Deliver Us from Evil

In Nomine Iesu
Luke 23:46/7th Petition
March 30, 2018
Good Friday

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

In the account of our Lord’s Passion from the pen of St. Luke, Jesus’ final words from the cross are words of faith—a prayer of great faith and confidence. Despite all appearances to the contrary—despite every indication that He is completely abandoned by His Father—despite the savage brutality to which He is subjected—Jesus prays with confidence and deep conviction: Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit. And having said this, He breathed His last.

This final prayer of our Lord is nothing new. Jesus is merely quoting from Psalm 31—quoting from the mouth of His ancestor, King David: Into your hands I commit my spirit. Jesus made these words His dying prayer. And saints down through the ages have also prayed these words as earthly life ebbed away. As angry men gnashed their teeth and hurled stones at Saint Stephen, he prayed that the Lord Jesus would receive His spirit. Martin Luther on the night when he died, prayed over and over again, “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.”

To “commit” something is sort of like making a deposit—maybe even a bank deposit. In these days of electronic banking and direct deposit, it’s becoming increasingly rare to do what I do two times each month: I drive to my bank, walk in, hand over my paycheck, and make a deposit. And this is an act of trust and faith on my part. I “commit” those funds, confident that when I need them they will be available.

To commit yourself to the Lord is also an act of trust and faith. It acknowledges that He is good and merciful and loving—that He does what He says and keeps His promises. You can deposit yourself with Him. You can commit to Him Your body and soul, your possessions and reputation. You can trust Him.

Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit. Can you pray these words along with Jesus? Can you comfortably and confidently entrust your spirit to your heavenly Father when your last hour comes? Not everyone can, and some for good reason. For some, the hands of God are to be avoided at all costs. In the book of Hebrews it says, “It is a fearful thing—a dreadful thing—to fall into the hands of the living God” (10:31). It is “fearful,” the author explains, for those who keep on sinning deliberately—even after receiving the knowledge of the truth. God’s hands are a “dreadful” place for those who know better—for those who insult the spirit of God’s grace by persistent, deliberate, unrepentant sinning. Our God is holy, which means that He is sinless and hates sin.

How then can sinners commit themselves to this holy God? We must first pray the seventh petition: Deliver us from evil. Before we can commit ourselves into God’s holy hands, we must first confront the problem of evil. We know all about evil. News broadcasts serve up a steady diet of despicable crimes and evil acts: Mass shootings, terrorist bombings, heartless acts of sexual abuse perpetrated against the powerless. And sometimes, even what the media trumpet as “progress” and a “grand step forward,” is actually a despicable evil in God’s eyes. Evil is real and we are surrounded by it.

But there’s a deeper truth concerning evil that never quite makes the headlines. The Scriptures remind us that evil also has a home in our hearts. Evil isn’t just something that finds expression in bars, brothels, and battlefields. Evil finds expression in our lives—in your life. Our liturgy teaches this terrible truth. The liturgy leads us to confess that we are poor, miserable sinners—that we are by nature sinful and unclean. But there’s a tremendous difference between just saying those words and believing them. If we don’t believe them—if we don’t believe that even our hearts are poisoned by evil, then we will never, ever correctly pray, Deliver us from evil. It’s the evil in here from which we most need deliverance. Nor can we deliver ourselves from evil. We must be delivered from it. When it comes to deliverance from evil, we are passive. God is active—very, very active. Deliverance from evil is what He does best.

And so behold the man on the center cross. There you will see God delivering you from evil. Isaiah saw this deliverance from evil centuries before it came to pass. Isaiah saw God’s servant, the Messiah, made to bear the punishment for our evil. He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. When we pray, “Deliver us from evil,” we must always pray with the crucifixion in mind. Because there, on a dark Friday afternoon, evil had its way with Jesus.

Thus Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father, deliver us from evil.” Notice that Jesus doesn’t have us pray for an end to evil—at least not until our last hour comes and we depart this valley of sorrow for our heavenly home. No, Jesus doesn’t teach us to pray for all evil to be eradicated and eliminated. He teaches us to pray for deliverance from evil. We’re praying to be rescued from it. We’re praying that—in the end, when the smoke clears and the dust settles and the flames subside—we will still be standing, with our living Lord.

