Sermon - February 21, 2010
Text: Luke 4:1-13
21 February 2010
Topic: Confession of Sins
Here I am, back up here. I’m back in the pulpit, not down at the lectern. For Lent, I want to preach from here. And I am going to preach on Martin Luther’s catechism.
As you have seen, we have begun our GIFT process for this year. They will begin their journey doing basic Bible study and praying together in a group. Just as they are looking at the basics of their faith, so, the rest of us would do well to look at the basics of our faith too.
Martin Luther was a Lutheran pastor and teacher at a German university in the 16th century. He noted how poorly the folks in his congregation knew even the basics of the Christian faith. In fact, you could say he was appalled. People were coming to church for worship but they didn’t seem to have a clue about what they were saying or believing.
So, he wrote a handbook of the Christian faith for the people coming to worship on a Sunday morning. He wrote a catechism for farmers, for shop keepers, for bankers, for the fathers and mothers of children, for peasants and rich alike to help them understand what they were doing on a Sunday morning and to give them insight and depth to their faith.
You will find a copy of Luther’s catechism in our red hymnal, at the end of the book, on pages 1160 and following. I am going to discuss with you THE CONFESSION OF SINS as printed on page 1165 which is part of what Luther wrote about Holy Baptism.
We come to worship each week and confess our sins. We start our worship by saying to God, “I’m sorry I wasn’t the person you called me to be this week. I’m sorry I didn’t treat the people around me the way you expect baptized children of God to act. I’m sorry I haven’t lived up to the standards you set for us in your Holy Word.”
The reason ‘confession of sins’ is part of Luther’s writings about ‘The Sacrament of Holy Baptism’ is because when we were baptized, be that as an infant, or as an adult, God said, “Behold, here is a child of mine.”
God made a covenant with us in baptism that said, “I will be your God, no matter what. I will love you, no matter what. I will walk with you and talk with you as long as you are alive. And when you die, I will give you a place in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
God also declared in our baptism, “Not only are you my child, I am calling you to be a disciple of mine in the world. I want you to love and serve others. I want you to declare to people how much I love them and want to be their God. I want you to give your very soul to this because you are my ambassadors on earth, you are my hands and legs and voice to people who have no idea who I am.”
The problem is, we don’t live up to our end of the relationship God began with us in baptism. We don’t do well as God’s disciples. We don’t always love and serve others. We don’t even try to tell others about God’s love for them. In fact, sometimes, we actually get in the way of what God is trying to do for others through us. We resist God, and we resist our baptismal calling. That’s sin. And so, we need to confess that sin each and every week.
A big part of sinning is giving in to temptation. A temptation is thinking about doing something we know to be wrong. Generally speaking, we know what God wants from us, but sometimes we are tempted to do exactly the opposite.
We can see what temptation is by looking at today’s gospel. Jesus was tempted to do things and be ways God didn’t intend for him to do and be.
But what if Jesus had given in to the temptations he was faced with? What if Jesus, who was baptized and declared to be the Son of God, who had gone into the desert to pray, only to find himself hungry and tired after forty days, had given in to the devil and commanded the stones around him to be made into bread? He could have eaten his fill and gone about his day. Who would have known? He was all alone. Nobody would have seen him. He could have gotten away with it easily. He was tempted.
Or, what if Jesus had accepted the powerful notion of becoming the earthly king and political ruler over all nations of the world? He could have lived a life of power and glory and never had to concern himself with dying on the cross. Sure, he knew he was God’s Son, but, what difference did that really make to the humans he was living amongst. Wouldn’t it have been a better life to have all that power, power that every living person around him would have coveted?
Or, what if Jesus had jumped down from some high and lofty place and dared the angels of God to catch him before he hit rock bottom?
Thankfully, Jesus didn’t succumb to any of these temptations.
Sadly, the same can’t be said of you and me. You and I are constantly bombarded by time constraints, shortages of money, ill health, cranky and impatient people, and we just don’t see any way out of the messes we are in sometimes except to take a short cut and bypass God’s baptismal expectations of us. In short, too often, we give in to temptation, take the easier way out and it results in sin.
So, at the beginning of the service, we confess our sins because we know we haven’t done what God expects of us. We list our sins, not out loud, of course, but silently, to ourselves and to God.
And then we wait. We wait for the absolution. We listen for the words, “Your sins are forgiven.” These words are spoken by the pastor, as if they are from God. We are told our sins are not held against us.
That’s the Good News for us each week. Even though we have given in to temptation and have sinned, time and time again, in the confession of sins and the absolution, we are forgiven for not being the way God intended us to be.
If we do nothing else on a Sunday morning, we need to make sure we hear the words, “Your sins are forgiven.” And then, we need to believe it, for that’s the gospel each and every week. AMEN