Homily for Anniversary of a Congregation - 2019

"Faithful God: Past & Future"
1 Kings 8:22-30; Revelation 21:1-5; Luke 19:1-10

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When we celebrate our congregation’s anniversary, we look not only to the past. We also look to the future. For us at Hope, today is a bit like January 1st, New Year’s Day. The month of January is named after the Roman god Janus. In Roman mythology, he was literally a two-faced god. One face looked back to the past; the other face looked forward to the future. Thus Janus was the god of beginnings, transitions and doorways. So on January 1st each year, we non-Romans still look back to the past year and forward to the coming year. (Of course, Janus was a false god, really a non-god. The myth just happens to be a fitting illustration.)

Today we celebrate 103 years of God’s faithfulness to Hope congregation. And we also look to the future. How did we celebrate the big one just three short years ago? “Our Hope for Years to Come” was our theme. The true God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—has now blessed our beloved congregation for 103 years. He has shown steadfast love to His servants. He has indeed dwelt on earth by means of His Word and Sacraments. He has indeed come to this house to be the guest of us sinners. He has most certainly come to seek and save the lost—many who went before us and us too. For 103 years God has dwelt with us and we have been His people. He has sustained us with His promise to wipe every tear from our eyes and the sure and certain pledge that death shall be no more. And He still promises to keep doing all of that for years to come.

King Solomon celebrated this very thing when he dedicated the temple. There is no God like our Lord, in heaven above or on earth beneath. He is faithful in keeping His gracious covenant and showing steadfast love. Then Solomon looked to the past. God had kept His promise to David, Solomon’s father. David first wanted to build a temple, but God told David, “You don’t need to do that for Me. In fact, here’s what I will do for you, David. I will make your name great. I will give you rest from your enemies. And “I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Sam. 7:12-13).

After thanking and praising God for His faithfulness in the past, Solomon then began looking to the future. “Now therefore, O God of Israel, let Your word be confirmed, which You have spoken to Your servant David my father.” Keep Your promises going, Lord! Then Solomon prays for God to keep His eyes “open night and day toward this house” going forward. Solomon asks God to listen to the prayers of His people in days, weeks, months, and years to come. Solomon pleads for God’s ongoing forgiveness, grace and mercy well into the future.

Solomon finished his prayer of dedication and then gave the benediction: “Blessed be the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel, according to all that he promised. Not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke by Moses his servant. The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers. May he not leave us or forsake us, that he may incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his rules, which he commanded our fathers” (1 Kgs. 8:56-58). Thanking God for the past and relying on Him for the future—that is Solomon’s example for us.

We find ourselves in the same position today—thanking our Lord Jesus for the past and relying on Him for the future. We can remember our own stories of the past. Reverend Martin Engel serving as our first pastor. Pastor Roschke following him and starting a Lutheran day school. Pastor Bohnert coming along to serve with Pastor Roshcke. Then Pastors Richter and Lucero rounding out the 20th century. We can thank God for Mr. George Stohlmann, the first principal, and all of the other principals and teachers through the years of Hope Lutheran School. We can rejoice in all of the people who have been blessed by hearing the Gospel and receiving Jesus’ Body and Blood in this very sanctuary since 1930. We can thank our Lord for all of the students who were blessed with a Christian education to shape them for all of life. God has been faithful to His promises. He has forgiven sinners throughout the past 103 years.

And He still comes to dwell among us in His Word and Sacraments. He still comes to hear our prayers and forgive our sins because of Christ crucified and risen. Even as times have changed, even as we as a congregation have changed, God remains faithful. When we doubt about going forward, when we mentally and verbally wring our hands, when we look to anything and everything except God Himself for our identity and security, God remains faithful.

Beryl Markham was a British-born Kenyan. She was also an aviator, a racehorse trainer and an author. She was the first to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west. (Charles Lindbergh, of course, was the first to fly across the Atlantic, going from west to east.) Here’s something Beryl Markham wrote about the past and the future: “Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lies in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it.”