This is exactly how God operates in your life. He doesn’t remove all evil, but He does deliver your safely right through it—right through the valley of the shadow of death. Like when the Lord sent a plague of venomous snakes in the book of Numbers. People were dying left and right from snake-bite. The people asked Moses to pray to the Lord to take away the snakes. But the Lord didn’t take away the snakes. He had Moses make a bronze snake on pole. And when anyone looked at that bronze snake they were delivered—delivered from death by snakebite—even as the snakes continued slithering and sinking their fangs into flesh.

There are other examples too. Think of Daniel in the lions’ den. The Lord didn’t take away the lions; He simply delivered Daniel from becoming the lions’ lunch. Or think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. The Lord didn’t douse the flames. He didn’t turn down the thermostat. He simply delivered those young men—delivered them from evil.

As we gather together on this Good Friday in the year of our Lord 2018, many of us are in rough shape. Temptation slithers around us like venomous snakes. The weariness of worry and grief has left us fatigued to the point of despair. Some are in the lions’ den; others in the fiery furnace. All we know for sure is this: You will be delivered from every evil. For you have been delivered by Jesus—Jesus who became our sin so that we might become the righteousness of God—Jesus who loves you and gave Himself for you.

Trusting Jesus, redeemed by His blood, you too can pray along with Him. You can, with all boldness and confidence pray, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” For despite any appearances to the contrary, your God loves you for Jesus’ sake. He will deliver you from death for Jesus’ sake. You just wait. Just wait until the third day. And then you will see the ultimate deliverance from evil.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

At the Ninth Hour

In Nomine Iesu
Mark 15:34-39
March 25, 2018
Palm/Passion Sunday

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

This Sunday has it all—everything from pomp, pageantry and praise . . . to torture, execution, and burial. Joy-filled shouts of “Hosanna” to hate-filled cries for crucifixion. This is the Sunday so nice they named it twice. It’s Palm Sunday; it’s also the Sunday of the Passion. Palms and Passion. Cheers and jeers. Triumph and tragedy meet head-on this day—in Jesus the Christ.

The Gospel according to Saint Mark has been our guide to the life of Jesus for most of this year. Mark is the most concise of the four gospels. But if you happen to make it back here next Sunday to celebrate the resurrection (which I hope you will), what you will discover about the Gospel of Mark is that it ends with a whimper—not with a bang. Easter according to St. Mark only has an angel and a few fearful women who are too scared to say anything to anyone. It’s not a very grand finale. But then again, it’s not intended to be.

No, the finale—the climax of Mark’s gospel—is found in that long reading you heard today from chapter fifteen. Specifically, everything comes to a head at the ninth hour. Now, the “ninth hour” is not nine o’clock, but three o’clock—three o’clock in the afternoon. It’s the ninth hour because it’s been about nine hours since the sun had risen. But by this ninth hour, on this Friday afternoon, there was only darkness. Four things happen in rapid sequence at the ninth hour. And these four things are why Good Friday is called Good Friday.

At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These words of Jesus from the cross are the only words from the cross that Saint Mark chose to record for us. You have to

look elsewhere for the other six sayings. But these words are crucial to understanding what’s happening. Jesus is quoting Psalm 22—a Psalm that reads like a blow-by-blow commentary on the events of Good Friday. But this one verse tells us all we need to know.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? God the Father has forsaken His one and only Son. He has abandoned Jesus. He has turned a deaf ear to His prayers, and a blind eye to His suffering. And this is hell. When you and I reflect on the bleakest and most hopeless periods of our lives, we sometimes say, “It was a living hell.” But not really. The only person to endure a “living hell” in the strict sense was Jesus. And He endures it for you. He’s bearing your sin. He’s taking your punishment. He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. As Isaiah reminds us, “it was the will of the Lord to crush Him” (53:10).

