Sermon, Sunday Mar 1, 2009
First Sunday in Lent
Brothers and Sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Lent is a time for remembering. Lent is the season when historically we remember the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. But it’s not just the time in the wilderness that we remember, but all of the shame and suffering that Jesus endured on His way to the cross. For many people, this season of Lent is marked by periods of fasting, penance, charity, and other forms of spiritual discipline. And this is all reflective of this notion of dying to ourselves that is prevalent all throughout this Lenten season. We walk through the darkness of Lent right on into that darkest of dark hours, Good Friday so as to underscore the great and glorious light of resurrection Sunday, or Easter.
And so, in this season of remembering, the Genesis passage for this morning seems appropriate and consistent. For in this passage our Lord tells Noah and his sons, whom He had just delivered from the flood, that He is establishing a covenant with them that never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.
But He does not make this covenant only with Noah and his sons, but our Lord makes this covenant with them and all future generations. God extends this covenant not only to Noah and his sons but to all those who would come after them; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Solomon, Daniel, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, into Christ’s apostles and even you. You are among those future generations that are included in this covenant.
But it doesn’t end there. Our Lord knows us. He knows that we are a forgetful people. He knows that we are a “What have you done for me lately” type of people. And so He promises that He will send a sign of this covenant that He has established with us. He says that He has set His bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between He and the earth. Our Lord of course is talking about a rainbow here. And even though He doesn’t say it is so we will remember Him, it’s still pretty clear that the rainbow is given to us to remind us of the covenant that God established with us after the flood.
But what is really remarkable about this is that our Lord says that the rainbow will serve as a reminder for Him also. He says that when the rainbow is seen in the clouds that He will remember the everlasting covenant that He made with every living creature spanning all generations. What this basically means is that when you see a rainbow, it is not just a sign of something that God did for you in the past but something that He is doing for you right now. When you see a rainbow, our Lord promises that He is remembering the covenant He made with you after the flood. So when you see a rainbow, you know that God is remembering you. He is thinking about you. The rainbow reminds you that you are on God’s mind, that God remembers you.
But still even with this bold and remarkable sign of our Lord’s faithfulness, we forget that we are remembered by our Lord. It was not long after this covenant before God’s people were once again forgetting the One who remembers them. Even Abraham would show that he simply could not take God at His word when He promised Abraham that his wife Sara would bear him a son, so Abraham had a child with his servant Hagar.
Jacob was a swindler who cheated his brother out of his birthright. David was an adulterer and a murderer. Solomon formed alliances with pagan and corrupt nations. The history of God’s people is one of us continually and repeatedly showing our tendency to forget or at least ignore the fact that we are always remembered by our Lord. It is a history of rebelling against our Lord that began with Adam and Eve and has never ceased.
But our Lord is faithful. He promises that He will never again send a flood to destroy all flesh, and so He doesn’t. But still He cannot sit idly by and do nothing in the face our continuous and impetuous attempts to escape Him. Try as we might to forget our Lord He refuses to be forgotten.
And so even though we had given Him every reason to change His mind and go ahead and send another flood, He does not. And so not only does He stay faithful to the promise He made to us after the flood, but He comes to us in fragile, human flesh. Even though we had given Him every reason to cut us off from His eternal kingdom, He brings His kingdom to us in the form of His perfect and sinless Son, Christ Jesus our Lord.
And in the Gospel lesson from Mark it is made immediately clear that the arrival of Christ Jesus bursting upon the scene means that something radically different is happening. Jesus shows up in the Jordan and He is baptized by John the Baptist. And it says that as Jesus was coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove.
It says that the heavens were torn apart. The use of the word “torn” is very strong there. It doesn’t just say that the heavens are opened but that they are torn. When we say that something has been opened then all one has to do to restore it back to it’s original state is close it. A door opens, then you close it. A window opens, then you close it. A suitcase opens, then you close it.
But when something is torn, there is some irreparable damage done. Even if you can put something that is torn back together, it is never quite the same. No longer would God’s revelation be limited to a rainbow appearing in the sky, for those skies had been torn by the Spirit descending like a dove upon Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh. Barriers between God and man were being broken. And we hear the voice of God saying to Christ Jesus “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And then the Spirit drives Christ Jesus into the wilderness where for 40 days He is tempted by Satan. But then after His 40 days in the wilderness, after enduring the temptations of Satan He goes back to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near: repent and believe in the good news.”
