How Do You Know Christianity is True?

 “See my hands and my feet,” He said to them, “that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.  And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.  And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?”  They gave him a piece of broiled fish,   and he took it and ate before them.”

Luke 24:36-42

Every time I taught Christian theology I got asked this question.  How do you know that what you are teaching us is true?  How do you know that the Christian religion is the one true religion?    Other religions argue just as strongly for what they believe.  Maybe they are all right.  Maybe they are all true.  How do you know?”   I still get this question all the time.  People, even people who have been Christian all their lives will from time to time, struggle with doubts.  Think of the disciples, that first Easter. That morning the women had returned from the tomb with the news that the tomb was empty.  They told them the angel’s message – that Jesus had risen from the dead.  Yet Luke tells us “that these words seemed to them an idle tale and they did not believe them.”  By the time our story takes place Simon Peter had seen Jesus, the disciples on the road to Emmaus had seen him.  Before He went to the cross Jesus Himself had told them several times that all these things, including the resurrection were going to happen.  Then Luke tells us, “As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!”  Yet in spite of already having heard the good news, still “ they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit.  And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?”  When we struggle with doubts we are not the first to do so.   We are in good company. 

So, can you or I ever really know?   Yes.  How?  Well that first Easter night Jesus Himself stood among them.  Look at what He invited them to do.   “ See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.  And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.  And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?”  They gave him a piece of broiled fish,  and he took it and ate before them.”   Think about it.  Jesus showed them the wounds in his hands and feet… the scares from the cross where He died for the sins of the world.   He invited them to do more than look. He invited them to touch Him… to experience Him with all their senses… and with their senses to learn the truth that He really is alive.  He even ate some fish before their eyes. 

That’s how God answers our doubts.  God makes the Word tangible to you and me.   He Himself comes and stands in our midst.  He is here today, making the Word tangible to us… showing Himself to us… presenting His word in ways that we can see, and touch, as well as hear… in ways we can smell and taste.  After all, as Luther wrote, baptism “is not simple water only but it is water included in God’s command and connected with God’s Word.”  Baptism is the risen Christ at work among us in tangible forms.  In Baptism He “works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe.”  He gives us all the gifts won by His death and resurrection.   Or what about Holy Communion?  The risen Christ gives Himself to you and me. In the very tangible forms of bread and wine He will give us His very body and blood to eat and drink.  In this meal He answers our question.  “This is how you know.”  Jesus says.  “Taste and see what I have done for you.”  He gives Himself to us here so that we might have no doubt that His grace, His love, His forgiveness includes you and me, no matter what we have done.  He makes His Word tangible.  This is how He invites you and me today to “touch me and see.”   

Jesus doesn’t stop there.  He then opened their minds to understand that His life, death and resurrection is what the Bible is all about – that this is the message that must be proclaimed to the world…  that we must proclaim.  Jesus says, “You are witnesses of these things.”   In other words, now in us God makes the Word tangible to the world.   That’s why God gives us pastors.  A few years ago, a man sat in my office confessing his sins, asking, “How can I know that God really forgives me?”  I answered, “That’s why God gives you a Pastor.  Here you have someone who has been called by God… someone you can see and hear and touch… whose mission from God is to relay to you the message that He forgives you.”   The relief was palpable.   He also sends all of you to your family, your neighborhood, your workplace and your school.  God makes Himself tangible through your life and your witness. The other day someone came to me concerned about how to minister to a family member who has little or no faith but is hurting so badly because of loved one’s death.  I asked her why prayer is so important to her.  She said, “because God listens.”  That’s right.  That’s how you minister to your brother.  “Listen.  Listen with love and he will meet Jesus in you.”  That’s our mission to be God’s tangible witnesses to the world.. Jesus living in us… living through us in their lives.  That’s how we know. That’s how they will know.  Amen.  

What if God Kept a List?

Psalm 130:3-4

“If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness.” 

