You're Fired!

“’Brothers, what shall we do?’ And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of sins…”

Acts 2:37b-38a

One of the first things I do when I wake up most every day is get online and check the news, especially the news from America.  Yesterday morning I wasn’t expecting what I read there.  The President of the United States had fired the Director of the FBI.  Now I have tried purposefully to stir this blog away from politics and instead focus on what God’s word has to say to our daily lives.  This week’s blog will be no exception.   

However, as the day went on, I couldn’t get the word’s “You’re Fired” out of my mind.  That’s when it struck me, there is someone in each of our lives who absolutely needs to be fired!  That someone in my life is me.  That’s someone in your life is you – the old sinful you and me.  When God calls you or me to repent, that’s what He means.  That’s what it means to turn away from sin.    Spiritually, this is the first step in the new life God has given us in Christ.  This is the first step of every day of the Christian life – to repent… to fire yourself!

Now I know President Trump seems to make firing someone look easy.  He made a whole career out of sitting across the desk from people on The Apprentice and saying, “You’re fired!”  But anyone who has had to do it at work, can tell you that it’s anything but easy.  I have only had to do it once and I hated it.  Other managers talk about losing sleep when they knew that they had to take this step.

Having to fire yourself is as hard or harder!  Repentance after all means admitting that you have been wrong, that you have been going in the wrong direction, that you can’t set yourself right… that you can’t save yourself.  Most of us spend a lot of time doing just the opposite, trying to hide or deny our failures, trying to convince ourselves and others that we are handling life just fine… that we haven’t done anything wrong.  Why?  Because it’s humbling to admit we’re wrong.  There is shame involved.  We want people to only see the good not the bad in us.  We are afraid of facing the truth about our sin.  Yet go to any 12 step recovery program and they will tell that the first step is to admit you are powerless… that you can’t fix yourself.  They will also tell you that this step, just showing up at AA or Celebrate Recovery, and admitting you need help is the hardest step to take. 

Yet when the people asked Peter what they needed to do, this is exactly what Peter tells them.  “Repent and be baptized…’  “Turn from your ways and live…”  “Fire yourself!”  Why?  Because new life is found only in trusting God’s Son, not in trusting yourself.  Listen to Paul’s words to the Galatians, words of great hope that describe what happens when you fire yourself.  “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.  The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”  That’s what God does every time we repent. He starts a new life in you and me.  “If anyone is in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away.”  It’s been fired.  “Behold the new has come!”  Luther says the same thing in His Small Catechism when explaining the meaning of baptism for our daily lives.  “This signifies that the old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sin and evil desires.”  In other words the old Adam should daily be fired.  Why?  “so that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

You know there are mornings for some reason I wake up discouraged.  Linda thinks it’s because I start off with emails and the news.  Maybe she’s right.  Maybe the better way to start the day is to look in the mirror and say to our old sinful selves, “You’re fired!  I don’t need you anymore.  I’m a baptized child of God.  In Christ He’s given me a whole new life to live each day!  He’s all I need.”  Try it tomorrow morning.  I will too.  Amen.