Last Sunday I asked the children to remember the worst sin they had ever committed. And I heard from a few of you adults after the service, that you didn’t really care for that question. It’s not too pleasant to ponder and, for some of us, it’s quite a challenge to choose which one of our many sins is the worst. Whatever the sin that you’d rather not recall—see it with Jesus in the living hell of His crucifixion. It’s why He was forsaken by His Father, so that His Father will never forsake you—so that your sin (even your worst sin) will never stand between you and your Father in heaven.

At the ninth hour, at the moment Jesus died, two things happen almost simultaneously: He “uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” The fact that Jesus could cry out loudly is remarkable when you consider what His body was going through at that moment. Many of you know that death by crucifixion is actually death by asphyxiation. As the hours pass by, the ability of a crucified man to draw oxygen into his lungs becomes less and less. Breathing becomes labored and shallow. You can’t shout or cry out unless you’ve got air in your lungs. But Jesus found a way. And with that loud cry He gave up His life for us.

At that exact moment—less than a mile away—a critical curtain in the temple was torn in two. This curtain separated the Holy of Holies (God’s dwelling place on earth) from what was called the Holy Place. No one except the High Priest could ever pass through that curtain into God’s presence—and he could do it only once a year on Yom Kippur, and only being properly vested and bearing blood to atone for the sins of the people.

But at the ninth hour, at the moment Jesus died, God Himself tore down that curtain. The temple and its sacrificial system had become obsolete. The blood of God’s own Lamb had atoned for the sins of the world. And all who are covered by that blood now have full and free access to God. Jesus, our great High Priest, has opened the way for us with His own flesh and blood. And now nothing is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And now comes the climax. Now comes the grand finale. And quite surprisingly, this moment of maximum significance in the Gospel according to Saint Mark is entrusted to a no-name centurion—a Roman soldier who had witnessed our Lord’s crucifixion from a seat in the front row. When the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God.”

Now the true significance of the centurion’s statement only becomes clear as you reflect back on the previous 14 chapters of Mark’s gospel. You probably noticed how, in His earthly ministry, Jesus often commanded those who experienced His divine power to say nothing about it. It began with the demons and the unclean spirits. Jesus ordered them not to tell who He was. He placed that same gag order on other ordinary folks who had witnessed wonders—a man healed of leprosy, Jairus whose dead daughter was raised to life, to a deaf and mute man whose hearing and speech Jesus restored—to all of these people who had experienced Jesus to be the Son of God firsthand—Jesus said, “Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. Keep it quiet.” Even when Peter had explicitly confessed, “You are the Christ,” and after Peter, James, and John saw His heavenly glory on the Mount of Transfiguration—Jesus told them to keep quiet and tell no one.

But now, finally, at the ninth hour, a centurion spills the beans: Truly this man was the Son of God! That centurion is a stand-in for all of us—for all of us who will follow Jesus this week from Bethany to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem to Calvary’s cross. We’re “in” on the secret together with this no-name centurion. Only when Jesus has breathed His last—only when He has been reduced to a corpse on a cross—only then does He allow the truth to be confessed by the most unlikely of people, including you and me.

We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with that centurion. For our baptism has also given us a front row seat to witness what happened to Jesus on Good Friday. Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were crucified with Him. We were buried with Him. And we have a share in His resurrection from the dead. And until that day when we depart this life to be with Christ, we make it our goal to say with the centurion: This man was the Son of God. Not only that, but we make it our goal to live and speak and serve in such a way that we are always bearing witness to Jesus, the Son of God.

Part of what makes Mark’s gospel unique is that it was first written for Christians who were being persecuted. For them, to say with the centurion that Jesus Christ was the Son of God—well, it might have been enough to get them killed. Following Jesus is never easy. One day your own “ninth hour” will come. But whether your “ninth hour” passes with a whimper or a bang, remember what Saint Mark shows us today: You can trust this Jesus. Behold all that He has done for you. See the depths of His love for you. He will never leave you or forsake you. You are precious to Him. He is—truly—the Son of God, your Savior.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Forgive Us Our Trespasses

In Nomine Iesu
Fifth Petition
March 21, 2018
Midweek Lent 5

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

I’ll see you in court! You’ll be hearing from my lawyer! I’ll sue your pants off! Sound familiar? It should. Litigation is the contagion of our times. Back in 2012 litigation costs in the United States totaled $250 billion dollars. The amount of money we spent on suing and being sued amounted to over two percent of the Gross Domestic Product. It would be as if every man, woman, and child in this country spent $838 dollars in search of a legal remedy.