There is a scene in one of Chevy Chase’s movies in which he’s looking through his mail.  All he got that day were various bills.  He takes them all and throws them away.  The fellow with him is dumbfounded. “You can’t just throw them away.  You have to pay those bills.”  “Don’t worry,” is Chevy’s answer.  “They’ll write back.”  You know he’s right.  They will write back.  The companies you owe money to keep very careful track of all you owe them.  They even have records of all the bills you have paid.  They never forget!  I remember the first time Linda and I bought a house.  I remember going through our house with the inspector, making a list of everything he found.  There was nothing serious but by the end of the day the list was so long I thought, “Why would we want to buy this house?”

What if God kept that kind of list about you and me?  What if God kept a list of all your sins? Can you imagine how long that list would be?  You can can’t you.  You are aware of your failings…of the wrongs that you have committed.  There are things buried in the cellar of your life… the messes you have made recently… and long ago… Some, perhaps still burden your conscience and weigh you down with guilt.  There are so many items on that list that you can’t even remember them all.  Imagine God taking that list and making it public… taking a nail and posting it to the wall like a wanted poster in the post office.  That would be horrible… so embarrassing and shameful.  David was right in the Psalms, “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord who could stand?”  None of us could stand!  We are all guilty.  We would never want that list made public. 

Yet God has done just that.  He has taken the list of your sins and made them public.  He has taken them and nailed them up high. But you’ve never seen it.  Neither have I. No one except God has seen it.  Now He sees it no longer.  Why? Because of where He nailed the list.  Listen to Paul’s words to the Colossians.  He forgave all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, which was against us that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.’  The nail that posted the list of our sins is the nail that was hammered through our Lord’s hands into the cross.  They laid Jesus down on that cross.  Between his hand and the wood there was a list – your list and mine… the list of all the sins ever committed.   As the nails were driven through his hands into the cross… they were also driven through that list.

That’s why that list of your sins and mine cannot be seen.  They are covered.  At the top they are covered by his hands. Those down the list are covered by his blood shed there for you and me.  God forgives you everything that is on your list… even the one’s you have not yet committed.  To finish the Psalm, “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness.”  That’s the promise God makes to us.  Nailing our sins to the cross with Jesus, He says so clearly, “I forgive you!”  That’s the promise at the heart of all of God’s promises.  They all hang on this one  – that “as far as the east is from the west so far has He removed our transgressions from us…. You might ask , “How can you rely on the promises of a dying man?” Quite simply because He who made those promises… Jesus who died on that cross is not longer dead.  He is risen again.  That’s how we can be sure.  The promise is true.  The list has been nailed down but He has been raised up. We are forgiven. He remembers our sins no more.  Have a blessed Holy Week.  Amen.

Uncluttering Your Life - Making Room for God

Matthew 6:24

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. 

There have been two instances in my life when the Lord has had to teach me, in very practical terms, the meaning of these words - “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.   Each time it happened, I had let my heart become cluttered.  The Lord was getting shoved off to the side. The first happened after my dad died.   For most of my life I had been afraid of what I would do without him.  Then it happened.   Dad died.  For months I struggled with letting go of him.  The clearest illustration of that struggle was his work shop. I would not allow anyone to move anything in his shop.  I would often go in there just to look…nothing more.  Then one day, after referring to “my dad’s tools,” my pastor said to me, “Wayne, those aren’t your dad’s tools anymore… He will never use them ever again.”  That’s when it came home.  I was holding on to dad as if I couldn’t live without him. Yet, we can all only handle one master in life – for me that master needed to be God not my grief.

