✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
2. Peter 1,2-11 1316
Aschermittwoch 023
Silas, Fellow worker of St. Peter and St. Paul, Bishop of Corinth, Martyr 50
Scholastica, Virgin, sister of Benedict of Nursia, Italy
10. Februar 2016
1. O Almighty and Everlasting God, who hates nothing that You have made and does forgive the sins of all those who are repentant: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, so that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of You, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness. Amen.
2. Our sermon text for this evening, dear brothers and sisters, is from the 2. Epistle of St. Peter where the holy apostle writes: 2May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. 3His Divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, 4by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the Divine Nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. 5For this very reason, diligently supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7and godliness with brotherly love (φιλαδελφιαν), and brotherly love (φιλαδελφια) with unconditional love (αγαπην). 8For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, then they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 10Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 11For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal reign of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is our text.
3. Lent begins with ashes – the symbol of death and complete destruction – and thus, Lent begins with our recognition that one day we will become ashes. Hopefully for all of us, such will happen after decades and centuries of our body moldering and decaying in its grave, for the alternative is that we are turned to ashes in an instant by a fire or other such extreme tragedy. Ashes are the end result of God’s wrath and punishment upon sin and sinners. The curse of sin is death, and the after death comes the decay of the physical body until there are only ashes left. Even worse, after a millennia not even the ashes are left, unless you happen to be a mummified pharaoh. Where are Adam’s ashes? Abraham’s? Isaac’s? Jacob’s? Such patriarchs don’t even have ashes of their bodies anymore because so much time has passed that even their bodily ashes have broken down to molecules and atoms that have been reabsorbed by the ground and reprocessed elsewhere in nature. Ashes. They are the product of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics: Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out. This is called entropy. Practically, this law is shown in the following example: A hot frying pan cools down when it is taken off the kitchen stove. Its thermal energy, which is „heat“, flows out to the cooler room air. The opposite never happens. British scientist and author C.P. Snow has an excellent way of remembering this law: „You cannot break even. You cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases.“ This is the theme of Ash Wednesday and Lent.
4. Yahweh’s law is damning. To Adam and Eve: if you eat from the forbidden tree, then you will die. To sinners: the life of the sinner will die. We live in a world that is ruled by the 2. Law of Thermodynamics: sinners die; nature trembles with natural disasters; creation breaks down. The 2. Law of Thermodynamics is the result of this fallen world on account of man’s sin and Yahweh’s curse upon that sin. Yes, our end result is ashes, disorder, and entropy. O we can deny it, we can ignore it, but the results of sinful entropy surround us and press upon us every single day. The liturgy of our (Gottesdienst) Divine Service pounds this horrible truth home every Sunday when we confess that everyone of us is a „poor, miserable sinner“. Our sins offend God and justly deserve His earthly and eternal punishment. Perhaps we have specific sins in mind when we make confession. Perhaps we just throw up our hands and say: „I cannot remember all my sins, I just know I am a filthy sinner and I cast my entire sinful body and soul before God in repentance of all I have done, spoken, or thought that has been sinful. “
5. How do we know we are sinful? God’s holy law reveals our sinfulness. The Ten Commandments pierce our conscience, and we feel guilty. The commandments tell us that we are subject to the law of entropy and that one day we will become ashes. The law, however, does not grant us the remission of our sins. The law only reveals that we are sinful, that God is angry at us, and He threatens to punish us for our wickedness.
6. Let’s be honest, though. Many try to use the law to earn their way to Jesus and salvation. Many will use Lent and the things they give up for the next forty days as ways to work their way into Jesus’ favor. Others will turn to other religions or philosophies, all of which are religions of law that tell you what you must do to get into God’s good graces.
7. The law only reveals that we are sinful, that God is angry at us, and He threatens to punish us for our wickedness. The law shipwrecks our lives. Yahweh gave us the law with the intention that His law is supposed to finally take us to the feet of Christ. Well what does Christ then do with us who have been tossed and churned by the law and cast upon the shore at the feet of Jesus. Does Jesus pick us up and give us more laws to follow so that we might join Him in Paradise? Certainly not! Jesus takes those who have been beaten and battered by the law, their sinfulness, and the curse upon sin and gives them the gospel.
8. Jesus tells us: „You have been beaten up by the law, and you are afraid of what awaits you when you die and your body turns to ashes, but do not fear, I will overturn death and entropy. You will live with me forever!“ Jesus accomplishes this for us and the entire world, and He accomplished it when He suffered and died on the cross in ransom payment for our sins, and He secured it when He triumphed over death when He Himself rose from death unto life, and not just any life, but eternal life never to die again. Jesus gives us these gospel gifts freely and we simply receive Jesus and His promise by faith.
9. Ash Wednesday and the liturgical season of Lent, then, is about Christ, His death, and His resurrection. The Apostle Peter says great things are born from faith in Christ. »For this very reason, diligently supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly love, and brotherly love with unconditional love« (1,5-7). Here the holy apostle exhorts us to give evidence of our Christian faith with good works (Luther 155). „Since such a great blessing has been given to you through faith so that you truly have everything that is God, he wants to say, add to this … that is, let your faith break forth before the people, in order that it may be helpful, busy, powerful, and active, and may do many works and not remain sluggish and sterile. You have a good inheritance and a good field. But see to it that you do not let thistles or weeds grow in it“ (Luther 155).
10. This is but to be like Christ. Faith sprouts good works just as an apple tree produces apples. Both the faith and the works are God’s power working in us which He has freely and graciously given to us. The gospel, therefore, is the opposite of the law of entropy. Rather than breaking down and becoming ashes, the gospel overturns entropy. Death leads to decay and ashes, but Jesus overcame death; He did not decay and His body did not rot away for centuries in a grave. Jesus arose in resurrected life and in doing so He has overcome entropy. Tonight it is Ash Wednesday but on the last day it will become Everlasting Life Wednesday when Christ raises each person up to life, some for eternal torment in hell, and others for everlasting life in heaven.
11. Faith and the works that flow from faith are the beginning of Yahweh’s removal of the curse from creation, and when the curse is finally and fully removed, then the 2. Law of Thermodynamics will cease to be a law for entropy will not exist in the new heavens and the new earth. The beginning of this new creation begins with Ash Wednesday and Lent, for in this liturgical season we acknowledge our sinfulness and repent of our sinfulness, once again take up our cross, the cross that Jesus will bear, and journey with Him to Calvary, His crucifixion, and ultimately His resurrection. And in following Jesus as the Christ, we know and believe that the ashes on our forehead that symbolize our mortality and humiliation will on the last day symbolize our immortality and glory that we have through Christ Jesus alone.
12. We may not see the healing of the damage, but the sin can be forgiven, its dominion broken. Sin can no longer destroy us; it can no more destroy us than it can destroy Christ. He has answered for it all. You are free from the sting of death, free from the condemnation of the law, and free from the law of entropy, for in Christ Jesus ashes are raised up to new life with a physical body. Amen.
13. Let us pray. O Heavenly Father, who does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities, do not remember against us our former iniquities and let Your compassion come speedily to meet us. Help us O God of our salvation, so that we may see, believe, and rejoice in the glory of Your Holy and Almighty Name. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
Soli Deo Gloria
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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 30: The Catholic Epistles. Jaroslav Pelikan, Ed. Copyright © 1967 Concordia Publishing House.
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