And indeed some of us did. Some of us did heed our Lord’s gracious calling by repenting and believing upon Him. But most of us continued to run from Him. Most of us continued to reject Him. Most of us continued to reject Him until eventually it ended up leading to this One whose arrival upon the scene brought forth the tearing of the heavens, laying down His life for us, taking upon Himself all of our sin, and bearing all of our punishment. And make no mistake even among those who repented and believed upon Him, they all also, in one way or another rejected Him.
Paul writes in Romans that “…while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.” And in that moment, that darkest of moments, that we thought that we had finally gotten rid of Him, when we thought we would no longer be bothered by God, He shows that His coming into this world means that, try as we might, we can no longer keep ourselves away from our God or keep Him from us.
For Peter writes that Christ suffered for sins, once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous. And He did this to bring you to God. Death, the final barrier between you and your Lord, has been knocked down. And so finally we see that the covenant that our Lord made with us after the flood was actually pointing to something even bigger and more radical. It was pointing to the baptism that saves you. When Christ went into death it meant the death of your death, and the defeat of sin and the devil for you. And Christ Jesus, coming through death having been made alive in the Spirit and resurrected for your salvation, now through His resurrection is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to Him, appealing to His Father on your behalf, remembering you.
And it is through this very means, that baptism saves you. For, in baptism, having been united with Christ in a death like His you will certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. So you may as well stop running from Him, for He has claimed you as His own. And He’s going to keep coming after you in His Word and sacraments. So you may as well simply receive the good gifts that He is bringing you, such as the forgiveness of your sins in His body and blood when we partake once again in His Supper in a few minutes, and the nurturing and sustaining of your faith in the Word proclaimed. And then go forth from here brimming with His good gifts of faith, forgiveness and salvation so that they might burst forth from you to your neighbor.
Amen
Brothers and Sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Lent is a time for remembering. Lent is the season when historically we remember the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. But it’s not just the time in the wilderness that we remember, but all of the shame and suffering that Jesus endured on His way to the cross. For many people, this season of Lent is marked by periods of fasting, penance, charity, and other forms of spiritual discipline. And this is all reflective of this notion of dying to ourselves that is prevalent all throughout this Lenten season. We walk through the darkness of Lent right on into that darkest of dark hours, Good Friday so as to underscore the great and glorious light of resurrection Sunday, or Easter.
And so, in this season of remembering, the Genesis passage for this morning seems appropriate and consistent. For in this passage our Lord tells Noah and his sons, whom He had just delivered from the flood, that He is establishing a covenant with them that never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.
But He does not make this covenant only with Noah and his sons, but our Lord makes this covenant with them and all future generations. God extends this covenant not only to Noah and his sons but to all those who would come after them; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Solomon, Daniel, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, into Christ’s apostles and even you. You are among those future generations that are included in this covenant.
But it doesn’t end there. Our Lord knows us. He knows that we are a forgetful people. He knows that we are a “What have you done for me lately” type of people. And so He promises that He will send a sign of this covenant that He has established with us. He says that He has set His bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between He and the earth. Our Lord of course is talking about a rainbow here. And even though He doesn’t say it is so we will remember Him, it’s still pretty clear that the rainbow is given to us to remind us of the covenant that God established with us after the flood.
But what is really remarkable about this is that our Lord says that the rainbow will serve as a reminder for Him also. He says that when the rainbow is seen in the clouds that He will remember the everlasting covenant that He made with every living creature spanning all generations. What this basically means is that when you see a rainbow, it is not just a sign of something that God did for you in the past but something that He is doing for you right now. When you see a rainbow, our Lord promises that He is remembering the covenant He made with you after the flood. So when you see a rainbow, you know that God is remembering you. He is thinking about you. The rainbow reminds you that you are on God’s mind, that God remembers you.
But still even with this bold and remarkable sign of our Lord’s faithfulness, we forget that we are remembered by our Lord. It was not long after this covenant before God’s people were once again forgetting the One who remembers them. Even Abraham would show that he simply could not take God at His word when He promised Abraham that his wife Sara would bear him a son, so Abraham had a child with his servant Hagar.