The second time was when we took the call to Germany.  That call meant clearing away all sorts of clutter – We sold or gave away most everything we owned – furniture that had been part of my life since childhood… all those tools that I had inherited from dad… my attachment to Lamb of God… my love, even dependence on being loved and needed by them.  God moved us 5000 miles away from our kids and grandkids.  The question in rejecting or accepting that call came down to this – Who would be master of my life?  “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Please note, there is nothing sinful about any of these things.  There is nothing wrong with loving or grieving your dad, nothing wrong with keeping family heirlooms, nothing sinful about having nice tools… nothing wrong with loving people, nothing wrong with being needed and loved… Nothing wrong that is, unless you give to those things the place in your heart that belongs to God… nothing wrong unless you allow those things to become Master.  Then you will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other… That’s what had happened.  I was so stressed by trying to maintain what we had… trying to please and be liked that I was easily angered… struggling with anxiety and more.  Jesus warns us, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Too often we set our hearts on things that perish. We think that we can’t live without them.  We give things or people a place in our heart that can only safely belong to God.  We expose our hearts to the temporary nature of those things or relationships… to the eating of the moth, the canker of rust and the subtle hands of thievery.  Instead of having, we end up being had.  Disappointment and discouragement, jealousy and envy take hold of your hearts.  When you worry about all these things you need to ask, “Who owns who?  Do I own my things, or do they own me? 

God’s solution?  In love He decluttered my life.  He put me in a situation where I had to give up everything that was leaving no room for Him.  He left me with the one treasure moth and rust can not destroy… the one thing no thief can take away… He left me with the one eternal treasure – Himself.  The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.   You and I are that treasure for the Lord! He literally went and sold all that He had to purchase us for Himself.  He gave His own Son.  Jesus left heaven, made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, then dying on a cross.  He sacrificed everything so that “you and I might be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness.”  Yes, He paid it all that we might be His treasured possession… more than that – He paid it all that so that He might be our one true eternal treasure – the treasure in heaven… the only treasure that can never be taken away.  

Even St. Paul had to learn this lesson… had to declutter his life of the things that had left no room in his life for God.  Listen as Paul describes this in Philippians 3 – “If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more:  circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…  This is really what this sermon series has been about… this is what it really means to declutter your life… getting rid of anything that crowds Him out… making room for God… letting Him have the place in your life that belongs to Him… the place He purchased with the life of His own Son.  Amen.

Unclutter Your Lives - Make Room for Rest

Mark 6:31 (ESV)

And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.

I did something right this week.  I was going to have three evenings in a row with activities at church.  Normally, because of where we live, I would have stayed straight through each day from 9=8:30 in the morning till 9 or later at night.  The thought of it made me tired.  So, at Linda’s suggestion, I did something different.  I decluttered my schedule. On two of the days, I got to church a little earlier in the day.  On those days, I took off in the late afternoon to go home – got an hour or two rest and then came back.  That little rest made all the difference. I got more done. I had a better attitude.  I enjoyed my work, my life and my day more… by just taking time to go to a quiet place, alone with Linda, and our Lord.  

That’s what Jesus is encouraging the disciples to do in Mark 6.  The disciples are just returning from a very busy mission trip.  They have been preaching, healing the sick, casting out demons every place they went.  They were both excited and exhausted… Even after they come back to Jesus there are so many people coming to them… they are so busy that Mark tells us that they “had no leisure, even to eat.”  Jesus invites them to take some time.  “Come away by yourselves,” He says, “to a desolate place and rest a while.”  That invitation is also for you and me.  He knows how busy your lives – how many hours you spend at work… how some of you are constantly on the road.  He knows that your family life often has something going on every night of the week.  He knows how you feel pulled in too many directions.  He knows how doing the same job over and over for so many years can itself become so routine it becomes exhausting… he knows the even deeper exhaustion that can be brought on by guilt… by a sense of failure… by the feeling not only that you can’t please everybody but worse that sometimes you can’t please anyone… by the worry “Am I really accomplishing anything?”