Although litigation is sometimes a necessary thing—and although judges and attorneys should be viewed as good gifts from God—yet, suing somebody has almost become a way of life in American culture—even among Christians—even between Christians. The creed of our culture almost seems to be: I don’t get mad; I get even.

But for those who follow Jesus Christ, getting even and getting revenge are not viable options. Jesus advocates forgiveness, not litigiousness. Jesus promotes reconciliation, not litigation. He tells us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us (Matt. 5:44). And the concrete expression of that love for our enemies—the place where the rubber hits the road—is the Fifth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

You’ve prayed those words perhaps thousands of times. What do they mean? First and foremost, those words are a confession—an admission—that we’ve got trespasses that need forgiving. Whenever we pray this petition we are owning-up to the fact that we daily sin much and deserve nothing but punishment. With these words we admit the worst about ourselves—that we are indeed poor, miserable sinners.

This petition also levels the playing field. It just lumps us together with all the other sinners. There’s no distinction here. It’s not “forgive him” or “forgive her” or even “forgive me.” It’s “forgive us our trespasses.” The plural pronouns of this petition break our pride and keep all of us as beggars before God. Anyone who would dare to boast in his own goodness and look down on the sins of others—that person needs to pray these words: Father, forgive us.

This petition also teaches us how God’s forgiveness is like rainwater. It pours down vertically from God to us; and then runs horizontally from us to our neighbors. It’s just like the rain that first showers down from the heavens and then runs along the channels of streams and creeks and rivers. Or, if you prefer, it’s like a waterfall that gushes downward and then turns into a river flowing outward. God forgives, and His forgiveness propels His forgiven people also to forgive. Both our forgiveness and our forgiveness of others is offered to God in one, seamless, unbroken petition, prayed in a single breath: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Forgiveness cannot be hoarded. You can’t save it up just for yourself. It’s like the air we breathe—inhaled and exhaled, but no holding your breath—at least not for very long. Forgiveness is made to move. It’s made to flow, like the blood and water from Jesus’ side—from God to us—and through us to those around us. This is important because any blockage in the horizontal channel results in a back-up in the vertical. Those who refuse to forgive others are also—actually—refusing to be forgiven themselves. Jesus helpfully expressed it this way: For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Matt. 6:14-15). Luther put it more succinctly in the Large Catechism: If you do not forgive, do not think that God forgives you.

To forgive means to “let go” of the sin—to send the sin away to where it no longer comes between you and your neighbor. But our sinful nature never wants to let go—never wants to send away the sins perpetrated against us. We want to hold onto those sins—carefully file them away for use at a later time. Instead of “forgive and forget,” what comes naturally to us is to “remember and retaliate.” We’d rather even the score than forgive as God in Christ has forgiven us.

What’s more, the forgiveness we are called to share cannot be half-hearted. It’s not just saying, “I forgive you,” but meaning it. As the Small Catechism reminds us, “So we too will sincerely forgive and gladly do good to those who sin against us.” The forgiveness we give should be just like the forgiveness we receive from the Lord: full, free, and genuine.

This is tough. In fact, this is impossible without Jesus. I’d like to share with you something Jesus once taught me about forgiveness. I was in second grade. And one Wednesday evening during Lent, while I was at church with my family, I did something destructive. My destructive act was soon discovered, and later that night at home a suitable punishment was administered.

But that’s not the end of the story. For my parents decided that since my destructive deed was carried out at church, I needed to apologize to our pastor. I still remember the fear and dread that followed in the days ahead as I contemplated what it would be like to apologize to the pastor, who to my second-grade eyes was a rather formidable figure. When the moment of truth arrived, I was terrified. I don’t remember a word of what I said. But I will never forget what he said: Mike, since Jesus forgives you, I forgive you too. It was unexpected. It was undeserved. It was grace. It was the forgiveness of Jesus flowing from one forgiven sinner to another.