It’s safe and easy to look to our past. Those years have happened; they’re set in stone. Ponder the sacrifices our forebears made to start this congregation and keep it going. When it came time to construct this building, the church sold bonds, members bought them and thus contributed to this structure. Ponder the blessings they all received from our faithful God as well. A congregation that grew through the early decades and blossomed after World War II. Passed years are safe ones. We know what happened.

The future, though, seems to lie in a cloud. We do not know what the future will bring. But we do know we have God’s faithfulness, forgiveness, love and mercy along the way. And this brings us to our second theme of the day: Consecration Sunday. It’s our chance as individuals, as families, and as the whole congregation to look to the future. It’s an opportunity to grow in the grace of generous giving. After all, that’s what our forebears did when they started this congregation. It’s also how we end up in a newly renovated sanctuary with a newly restored organ. Generous giving by two sisters made all this possible. (Okay, we chipped in just a little for the porcelain tile flooring. Still generous giving.)

What can we make possible? What can we, by God’s grace, endeavor to achieve as we proclaim His Gospel? How can we as individuals, families and a church family grow in being generous so that others may hear the Good News of Jesus Christ and have “hope for years to come”?

Our forebears went before us only because of our faithful Lord and Savior. We are here today only because of our gracious giver God. Now we get to strive forward into the cloudy future only because of our Savior who gave Himself, His very all, for us. You see, God delights in pouring out His mercies in abundance. He loves exceeding our expectations. He has proven His love for us on the cross—the greatest act of giving ever. How can we not trust Him? How can we not respond to His love—each of us and all of us—with generosity toward His mission in the Church? How can we not seek to imitate Him in blessing others as we have already been blessed?

“O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like You, in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants.” We thank You for coming to seek and save us who were lost. We thank You for bringing Your salvation to this house through Christ crucified and risen. Give us joy in Your salvation. Give us joy that You dwell among us in Your Word and Sacraments. Lead us to be generous givers that others may also rejoice in Your steadfast love. Amen.

Homily for Transfiguration - 2018

"Transfigured"
Matthew 17:1-9

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Make no mistake about it. When you see Jesus transfigured on the mountaintop, you see your own glorious future. You also will be transformed and transfigured. But also, don’t doubt this: it will be a rough, dark road to get you there.

This glorious sight of Jesus outshining the sun itself is no random event, no mere magic show. Jesus is not just showing off His divine glory. No, this event is intimately connected to what happened six days earlier. Jesus had asked His disciples who they confessed Him to be. Peter spoke up for all of them: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). “Well done, Peter!” Jesus said. “You’re confessing the faith that My Father has given you. Believe me, I will build My church on that very confession.” Then Jesus spoke of going to Jerusalem, suffering many things, being killed, and then being raised on the third day. We accept the words well enough, but Peter strongly objected: “Never Lord! How can you even think that?” So Jesus countered and corrected Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! … You are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matt. 16:23).

We, like Peter, love the picture and promise of radiant glory. We’re not so sure about the harsh reality of gloomy suffering—not for Jesus, and certainly not for ourselves.

So when Jesus is transfigured—revealing Himself as the very source of all light and glory—He seeks to comfort and sustain His distressed disciples. Suffering? Death? Cold, dark grave? The mere thoughts of such things, let alone going through them, lay us flat like a boxer giving a gut punch followed by an undercut. Jesus knows His disciples are laid flat by His prediction of the Passion. He wants to encourage them and sustain them. It’s as if Jesus is telling them, “Yes, it will be dark and deadly. Yes, you too will be shaken to the core, as well as opposed, hunted down, imprisoned, even executed just for confessing Me. But let not your hearts be troubled. Here is what lies on the other side of suffering and death, both Mine and yours.”

You see, this was not the first time that Jesus was transfigured and transformed. He has been the radiant, brilliant source of all light and glory since before the beginning of time—along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Then, when the time was right, the Son of God actually transformed Himself by taking on our human flesh and blood. In taking our humanity into Himself, He transfigured Himself—He hid Himself—in humility.