So it is that Jesus also invites you and me to come away to a desolate place - a solitary place, away from the hustle and bustle and noise of life.  He wants us to declutter our schedules… to make room for rest.  There is just too much noise and hurry in our lives.  Life has become one constant hurry…  That hurry gives us no time for one another… no time for love… no time for God.  “Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life.  Hurry lies behind much of the anger and frustration of modern life.  Hurry prevents us from receiving love from the Father or giving it to His children.  That’s why Jesus never hurried.”  That’s why Jesus invites us to regularly step away to a quiet place with Him.

He knows that He is the only one who is indispensible.   After all He is the Savior.  Jesus is the one who carried our sorrows and our illnesses… and our burdens… and our sins to the cross.  He is the One who died for you and me.  He is the one who rose from the dead, triumphant over sin and death.  Jesus is One who says, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”    Come away by yourselves,” He says, “to a desolate place and rest a while.”  The word Jesus uses for rest means “to permit yourself to cease from labor in order to recover and collect his strength.”  He knows that without such times of rest you and I will have nothing to offer anyone else.  We will get all used up. We will run out of gas.  So if you need permission… you have the invitation of the King of kings… to take time daily… weekly… monthly… yearly to come away with Him… to lay your burdens and worries and fears on His shoulders.. to hear His word of forgiveness… to be restored and refilled by His love. 

This text is how Jesus took away any guilt I had about going home for a couple of hours.  No matter what others may think, this is His invitation… because he knows that He… not me… not you… is indispensable…  So unclutter your schedule… take time… Come to the quiet place.  Come away by yourselves,” He says, “to a desolate place and rest a while.”  Amen.

Unclutter Your Lives - Clear Away the Conflict

Matthew 5:23–24 (ESV)

"So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift."

I met this man on my vicarage.  I was the fourth of 7 vicars (interns) to serve this vacant congregation in southern Nebraska.  He was a man every single one of us vicars visited sometime during our year of vicarage.  He came to church, but he refused to go to communion.  He hadn’t been to communion in 40 some years.   So each vicar, during his year, went out some time to visit with this man out of spiritual concern.  Why wouldn’t he take communion?  The initial reason we were given was that he objected to having to kneel for communion.  Back in the day, when the congregation put in the kneeler for communion, he was against it. Since the congregation went ahead and did it anyway, he refused to go to communion. 

Well I suggested to him that he didn’t have to kneel.  He could stand to receive the Lord’s Supper.  Apparently, I was the 4^th vicar to suggest this to him.  That was when the real problem came out.  40 years earlier this man had been involved in a conflict with another church member from a nearby church.  The other man had accused this man of attempting to have an immoral relationship with his wife.  This was fervently denied by the member of my vicarage church.  So the other man proceeded to beat him up… severely beat him up.  The result was that this man, the member of my vicarage church, was very bitter.   He was bitter about being wrongly accused.  He was bitter about being beaten up.  He was bitter because this other man was never disciplined by his church.  He held on to that bitterness for 40 years. That day of my visit, he showed me an old picture of what he looked like after the beating.  He carried that picture in his wallet.

I share that story because that conflict from 40 years earlier had really cluttered up his life.   This unresolved conflict left him angry, destroyed his marriage, hurt his faith (he wouldn’t go to communion), lost him all sort of friends.  The list of clutter goes on and on.  That’s what unresolved conflict does – It leaves trash all over your life.  It is a cancer that eats away at your heart and faith.  When you allow conflict to fester, you hurt yourself most of all. 

How do you clear away such conflict?  The words of Jesus make that clear.   So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.   First, go to God and ask for his help and his forgiveness.  After all, it takes two to tangle.  Then go to whomever it is. Go not for revenge. Go in humility – willing to listen and willing to see your own fault in the matter.  Go ready to ask forgiveness.  Go in love.  Speak the truth in love to the other person.  Jesus said it in Matthew 18, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.”