That forgiveness is still flowing right here this evening. It flows from the cross of Jesus—from the Lamb of God slain for sinners like us. Hanging from the cross, on a dark Friday afternoon, our Lord Jesus prayed to our Father. Even as He was mocked and spit upon—as pain beyond measure was inflicted upon His lacerated body—He prayed. He prayed not for vengeance or retribution. He prayed for the forgiveness of His enemies: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And just a short while later, Jesus breathed His last to make our forgiveness possible. Jesus, who was innocent, prayed for the guilty. He takes our guilt and gives us His innocence. He takes our sin, and gives us His forgiveness. Tonight you have His forgiveness—full, free, and genuine. The only question is: What will you do with it?

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Ten--And Still Holding

In Nomine Iesu
Exodus 20:1-17
March 4, 2018
Lent 3B

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

When I took my first-ever trip to Germany last summer, there was nothing I depended on more than Google Maps. With one glance at my phone, my navigation needs were mostly met. I knew right where I was. I got my bearings quickly. I could emerge from a shadowy, underground subway station into the bright Berlin sunshine, and pretty much immediately, I knew which way to walk—despite never having traveled those streets before in my life. With Google maps I knew where I was; I knew where I had been; and I knew where I was going.

The Ten Commandments serve a similar purpose in the Christian’s life. The Ten Commandments—and especially that all-encompassing First Commandment—serve as a kind of spiritual GPS as we travel along life’s way. Whether you give much careful thought to the Ten Commandments or not, they provide a center of gravity—a solid point of reference—for us. With one simple sentence—You shall have no other gods—God simultaneously shows us both the way we should be going and just how far we have strayed from that way.

Our text this morning—the chapter in which the Ten Commandments are first recorded—is Exodus 20. To me, that’s always a little bit surprising. Why did it take so long to get these timeless truths inscribed on two tablets? We are seventy chapters into the Old Testament.

We are at least seven centuries past the call of Abraham, and who knows how many centuries past that awful day when our first parents fell into sin and ruined everything. Why did the Lord wait so long to lay out the rules? Two simple Power Point slides could have sufficed. If I’m God, I’m setting Adam and Eve down in Genesis chapter four and giving them ten bullet points to take to heart. But the Lord waits. I wonder why?

Well, as many of you already know, the Ten Commandments are just a written expression of what we call the “Natural Law.” It’s called the “natural” law because God writes it upon the heart of every human being. So, long before the Lord took the time to give Moses those two tablets, that content was actually already inscribed on every human heart. Every human being has a conscience—an inborn sense of right and wrong. Long before you ever learned there was such a thing as the Fifth Commandment, you knew that murder was wrong. You knew that parents should be honored—that stealing and lying and adultery were wrong. In a sense, God only waited until Exodus chapter twenty to formalize what was already naturally known.

This means that there really aren’t too many surprises when it comes to the Commandments. What is a surprise is that the Bible nowhere calls them the “Ten Commandments,” and that not everybody numbers them exactly the same way. There may be a lot of differences between Lutherans and Roman Catholics and Jews; but we’re all on the same team when it comes to numbering the commandments. We see the command against carved images as falling under the First Commandment, leaving two commandments concerning coveting at the end. The Eastern Orthodox and other Protestants number things differently.

But ultimately the numbering doesn’t matter because, however you slice it and dice it, “God spoke all these words.” And all these words—all these commandments—still hold and still apply to us today. No statute of limitations. No expiration date. Jesus didn’t abolish the commandments. If anything, He sharpened them. He brought them to bear on human conduct at the very deepest level. Avoiding adultery, for instance, is now much more than just avoiding sexual intercourse with the wrong people; for Jesus tells us that even our private thoughts must be sexually pure and decent. Likewise, avoiding murder is much more than just refraining from plunging my knife into my neighbor’s back; for Jesus tells us that even hateful thoughts break the Fifth Commandment.