So when Jesus predicts His passion and death, He’s simply unveiling what lies further back in the deep dark recesses of His glory—His suffering in the garden, His arrest, His trial, His bearing the cross to Golgotha, the pounding of spikes into His hands and feet, the lifting of the cross into its place, and the weight of His body hanging from wrists nailed into the cross beam. This is the Son of God completely revealing Himself. This is His real glory—suffering so to redeem and forgive us sinners who had fallen from our glory. It’s on the mount called Calvary that you are transfigured.

Peter, James, and John basked in and soaked up the brilliant glory of Jesus transfigured. Peter even wanted to extend his mountaintop experience with a bunch of tents. Moses and Elijah, though, were there for a different purpose. Yes, they are heroes of the faith—Moses the icon of the Law and Elijah the representative of the prophets. Yes, Moses’ skin shone with a most incredible suntan after his time on the mountain with God. Yes, Elijah was taken to heaven in a fiery chariot, and hence did not taste death. But Moses and Elijah were also there as fellow sufferers with Jesus. Consider the many times God’s people rejected Moses with their complaining over things as mundane as food and water. Remember the times that Elijah had to flee for his life from the government out to get him or the time he took on the many prophets of Baal. The same people rejected Jesus. On top of that, Moses and Elijah appeared to speak with Jesus about His “exodus”—His soon-to-come suffering, His pending Passion (Lk. 9:31).

With all of this darkness and gloom hanging over the disciples, they desperately needed some encouragement, some hope, some promise. That’s why Jesus shone brighter than the sun—just a small glimpse of what lies ahead. That’s why the Father’s voice boomed from the cloud: “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” That voice still bids us to listen to Him, and Him alone. And we find that voice speaking ever so clearly in the Scriptures. After all, here’s “the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

Here’s what awaits all who follow Jesus—first, the suffering and dying of a fallen world; then, the glory and radiance of new life with Jesus. It’s the way it works since we humans first transfigured ourselves from God’s holy people into the devil’s sinful slaves. We should have had the brilliance of a trusting, loving relationship with God all along. Instead, we chose the nakedness of self-centered shame. Instead of being clothed with God’s glory, we had to settle for being covered by garments of animal skins.

But Jesus has come to reverse all that. He’s the new Moses as He leads us out of our slavery to sin and death and into the Promised Land of His mercy, forgiveness, and eternal life. He’s the new Elijah—surpassing all the prophets—because He alone has the words of eternal life. He is transfigured on one mountain, but on a different mountain—the one called Calvary—He accomplishes your transfiguration. He transforms you from sinners to saints, from people suffocating in death to people breathing the very air of life.

Make no mistake about it. The transfiguring and transforming continues. He who was transfigured from humility back into glory now comes transforming Himself in the bread and wine of His holy Supper. And with that Meal, He begins and continues transforming our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body. “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).

So we live patiently and trustingly, awaiting that day when our own transformation will burst forth with brilliance. Much like putting up with the inconveniences of renovating an organ or soon a sanctuary, we bear with those things that are not yet set right—the crosses we bear, the sorrows we endure, the losses we suffer. But as we live patiently and trustingly, we draw strength and resolve from our transfigured Lord of glory. He sustains us. He gives the promise, the hope, the courage.

And so we can be people of life in this world of death. By God’s grace in Jesus, we can resist being conformed to this world. Instead, we are transformed by Jesus renewing our minds, by discerning what His good and acceptable and perfect will is. We can rejoice with those who march for life year after year. We can work with those who help mommies and daddies to keep their babies as well as teach them how to be better parents. We can run into the muck and the mess of our culture of death—this culture bent on snuffing out lives in the womb and shortening the lives of those who suffer or become frail with age. You see, our Lord of glory gave those people their very lives. He wants to protect their lives. He wants to transform them to eternal life too.

Our transfigured Lord reveals Himself to be the Lord of life in the face of death. This glorious revelation sustains us and gives us hope and courage as we journey through the valley of the shadow of death. Through Jesus’ transfiguration, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:16-17). Amen.