Jacob was a swindler who cheated his brother out of his birthright. David was an adulterer and a murderer. Solomon formed alliances with pagan and corrupt nations. The history of God’s people is one of us continually and repeatedly showing our tendency to forget or at least ignore the fact that we are always remembered by our Lord. It is a history of rebelling against our Lord that began with Adam and Eve and has never ceased.
But our Lord is faithful. He promises that He will never again send a flood to destroy all flesh, and so He doesn’t. But still He cannot sit idly by and do nothing in the face our continuous and impetuous attempts to escape Him. Try as we might to forget our Lord He refuses to be forgotten.
And so even though we had given Him every reason to change His mind and go ahead and send another flood, He does not. And so not only does He stay faithful to the promise He made to us after the flood, but He comes to us in fragile, human flesh. Even though we had given Him every reason to cut us off from His eternal kingdom, He brings His kingdom to us in the form of His perfect and sinless Son, Christ Jesus our Lord.
And in the Gospel lesson from Mark it is made immediately clear that the arrival of Christ Jesus bursting upon the scene means that something radically different is happening. Jesus shows up in the Jordan and He is baptized by John the Baptist. And it says that as Jesus was coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove.
It says that the heavens were torn apart. The use of the word “torn” is very strong there. It doesn’t just say that the heavens are opened but that they are torn. When we say that something has been opened then all one has to do to restore it back to it’s original state is close it. A door opens, then you close it. A window opens, then you close it. A suitcase opens, then you close it.
But when something is torn, there is some irreparable damage done. Even if you can put something that is torn back together, it is never quite the same. No longer would God’s revelation be limited to a rainbow appearing in the sky, for those skies had been torn by the Spirit descending like a dove upon Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh. Barriers between God and man were being broken. And we hear the voice of God saying to Christ Jesus “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And then the Spirit drives Christ Jesus into the wilderness where for 40 days He is tempted by Satan. But then after His 40 days in the wilderness, after enduring the temptations of Satan He goes back to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near: repent and believe in the good news.”
And indeed some of us did. Some of us did heed our Lord’s gracious calling by repenting and believing upon Him. But most of us continued to run from Him. Most of us continued to reject Him. Most of us continued to reject Him until eventually it ended up leading to this One whose arrival upon the scene brought forth the tearing of the heavens, laying down His life for us, taking upon Himself all of our sin, and bearing all of our punishment. And make no mistake even among those who repented and believed upon Him, they all also, in one way or another rejected Him.
Paul writes in Romans that “…while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.” And in that moment, that darkest of moments, that we thought that we had finally gotten rid of Him, when we thought we would no longer be bothered by God, He shows that His coming into this world means that, try as we might, we can no longer keep ourselves away from our God or keep Him from us.
For Peter writes that Christ suffered for sins, once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous. And He did this to bring you to God. Death, the final barrier between you and your Lord, has been knocked down. And so finally we see that the covenant that our Lord made with us after the flood was actually pointing to something even bigger and more radical. It was pointing to the baptism that saves you. When Christ went into death it meant the death of your death, and the defeat of sin and the devil for you. And Christ Jesus, coming through death having been made alive in the Spirit and resurrected for your salvation, now through His resurrection is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to Him, appealing to His Father on your behalf, remembering you.
And it is through this very means, that baptism saves you. For, in baptism, having been united with Christ in a death like His you will certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. So you may as well stop running from Him, for He has claimed you as His own. And He’s going to keep coming after you in His Word and sacraments. So you may as well simply receive the good gifts that He is bringing you, such as the forgiveness of your sins in His body and blood when we partake once again in His Supper in a few minutes, and the nurturing and sustaining of your faith in the Word proclaimed. And then go forth from here brimming with His good gifts of faith, forgiveness and salvation so that they might burst forth from you to your neighbor.
Amen
posted by Steve at 5:28 PM
1 Comments:
LIke I said previously, this is a very good sermon, incorporating all the texts for the day, showing how they all help shed like on the Gospel. And I loved the connection with Baptism at the end. Wonderful.
These verses are absolutely great:
"But when something is torn, there is some irreparable damage done. Even if you can put something that is torn back together, it is never quite the same. No longer would God’s revelation be limited to a rainbow appearing in the sky, for those skies had been torn by the Spirit descending like a dove upon Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh. Barriers between God and man were being broken."
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