Why should you go, especially if the other person was wrong?  Well it doesn’t really matter which of you is wrong.  Most likely you both are wrong.  No, the reason to go is because that is what God did for you and me.  He didn’t wait. He came searching for Adam and Eve.  He promised a savior from sin right there in the garden.  “He sent forth His Son…”  “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their sins against them…”  “God demonstrates His own love for us in this, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”  “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and gave His son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”  He is the shepherd “who leaves the 99 in the open country and goes and searches for the lost sheep,” came searching for you and me.  That’s why you go… that’s why you seek to clear away the clutter of conflict – you want others to know about, to see and meet in you the love of the God who loves them and you.  You love because Christ first loved you… That’s what God’s love does – It clears away the clutter.   

Unclutter Your Lives - Get Rid of Your Worries

Philippians 4:6-7

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.  

Are any of you a pack rat?  I wanted to know if I am, so I googled it and found this definition.  A pack rat is a “bushy-tailed rodent that has well-developed cheek pouches and that hoards food and miscellaneous objects.”  Phew… that’s not me.  But then there is another definition – ‘a person who collects or hoards especially unneeded items.’  Now I wondered, am I hoarder?  Or is that different? Not really - a hoarder is simply a pack rat on steroids.  “Hoarding is the persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value.”  People hoard because they get attached to things.  What if they might need these things some day?”  People actually hoard free things – like Ross on Friends who used to load his suitcase with everything free from his hotel room.  Hoarders, and pack rats just have a hard time letting go of things.  They end up with cluttered homes, like a man I knew in Nebraska.  He had stacks of magazines and newspapers and other junk he just couldn’t throw out.  There were little trails through the stacks to get from his chair to his kitchen to his bedroom.  For someone struggling with hoarding, our “40 days – 40 items” challenge could be very difficult.

Now I don’t know if you or I are hoarders of things.  But I do have a suspicion that many of us are hoarders of worry. How many of you worry too much?  Any of you have trouble letting go of your worries?

Now please understand, I’m not talking about having legitimate concern for something or someone.  That is a difference between worry and concern. Concern has to do with being responsible or taking responsibility for something or someone – where you have the ability to make a difference.  When one of you sees that someone is missing in church and you reach out to make sure they are okay… when the boss gives you a job and you take steps to get that job done… you are being concerned.  Worry is what happens when you neglect your responsibilities and instead fret over them.  Worry is what happens when you become anxious about things you have no control over.  Concern is the natural state of a servant of God.  Worry is the natural state of someone who is trying to be God… to do God’s job for Him.  Since you and I can’t handle His job – we worry!

Worry is a huge source of spiritual clutter in our lives.  Think of all things you worry about – lay offs at work, money, bills, kids, health, etc.  Worry causes loss of sleep.  It ties our stomach up in knots.  It can make it hard to focus or concentrate.  On days when I am really worried I find it hard to get anything else done.  Worst of all – we all know we shouldn’t worry…It’s a big waster of time.  Most of what we worry about never happens.  We know that we should get rid of worry… but we are hoarders- we hold on to worry like we can’t live without it… after all to quit worrying is to admit that we aren’t God.   

The problem with worry, is the problem with a lot of the junk we hold on to in life.   Who can we give it to?  Who would want our worries?  He does – the Lord – the only one who can truly handle them.  “Cast all your cares on Him, the Bible says, “for He cares about you.”   How do you give Your cares away?   The answer is so simple, it almost seems too simple.  Pray. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.   When you give your worries to Jesus, guess what you discover?  He already took them.  He already carried them. He already conquered them for you.  He carried them to His cross.  He gave up His life to handle your worries.  He rose again to dispel all worry forever. 

Whatever it is that worries or scares you… what ever it is that you can’t handle – He knows about it.  He can handle it.  He has handled it.   I love the words of Jesus in Matthew 6.  “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?  “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?  So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Yes, get rid of your worries.  Give them to Jesus.  He’s already gotten them all handled. Amen.