Homily for Trinity 18 - 2017

"Do You LOVE God?"
Matthew 22:34-46

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Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” … Do you love God? I don’t expect anyone here actually to say, “No, I rather hate God.” Who in their right mind would say that? But do you really LOVE God? Are you completely devoted to Him? Is He the One you think and daydream about all the time? Is there no one else on earth with whom you would rather spend your time than with God? Is there nothing that you’d rather do than be with God, talk with Him, enjoy His stories, and just revel in His company?

Or is God just Someone we learn about in Catechism class or Bible class or sermons? Learn about Him, but keep Him at a distance. Stick Him under the microscope of our quest for religious knowledge or in the petri dish of our fascination with things spiritual. Is God little more than an intellectual pursuit, once a week or whenever we happen to think of Him? Do we merely learn to say the right words about Him, such as He’s all-present, or all-powerful, or all-knowing? Is God simply Someone we talk about when we want to sound religious? Or do you truly LOVE God?

The Pharisees certainly claimed to love God. But when He came to them in the flesh, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, they put Him to the test. You see, they did not want this God, the One who took on our human frame to free us from sin and death, to get too close to them! They did not want God to get too personal or too intimate. So they tested Jesus: “Which is the great commandment in the [Torah]?” They wanted to reduce all five books of Moses to the bare minimum. They wanted a bumper-sticker slogan that would fully capture the law of God.

We fallen creatures like to do that. We like to defang God’s law—render the Doberman harmless. One speaker called it the “religion of St. Minimum.” What’s the least that I have to do to get by? How often do I really have to go to church? How often do I really need to pray? How much money do I really have to give? How much do I really have to know? What’s the bottom line? What's the bare minimum? The religion of St. Minimum tries to keep things practical, painless, and puny. It delights in loopholes. It bargains with God to be “fair.” “So, Jesus, what’s the one commandment that we really need to keep?” But that’s not love. What boyfriend, fiancé, or husband could get away with telling his sweetheart, “I only want to spend the minimum amount of time with you”?

Jesus sensed the trap. He knows what’s in our hearts. He knows how we like to twist and turn, and wiggle out from under God’s commands. So He gives not one, but two greatest commands. The first one: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” That’s the Hebrew way of saying, “Love God with every last fiber in your being; hold nothing back.” Then Jesus said, “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The two go together. You cannot claim to love God if you don’t love your neighbor. When you do love God, you will naturally also love your neighbor whom God gives you. So Jesus does boil God’s law down to a minimum in these two simple commandments. But they are far from minimal in shaping our life. Love God with your whole being; and love whomever God puts next to you.

If you’re still looking for a bumper-sticker slogan, you can distill God’s law down to one four-letter word: L-O-V-E. As St. Paul said, “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10). But we even have troubles with this word “love,” don’t we? For one thing, we think love is a feeling, a warm-fuzzy on our insides. But love is not a feeling. Love is a deliberate action of our will toward another person. When we love God or our neighbor, it does not mean that we have certain feelings about God or our neighbor. Sure, feelings are there with us, but love is not essentially a feeling.

Another trouble we have with “love” is that we think it’s something that we “fall” into. We fall into ditches and holes filled with mud, but we don’t fall into love. Besides, falling means losing your balance, losing your control. Love is not an out of control, loss of balance experience; love is a deliberate action of our will toward another person. To love means deliberately to turn ourselves toward another person. One commentator explained it this way: “[Jesus] opens the hearts of believers, like flowers to the sun, to their living posture. We were made for love…. [Jesus] does not so much give an activity that can be calculably done as he gives a direction to face” (F. D. Bruner, Churchbook, 794). The Bible describes love in self-sacrificing terms: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:4-7).

How do we love God and neighbor? Let’s count the ways. We love God by having no other gods in our hearts, by giving God our whole-hearted fear, love, and trust. We love God by using His Name in worship and prayer, and by giving glad attention to His Word. We love God by honoring the authorities He has placed over us, starting with our parents; by caring for the health and well-being of our neighbor’s body; by upholding marriage in the way we conduct our sexual lives; by helping our neighbor improve and protect his possessions and income; by upholding our neighbor’s reputation and not participating in gossip or slander; by being content with what we have rather than continually wanting what we don’t have. These are just some of the ways that we love God and our neighbor.