Time doesn’t allow us to explore all Ten Commandments in one sermon—you’ll be thankful to know. Such a sermon would probably leave you feeling more than a little depressed—more than a little inadequate. For your commandment-keeping has been a colossal failure. Your performance has been pathetic. You have not measured up to God’s standards of holiness, and you never will.

But for a bit of good news, consider again why God waited as long as He did to formalize His commandments on tablets of stone. In many ways, God’s timing tells the whole story concerning His commandments. There’s one simple sentence we dare not overlook this morning. For the Decalogue does not begin with the words “You shall” or “You shall not.” No, it begins with the words “I am—I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

What took the Lord so long to scribble out those commandments? What held Him up? He first of all had to baptize a people for Himself in the waters of the Red Sea. He first of all had to save and deliver His people from slavery and death—without any merit or worthiness in them. Because only then—only after they saw Pharaoh’s horses and chariots washed away forever under the waves of the Red Sea—only then could they know that this God was their God. Only then could they believe Him and trust Him. Only then could they see that the relationship between them was ultimately governed by grace and mercy and love. The commandments didn’t come first. First, God acted. God saved. God delivered.

Only then could the Israelites know that they were loved by this God, Yahweh. Only then could they understand that the words which followed—the Ten Commandments—were not just rules for the sake of rules—or rules by which to earn God’s acceptance. They already had God’s acceptance. No, these commandments were given in love. It’s the very same reason God has given you these Ten Commandments: Because He loves you. He is your God. You can believe Him and trust Him. He has washed you—not with Red Sea waters—but washed you in the tide that flows from the pierced side of His beloved Son, Jesus the Christ.

Israel knew her God because of what happened at the Red Sea; but you know your God because of what happened at Calvary. How do we know that God is for us and not against us? How do we know that His rule is one of grace and mercy and love? We see it at Calvary. There He makes it clear that He is your God, who has rescued and delivered you from sin and death.

We’ve made a royal mess of God’s commandments; so God has sent His royal Son into the midst of our mess. He is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. He is like us in every way—yet without sin. And although His commandment-keeping was perfect, yet He takes your sin and He answers for it. He takes your death and overcomes it. All this He did for you, so that you might know Him by faith as your God—the God who forgives you, the God who makes Himself your brother, and who gives your life eternal meaning and significance.

He is God; we are not. You shall have no other gods. He is number one. What He gives and says goes. This can be rough. We’re often reluctant to let Him have the final say. We all have our personal idols that we like to bring into the conversation—to get a broader perspective on things. But be careful with that. God is in the idol-destroying business. And when He’s through with you, He may just leave you with nothing—with nobody at all to rely on—but Him alone. That’s the sort of love He shows to all of us from time to time. And this is good. For when He cleanses us of our other gods—when He cleanses us of all our attempts to play God and to tell God how to behave properly—well then, what we are left with is the true God. He’s the God in the manger and the God on the cross—a God you can rely on and love—a God from whose nail-scarred hands we are given life that lasts forever.

Week after week the people of God gather right here. I’m sure you probably didn’t need Google Maps to find your way here. But for decades this place has been a solid reference point for God’s people—a place where we get our bearings—where we get reoriented to the Savior at the center of our universe. In the Divine Service we take our place in God’s throne room—with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. We remember the relationship we have with God—the one He forged through water and the word: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That, my friends, is a solid point of reference—a very good place to be. Here in God’s presence, we get things sorted out. We see clearly where we’ve been and where we’re going. We confess and get rid of everything that has gotten in the way—every idol, every false god, every sin. We confess it all and ask forgiveness. And that forgiveness is given in the name of Jesus. Here we drink deeply from His Word. We are fed from His altar. We respond with prayers and praises. And then we go back outside to the callings He has given us.

But as we take our leave from here, we have our bearings. By God’s grace, we know where we’re going. We know that one day we shall emerge from this dark land of shadows into the bright light of God’s presence. Google Maps can’t get you there; but that’s okay. You know the way. Just follow Jesus.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.