Unclutter Your Lives - God's Spring Cleaning

“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.   Joel 2:12-13

I love what we are doing for Lent – Picking out one item a day for forty days to give up… Something we don’t need that we can give to someone who does need it.  When Donna first proposed this idea to me, all I could think about was all the clutter in my life – in my closet, in my dresser, on the kitchen table, on my home desk upstairs, on my desk here at church.  It seems like no sooner do I clean off the clutter and new clutter takes its place.  Sometimes the clutter gets so bad that I can’t work at my desk… or we can’t eat at the table. We have too much stuff.  This is a great idea.

Lent is the perfect time for this project.  What a great reminder that we also have too much spiritual clutter in our lives.   Just like its good from time to time to give our home our good spring cleaning, that’s what the season of Lent is for spiritually.  This is a time for God to give our Spiritual lives a good old-fashioned spring cleaning.  That’s what we are going to do these next few Wednesdays. We are going to consider all the spiritual clutter in our lives… the things in our lives that either crowd out or leave very little room for God.  We will be looking at the burdens we carry, the busyness that clutters our schedules…the worries that consume our minds, the conflicts that threaten our relationships, the false treasures that we think we can’t live without. Tonight, though we consider the worst clutter, the clutter we are ashamed of, the stuff we don’t want anyone else to see, the clutter we hide in our closets.

In my family when we heard someone unexpected was about to show up, my mom would go into a panic.  She didn’t want people to see any kind of mess.  We would take all the clutter and shove it in closets. That wasn’t really cleaning… that was just hiding the mess.  Too often that’s what we do with our spiritual mess.  In our shame we hide the mess. We cover it up.  We blame others.  We lie.  We do what Adam and Eve did. When their eyes were opened by their sin and they realized they were naked.  They tried to hide it.  “They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”  Then when “they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day… the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God…  What are the things in your life you are so ashamed of that you don’t want anyone to know about them… so ashamed of that you would do anything to cover up that secret – an addiction?  Alcoholism?  Troubles in your marriage?  Something from far in your past? 

Let me tell you something important about all our attempts to hide our shameful clutter in the closet.  When my mom would tell me to clean up my room, I would often shove it in a closet or push it all under my bed.   That didn’t fool her for a second.  In the same way you and I can’t hide anything from God.  He knows all about the things we hide.  He knew where Adam and Eve were hiding. He knew why. He knows what you and I are hiding. Indeed, He made that clear today.  He marked us with ashes.  “Dust you are and to dust you shall return.”  With those ashes He said to you and me, “I know all about the clutter in your closet. I know you are a sinner!”  You can’t hide anything from Him.

So why try?  That’s the message of Lent.  Listen again to the reading from Joel.  “Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” He invites us to fling wide the closet doorway.  Let Him see the mess… Let Him do His spring cleaning.  He does for us here what He did for Adam and Eve that day.  He knew what they done before He even asked them.  “The Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”  He said, “Who told you that “you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”   God didn’t need their confession.  They needed to confess.   He was giving them a gift – the opportunity to let Him clean out the closet.  That is a gift our God holds out to us as well – a time of confession in our worship… or if you need a private, confidential time with Pastor Bauer or me… or a Stephen minster or some other person you trust.  You need not fear.  You won’t shock God… You won’t shock us.  We already know this about each other – we are all sinful and unclean.  We will tell no one.

After all God has marked us with more than the ashes of repentance.  At baptism you and I were marked with the sign of the Holy cross both upon the forehead and upon the heart to mark us as those redeemed by Christ the crucified… as those for whom Christ shed His blood and rose again.  He did that for our sins.  We have been marked by Him at baptism… “by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing...”   God’s chief desire is clean out the closets of our lives… to remove the clutter… to forgive our sins!  Indeed, He already has in Christ.  That’s the invitation before us tonight… this season of Lent.  “Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.   That’s my challenge to you this season of Lent – as you take out one item each day and place it in your bag… spend a few moments in prayer.  Consider the spiritual clutter in your life.  Give it to God.  Let Him do His Spring cleaning.  Amen.