In the Name of the Father, and of the +
Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
From the very beginning, sin has been a
rejection of God’s order; a questioning of His authority, and an assertion that
we know better than He does. Satan’s temptation of Eve centered on the
question, “Did God really say?” Sometimes we use that phrase as shorthand for
the tendency of the sinful mind to subvert God’s wisdom, authority, and
knowledge. God set all of creation in order and since that first bite of the
forbidden fruit, man has gone about setting the world into disorder.
The twentieth century and on to today
has fully embraced this type of thinking. Whether you agree with the statement
or not, the idea that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” has dominated all
western thought for over a hundred years now. It suggests that my taste is more
important than something objective, something that exists outside of myself. This
applies to the visual arts – paintings, sculptures, architecture – as well as
music, dance, hymnody, and the worship of the Triune God. If something is
pleasing to the eye, then it is valid. If you like it, then it must be beneficial,
if not true.
This is the foolishness of the world,
and it is sin. It is sinful to think that you know better than God. If God has
said that the Body and Blood of Christ are bodily present in the Lord’s Supper,
who are you to deny Him? As the Bride of Christ, we are often the object of
such ridicule. The world laughs at our worship, our faith, and our suffering
because it is not pleasing to the eye. At the same time, the world rejoices in
sinfulness. The world rejoices because there is nothing else. There is nothing
to look forward to. The world says, “Eat, drink, and make merry, for tonight we
die!”
It is always amazing when we insist on
something because it is the only thing we know. According to God, the only
thing we know is sin. Faith is a radical departure from what we know of our own
experience and the desires born in our hearts. The entire Christian life must
be one of seeking the wisdom, authority, and knowledge of God while putting our
own inbred thoughts to death.
The desire to seek God is born within
you in Holy Baptism. It is born in you by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. But
this desire does not spontaneously give you holy thoughts and liver shivers,
provable only because it is something you like. Holy thoughts are born by the
indoctrination of the Word of God, being steeped in the eternal truths given to
Abraham, Moses, Peter, and Paul, then carried forth by Augustine, Luther,
Chemnitz, Walther and more.
Such wisdom of the saints is recorded in our text as weeping and lament. How is that wisdom? It is wisdom in weeping and lamenting our sins. We cannot escape sinful desires. The Old Adam was drowned in Holy Baptism but he is a strong swimmer. We must continually put him to death by lamenting our sins.
What does that look like? It looks like
confessing. It looks like confessing before God Almighty, “I, a poor miserable
sinner, confess unto You all my sins and iniquities…” And then trusting in the
Word of the Almighty God that the absolution spoken by your Pastor is the very
same as though God were speaking it directly from heaven.
It also looks like taking the things of
God seriously. When was the last time that you obeyed the words of Saint Paul,
“But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of
the cup,”[1]
by coming to confession before receiving the Lord’s Supper, reviewing the
Christian Questions and their Answers in your catechism, or simply reciting the
Ten Commandments and determining where you have fallen short and where you need
the shed Blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of those sins?
These are not laws in the sense that
you must dot your Is and cross your Ts before you may commune. They are an
admonition of God to take His gifts seriously. This is wisdom. This is the
lamentation of the Christian in this time.
And this lamentation leads to joy. It
leads to joy here in time and there in eternity. It leads to joy here as your
sins are forgiven and you are unburdened. If you take the forgiveness of sins
lightly, then your burden will only be lightly relieved. Given great weight,
the forgiveness of sins will move the mountain of sins that weigh you down.
This joy, this true joy, will then lead
to the enjoyment of the right ordering of God’s creation. Weighed down by
sexual sin, you cannot enjoy the bliss of the marital union. Weighed down by
the sin of wrath, you cannot enjoy the bliss of company, activity, or
competition. Weighed down by the sin of anxiety, you cannot enjoy the bliss of determination,
purpose, and direction.
That doesn’t mean that coming to hear
private absolution will make everything joyful for you. It will relieve the
burden of sin, but it may not “fix” your life. That is the sorrow of a world
bent out of order by sin. The whole world fell in Adam’s fall and you still
live in the world. You are still effected by this disordered world.
So long as you live on this side of
glory, in one way or another, you are still the woman in labor. You will have
moments of joy, when you see beyond the sorrow of this world and glimpse the glory
of heaven, but the labor persists. Still, the promise of Christ stands, “Blessed
are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.”[2]
The labor will come to completion and
then you will have such joy that the danger, pain, and sorrow of labor will be
forgotten. It will be forgotten in the joy that you now behold the Son of Man
in your arms. You will see the face of Christ and rejoice. You will forget the
sorrow and weeping that marks this life. Your lamentation of sin will come to
an end. You will no longer seek the absolution because your absolution will be
made complete, made whole, in the direct presence of Christ, now enjoyed by all
the faithful.
In + Jesus’
name. Amen.
