Ash Wednesday
“Heart to Heart:
Sackcloth and Ashes to Robes of Righteousness”[1]
February 14, 2018
Text: Joel 2:12-19; Rev. 7:9-14
A
solid dose of repentance is what is called for on this day. Not just an outward show. The ash crosses, sure. That’s all wonderful. But we’re talking about a matter of the
heart. Rend your hearts, and not your
garments. Because sin is not a surface problem,
like trying to cuss less and be a better husband (remember today is also
Valentine’s Day, men, so you might want to stop at a store after Church). The problem, though, isn’t that you have a
few vices and you aren’t as good as you should be. No, it’s much deeper than that. The problem is your heart. Rend that.
Tear it up. Crush it to powder. Burn it to ashes. And ask God for a new one. For sin is nothing less than rejection of
God. “Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to
anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Joel 2:13; ESV). It is His grace, His mercy, His steadfast
love that is the basis of your confidence.
It is that grace, mercy, and steadfast love personified in the person of
Christ, crucified for your sins, risen for your justification and life, that
gives you boldness to return. Repentance
is always a returning. It is a coming
before God in the sackcloth and ashes of contrition (sorrow over the sin that
separates you from Him and from one another), in faith that He will forgive
you, heal you, and restore you on account of Christ His Son. King David has it right. What sacrifice can you bring when you come
before the Lord in repentance? “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,”
he says; “a broken and contrite heart, O
God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:17).
The
truth of the matter is, our sin has exiled us from God. We are in exile in the land of unbelief and
death, under the dominion of the devil.
This is a fallen creation. That
is always where sin leads. That is the
seriousness of the situation. And so,
just as faithless Israel was led away in chains to Assyria, and Judah to
Babylon, so we, in our faithlessness, live in a world and a flesh hell-bent on
rebellion against our God. We’re slaves
in a foreign country. Admitting that is
the first step in repentance. Confess
the situation. You are in bondage. You can do nothing to help yourself. You can do nothing to free yourself. The devil has you in chains, and in the end,
he will kill you. Confess your
sins. The actual bad things that you
have done, the things that have hurt your neighbor, your family, yourself. The words you’ve said. The evil you’ve committed with your bodily
members. The anger. The lust.
The covetousness. The grumbling. The ungratefulness. The dissatisfaction with the great gifts
you’ve been given. Confess the good you
have failed to do. The neglect of your
family, your responsibilities at work, to your community, to your Church. Even more to the point, confess the situation
of your heart, that it is evil, as Jesus says of it: “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual
immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matt. 15:19). And so, what it needed to free you from exile
is rescue from the outside of you. Note
this very carefully: Following your heart only leads you deeper into
bondage. It is just your heart that is
in chains. Your heart is the
problem. You need a Savior from the
outside, who will first of all steal you away out of slavery, and then turn
your heart, produce a change within, repent
you, if you will. And that Savior is
the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
There
is only one way for Jesus to free you from your bondage to sin, death, and the
devil. This is the really radical part. The only way you can go free is for Jesus to
take your place. That is to say, He must
be damned for you. He must suffer and
die for you. And that is why when you
receive the ashes this evening, you will receive them in the sign of the
cross. The ashes remind you that you are
dust, and to dust you shall return. That
is to say, your body will expire. You
will die. The ashes are a reminder of
your exile, your slavery apart from Christ.
But the sign of the cross is the sign of hope and redemption. You’ve been rescued. You’ve been led out of bondage. You serve a new Lord, now; the One who was
crucified and died for you, and who is risen and lives for you, Jesus Christ,
the Savior. And though you will still
die physically, unless the Lord returns first, still, you will live, because He
lives and you are baptized into Him, and His death is your death, therefore His
life is your life. Death no longer has a
claim on you. Jesus died your death for
you. The devil no longer has any power
over you. Jesus suffered your damnation
in your place. The price of redemption
has been paid, in full, by the blood of the Savior. Your servitude has been fulfilled by His
suffering. Depart in peace. You are free.
And
now He leads you out. Your whole
Christian life, from Baptism to the resurrection of your body, is an exodus, a
great journey of return to the Lord your God.