And so we reflect God’s love toward us—the way the moon reflects the light of the sun, or the way a polished mirror reflects the light that strikes it. When God first made Adam and Eve, they perfectly reflected His love. They were created in the “image of God.” God is love, and Adam and Eve were perfect reflectors of God’s love. But their rebellion ruined the mirror. Our self-centeredness and inborn desire to be little gods in place of God has distorted the reflection of God’s love. Just as fingerprints and gunk smudge the reflection in a mirror, so our sinfulness has destroyed our reflection of God’s love.

Do you LOVE God? Do you have wholehearted love for God, sacrificing your all for Him? Do you love your neighbor as yourself? You know you don’t love like that. Not even Mother Teresa loved like that. And here’s why we need the question that Jesus used to test the Pharisees. “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?” The Pharisees knew that the Messiah, the Christ, would be a blood descendent of King David. But there’s more to the Messiah than a royal bloodline. He is also David’s “lord.” As David said in Psalm 110: “The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” The Messiah is David’s son, a human being, but He is also David’s “Lord.” He is both God and Man, begotten of His Father from all eternity and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus is talking about the mystery of His Incarnation. In Him God has become man. And in Him humanity is recreated and renewed. In Him people are restored to be what God intended them to be. He came to restore the image of God to our fallen race. He loves God with His whole heart, with His entire being, with His whole mind. He loves His neighbor as Himself.

St. John said it well: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation—the means of forgiveness—for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:9-10). Jesus loved us to death on the Cross. It was the deliberate action of His divine-human will toward us loveless, unlovely sinners. In Baptism we receive God’s great love in Christ’s death and resurrection. In Holy Absolution, our Lord keeps telling us, “I love you by forgiving you.” And consider the great feast we’re about to enjoy. Here Jesus puts His own Body and Blood into our mouths so that we can love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourselves. After the Meal, we’ll even pray that God would “strengthen us…in faith toward [Him] and in fervent love toward one another.”

“We love—both God and neighbor—because He first loved us” (1 Jn. 4:19). Jesus’ death and resurrection free you to love God and one another. You no longer have to love; you get to love. We don’t love God in order to obtain His love; we already have His love in David’s Son, Jesus. Now we get to love God with every fiber of our being and we get to love our neighbor as ourselves, reflecting the love that our Lord has given to us. Amen.

Homily for Trinity 6 - 2017

"Exceeding Righteousness"
Matthew 5:17-26

Jesus says something quite astonishing—quite frightening, really—when you stop and think about it. He says: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The frightening thing about these words is just how good and upright the scribes and Pharisees really were—at least when you saw their outward lives. They sure appeared to fear, love, and trust in God above all things. They certainly did not utter His name in vain. They very faithfully kept His holy day and even listened to and learned His holy Word. They respected their elders. They did not abuse their bodies by being drunkards or gluttons. They did not live in sexual immorality. They did not steal from God by holding back on their tithes. In fact, they gave even more than what God required in His Law. They fasted regularly—at least twice a week. To all outward appearances, they were very, very good people. They were the sort of people that you would delight to have as fellow church members and neighbors. They did not “play religion” at all; they were very sincere, very zealous, and it showed. Yet the Lord Jesus points to them and says to all who follow Him: “Your righteousness must be better even than that!” What on earth does He mean?

Thankfully, He goes on to tell us what He means. He takes up the Fifth Commandment as His first example: “You shall not murder.” Now, every scribe and Pharisee could pride himself in having kept that commandment. God said, “Don’t go around sticking knives in people,” and the scribes and Pharisees could say, “Thank God, we haven’t done that. We’ve kept that one.” But Jesus raises His eyebrow at such a bold claim and says, “Really? You think you’ve kept the Fifth Commandment?” Then He asks some pointed questions: “Have you ever been angry with your brother in your heart? Have you ever hurt another person with the names you’ve called them? Have you ever insulted or put down another human being with malice in your heart? Oh, you have, have you? Well, then, you have smashed the holy Fifth Commandment to smithereens.”

