreover, lest we ever forget this truth, He sends to us His own Holy Spirit through His Word. When we come together to hear our Savior’s Words of Forgiveness preached, God continually renews us & keeps us safe in Him, in our life of faith, in His everlasting arms, in His Church.
This is why Lent is all about Jesus & the new life & freedom He won & gives to us now. It’s not about us & what we must do to free ourselves from sin & earn immortal life. Indeed, that is one of the most stark reminders that the ashes bring to us. The fact of the matter is we don’t have life within ourselves.
Indeed, all our worldly & religious efforts testify to this. All roads we take in this world to travel on only lead one place: The grave. We know, but yet will still try. This is why we don’t talk about “sins” but of “bondage to sin”. You see, sin as it is revealed to be in the bible, is not simply a “bad choice” moral or otherwise, but rather it is rebellion against God. It’s living the serpent’s old lie that says we can be in control; that we can be the makers of life. It’s to think we are “progressing”, we are going somewhere, & making something of this world & life for ourselves.
In this sense, sin is to be trapped in the pipe dream of perfection for ourselves & the world so it’s a disease of the human spirit. It’s the lure of grasping what is above, the future, & what is beyond, the past, that is the evil trap sin has us in. In the end, sin is an all-consuming desire for Utopia (which is the Greek Word for “no place”). As such, sin always results in death because it tempts us away from our essential human tasks of love & care of creation into prideful spiritual & religious pursuits that trick us into thinking we’re really too good for this garden.
Therefore, as we engage tonight in this rite of the ashes, we must also be on alert to the danger inherent in this tradition. Historically most sects in the church, both Roman Catholic & Protestant, get things wrong; they turn the focus around.
They make Lent into a season of contemplation, willful repentance of behaviors, prayer, & fasting. This is to say: They make the season all about you not Jesus. So, instead of focusing on the freedom you have in Christ as a Christian, the Church’s effort instead has been placed, & is still being placed, as Paul said so well in Gal. 5:1, on putting “the yoke of slavery” to the law firmly back on you.
Martin Luther famously once said: “A Theologian of Glory calls evil good & good evil but a Theologian of the Cross calls a thing what it is.” We all know slavery is bad & freedom is good. Yet, when you go with an ash cross on your head, most people will ask you: “What are you giving up for Lent?” As if what you do counts.
Now, as I reflected on this sad situation, an old saying came to mind: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Mainly, the saying is taken to mean that even one with poor sight will rule over those with no sight. Thus, for ages men have been led around by the nose during Lent by law-oriented moralists.
But, curious as to who originated this proverb, I looked it up on the WWW where I was informed that the source of it was none other than Desiderius Erasmus. You may recall that he was the humanist scholar & moral reformer who had so bitterly opposed Luther in Reformation on the issue of free will & bondage to sin.
Now I had a good laugh at this because the man who insisted we were free, that we could see sin & protect ourselves against it, came up with a saying that sums up the church’s misuse of Ash Wednesday & subsequent abuse of Lent so well.
While this saying may be smart advice when it comes to the affairs of this world, it’s utter foolishness & sheer blasphemy when it comes to God. Jesus’ own Words that we heard tonight in Luke 6 reveal its total falsity. According to Jesus, there is no such thing as being partially blind; the kingdom of God has no “one-eyed” men in it. We have Jesus’ own Word that every eye possesses a “log” that not only impairs its sight, but elevates its supposed sight as hypocrisy (Lk 6:42).
As such, while we still live in bondage to sin, as we live out our days in the flesh, we are all still blind. And, absent the clarity of sight, given by God’s unconditional grace, thru the Gospel of Christ as the in-breaking of the New Creation, the blind lead the blind thus all will fall into the pit. We think we can see sin but we can’t.
That is why Jesus continues with this sharp & absolute distinction between blindness & seeing in His Words in Matt. 6 on prayer & giving. While Satan’s kingdom works in nuances & shades of gray, God’s kingdom knows only Jesus’ sharp & absolute distinction between black vs. white, righteous vs. unrighteous, sinner vs. New Creature in Christ, & the blind vs. those w/our Lord’s clear vision.
Under the law, those shades of gray begin to quickly appear as we consider our conduct in this world. While the old, sinful flesh still adheres to us, our behavior falls on a moral spectrum whose ends are vice & virtue. We are encouraged to become better behaved & progress from acting out of vice to acting out of virtue.
But God’s New Creation doesn’t operate according to the law’s moral spectrum.
Instead, it brings hope to sinners who’ve been graced by God’s work in Christ. They now live by faith alone in Him as He is working their salvation out in love.
Therefore, better behavior as gauged by the law’s moral spectrum is no longer a Christian’s foundation for life. Rather, it’s folly just like building a house on ground w/o a foundation.
The truth is the Christian life is not a journey from vice to virtue but from virtue to grace because the grace of God is as solid a rock as you could ever build on.
And what is the grace of God? It’s Jesus & His cross where we see sin’s great seriousness & cost but moreover we see God’s even greater love for us; for you. As Paul wrote in 2 Cr. 5:21: “God made Him to be sin who knew no sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” This is the joyful message of freedom we celebrate as we move forward from now to Easter. In the cross, our Lord has not only seen what our problem is, but He has solved it forever. Amen!
Bethany Lutheran Church, Covington MI 