[Working out the bugs with the livestream, so no video or audio this week. The text of the sermon is below.]

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

Beforehand, God created Adam and Eve in the Image of Jesus to walk around in good works. And they did. They weren’t very spectacular; they didn’t give millions to charity or do some heroic or impressive action. They were put into the garden to keep it, to have dominion over God’s creation, and to be fruitful and multiply. Those are the good works in which they were created to walk around. And they did. And there was no shame, no guilt, no burden of exhaustion and sin. They simply walked around in the good works of God’s creation, until they died.

They died on the day when they ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When they tried to cross the boundary between the creatures they were and the gods they wanted to be. Then they died, and the carved out a new course in this world, away from their Creator and from His good creation. Then they followed, instead, the prince of the power of the air, who was now at work in them. They followed a course marked out by their own passions, by the desires of their now rebellious minds and hearts. And instead of the children of God, they become children of wrath, sons of disobedience.

And we haven’t done any better since. We all were among those in whom the devil was at work. We all followed the course Adam and Eve carved out in this world, away from God, from death to wrath. We were the walking dead, walking around in trespasses and sins. It’s the only thing that dead creatures can walk around in. They will never do otherwise. In the course of this world, even the best works are only so much sin and death and evil. That is the only thing that these hearts can produce on their own. And they may seek to worship, but they will always, always worship themselves and their own works.

Since those who were made in the Image of God decided to discard it for the image of Adam, the Son of God Himself took on their image, the flesh and form of a servant, of a man. And He walked in the course of this world, under the law, in a world subject to the prince of the power of the air. He walked not according to His own desires and passions, but according to the Mind of God, which is, even for us, still love and mercy. This is the love of God, that He sent the Son into this world, so that you would believe in Him. And believing in Him, you would not simply continue on from death to wrath, but have eternal life.

For us, who were under a curse, He became the curse. He became sin, so that He might make us the righteousness of God. That’s what the cross is. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up. And what was that serpent but the curse of Israel’s rebellion, sin, and death? The very sign of what was killing them was lifted up in front of them, and any who believed the word of God through Moses would look at it and be healed and saved. So Jesus on the cross is the sign of our sin, which ends nowhere but in death. The crucified one is both the sign of our sin and death, and He is the sign of the love of God. And not just a sign, but the love of God itself. So it is not that we believe, like Israel, in the word that directs us to the sign. We believe in Him, who is both the Word and the Sign.

When this kindness and love of God appeared, He saved us, not because of works we had done in righteousness. After all, dead people do no good works and have no righteousness. Instead, He saved us by the washing of rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit, which He poured out on us richly in Jesus Christ. In your baptism, He raised you from the dead, made you alive with Christ, the risen one, and made you His own living child, having the hope of eternal life. This is as pure as grace gets. This is as undeserved as mercy gets. Raising the dead is not something the dead do to themselves. Like calling Lazarus out of the tomb; like raising the daughter of Jairus; like raising the son of the widow at Nain, Jesus simply reached out and touched you and made you alive by His divine and resurrection life. By grace, you have been saved by faith. Pure gift.

You may have noticed that when God saved you in baptism by the death and resurrection of Jesus, He didn’t immediately translate you to heaven, to paradise, to the new creation. Instead, He put you alive back into a creation of the walking dead. He put you into the creation as He put Adam and Eve, remade you in the Image of the second Adam, and to do the same thing that He put Adam and Eve in the garden to do. The living and new creations of God in Christ walk around in good works as surely as the dead walk around in trespasses and sins. And yours are no more spectacular than Adam’s or Eve’s. A man and a woman get married and have children. They love and forgive each other. A mother and a father care for their children, and the children honor their parents. They love those around them according to their vocations, in this creation where God has put them. You love those whom God has given you, put right in front of you. It’s as simple and as difficult as honoring parents, living chaste lives as married or single, caring for one another in our physical bodies and lives, helping people keep their possessions and reputations. And there is, of course, no reason for boasting, not before God, not before the sons of disobedience, not before other Christians. None of this is from you yourself. It is God who wills and works in you for what is good.

And because the old, dead sinner still clings to us in this creation, we are certainly no less in need of God’s life than Adam and Eve were. They hadn’t even sinned, but everything they were and had was from their Creator. Everything we are and have is from God in Jesus Christ. So when you get tired, when you get weary, when you sin against those whom you are to love, when you do the old evil works of the flesh instead of the new good works of the Spirit, then the love of God remains. The love of God in the body of the crucified and resurrected Lord is eternal. So here we are, and He fixes our eyes, as always, on Jesus, who is both the author and the finisher of our faith. Here is the love of God in body of this man, given to us to eat and drink here at His altar. As you walk around in the good works God has given you to do, fix your eyes on Jesus, and He will both sustain you now, and finish what He started, until there is only the perfect love of God and the perfect love for one another.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen

— Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 3/8/24