Jesus is the Leader in this.
Follow Him. If you stick with
Him, you cannot be lost. This takes the
Holy Spirit, for this is where the change in you takes place, the turning from
sin and death and unbelief, the turning to God, the returning to your Lord,
conversion, faith. That happens in
Baptism and preaching. The Spirit is
given to you in the Word and the water.
And now you live in your Baptism, which is a continuous journey of
repentance. That is to say that every
day is a day to repent of your sins, to confess them to God, and to believe and
trust in the forgiveness of sins won by Christ on the cross. Every day is for you a day of death and
resurrection. That is what your Baptism
indicates according to Dr. Luther in the Catechism, that the old Adam in you
should daily be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and the new man
daily emerge and arise to live before God.
This is why every morning you arise and commend the day to God in
prayer, that He would bless your work and preserve you from sin and an evil
death (a death in unbelief), and every night you confess your sins to God, ask
His forgiveness for Jesus’ sake, and thank Him for His providence over the day
now past. And you go to sleep knowing He
will wake you, whether to another day of journey in the morning, or at your
destination in heaven.
The
destination, yes… that is important. It
is not just that you’re freed from the tyranny of your old masters in
exile. You are free to… free to live
under Christ in His Kingdom in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and
blessedness. Now, if you don’t watch
carefully, the old flesh will try to pull a fast one on you. It will try to convince you that it is enough
to be freed from… And then, your flesh will contend, you can be
your own master. Don’t fall for it. That’s the old trick from the Garden. Seeking to be your own master is precisely
what enslaved you in the first place.
No, just as important as being freed from
sin, death, and the devil, is that you’re freed to follow Jesus on the journey of repentance and faith, the
baptismal journey, to the Promised Land of heaven and the resurrection from the
dead. In Revelation Chapter 7, St. John,
or rather, the angel who is speaking with St. John, calls that journey “The
Great Tribulation.” That is what this
earthly life is. It’s a struggle. There is the flesh to contend with, which has
died already in Baptism, but needs to be crucified anew each day. There are the sins that beset us. There is illness and injury and pain and
sorrow. These are the symptoms of
death. But what happens when we
physically die, we who are in Christ, is described in that wonderful Chapter:
After this I looked, and behold, ba great multitude that no one could number, cfrom every nation, from all tribes and peoples and
languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dclothed in
white robes, with epalm branches in their hands, 10 and
crying out with a loud voice, f“Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and
to the Lamb!” 11 And all the angels were standing around the
throne and around the elders and gthe four living creatures, and they hfell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 isaying, “Amen!
Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be
to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
13 Then one of
the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, dclothed in
white robes, and from where have they come?” 14 I said to him,
“Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of jthe great tribulation. kThey have washed their robes and lmade them
white min the
blood of the Lamb. (Rev. 7:9-14)
That
is where the return to the LORD your God is complete. That is when repentance will be at an end,
and there will only be rest and rejoicing.
When we behold the Lamb face to face with the great multitude. When our white robes are visible for all to
see, including ourselves. When Old Adam
has died once and for all and forever and there is only New Creation all the
time. We get a foretaste of that here at
the altar. We will know it by sight when
we come out of the Great Tribulation with our palm branches before the
throne. We will know it fully when Jesus
Christ, who is risen from the dead, raises us.
On that Day, there will be no more sackcloth and ashes. Only the robes of the righteousness of
Christ. And you are righteous now, in
Christ. But you are still on the
journey. And so the ashes.
So
today we repent, which is to say, we follow Jesus on the road to death. But always, always with the end in mind:
heaven and the resurrection. That is
what Lent is, and that is our whole Christian life. A journey.
An exodus. A being freed from,
and a being freed to. Return to the LORD
your God, beloved, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and
abounding in steadfast love. For you, He
sent His Son. For you, He sends His
Spirit. For you, for you, for you. It is all for you. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son
(+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] The theme and structure of
this sermon are from Jeffery Pulse, Return
from Exile: A Lenten Journey (St. Louis: Concordia, 2017).
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