You see, we look at the outside and judge only by what we can see. There’s just one problem. That’s not how God looks at us. He does not judge by the outside, at least not by the outside alone. He looks at the inside. He looks at the inner life, at the heart. As the LORD told Samuel when he was searching for a king to replace Saul: “For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). That’s where Jesus’ real concern lies. Jesus even said, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mk. 7:21-23).

Now can you see why Jesus rejects all righteousness based on external behavior? We can certainly strive long and hard to do the right things and keep our evil inclinations in check. We can fight valiantly and somewhat successfully to not do what we would very much like to do at times. People around us may even think that we are good, upright, religious, and very pious. But we know the truth. We know what’s inside. We know what we would like to do at times. We know what we would do, if we thought we could get away with it. We know what we could do if the circumstances were just right and painting us into a corner. We just cannot quite control that heart and inner will so tainted by sinful self-serving.

So the real problem is our sinful hearts. We may have some limited control over our sinful actions; but over our hearts? Who can easily stop a fit of anger or jealousy or envy or pride by flexing the muscle of will power? No one! So, what is Jesus really saying? Is He saying that absolutely no one can enter the Kingdom of heaven?

Ah, but there is One Man from whose heart flowed nothing but pure love—pure love toward God above all things; pure love toward His every neighbor as Himself. Yes, there is One Man who has such a pure heart that He perfectly kept the Law without fail, and He lived all of His life in perfect love. There is one such perfect heart! And so there is also a perfect righteousness, a righteousness that did, and does, and always will exceed that of the Pharisees and scribes. That heart belongs to Jesus Christ, and so does the righteousness.

So, if we want to enter the Kingdom of heaven, we absolutely must have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. No, not a righteousness that is merely sort of like His. No, not a righteousness that only weakly imitates His. Not even a righteousness that says, “I tried.” You see, being “sort of like” or being “weak imitations” doesn’t cut it with God. Remember how Jesus summarized God’s will for us: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48). If we are to enter the Kingdom of heaven, we need a perfect righteousness. We need the righteousness that belongs to Jesus alone—a righteousness that we can receive only by His grace and only by faith in Him.

St. Paul reminds us today that in Baptism we are joined to Christ Jesus—buried with Him into death and raised with Him to walk in newness of life. You see, Jesus freely gives you His righteousness. He who is totally sinless took upon Himself all of our sin, and the sin of the whole world. As He went to the cross, He owned all sin and every little sin we commit as His very own. He even divests Himself of His righteousness, His holiness, and He places it upon us in the water of Baptism. He clothes us in His very own perfection. What a blessed exchange! And now, because of the miraculous washing of Baptism, God looks upon us and sees not our sinful hearts, but rather the image and reflection of His beloved Son. He sees us clothed in the exceedingly perfect righteousness of His Son Jesus.

“But, Pastor,” you say, “my heart is still sinful. I still have those terrible desires, small and large. Sometimes I even act on those wretched thoughts! Surely, God doesn’t just overlook that, does He?” No, He doesn’t just overlook sin. But what does Scripture say? “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation—the covering, means of forgiveness—for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn. 2:1-2). That answers the question, doesn’t it? God wants to free us from our sin, and cleanse our hearts through faith—no two ways about it. And since that cleansing job is never finished this side of heaven, we joyously live under His pardon until the end. And His cleansing work just keeps going and going and going.

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Let’s give thanks to our gracious God that our Lord Jesus Christ gives us what we could never come up with or accomplish on our own: an exceeding righteousness freely given to us, an exceeding righteousness placed on us through the washing of water and His Word in Baptism, an exceeding righteousness placed in us again today in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. As we keep learning to live from this gift of God, our lives will be transformed more and more into His perfect love. And on the Last Day, when our Baptism is fully completed, our lives will be like His—love, pure and simple. As we will soon sing:

We thank You, Christ; new life is ours,
New light, new hope, new strength, new pow’rs.
This grace our ev’ry way attend
Until we reach our journey’s end (LSB 562:6).

Amen.