Second Sunday in Lent – Reminiscere
Feb. 25^th, Year of Our + Lord 2024
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, SD
Called to Struggle and Fight for Peace and Reconciliation
Genesis 32, Romans 5 and Matthew 15

Audio of the Sermon available HERE

The same night [Jacob] arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³ He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. ²⁴ And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. 

    Faith, hope and love remain, and the greatest of these is love.   God’s goal for us Christians is to forever enjoy the fullness of His peace, the peace which passes all understanding.  And yet, there’s a lot of fighting in the Bible.  What’s that all about? 

    Last week, we heard about young David conquering Goliath with a slingshot, finishing off the enemy with the giant’s own sword.  The second sin recorded in the Bible is Cain killing his brother Abel.  Jacob, the weakling son of Isaac and brother of Esau, used deception and trickery both to steal his brother’s birth right, and secure the final blessing of their father.  Now Jacob has a strange, night-long wrestling match with a man.  This man turns out to be God Himself, making a mysterious appearance on earth.  In our Gospel the Canaanite woman duels verbally, first with the not-very-manly disciples, who whine to Jesus to “make her go away, because she’s pestering us.”  She goes on to struggle with the Savior Himself, fighting to win a miracle for her daughter, who was losing her battle with a demon.  What are we to make of all this? 

    Certainly there is a lot of violence in our world today.  Christian wisdom includes interpreting the world around us using the truth of Scripture.  With God’s Word, we might better understand our current culture’s schizophrenia regarding fighting.  There might even be a connection between our fallen human nature and our predilection to violence. 

   How we as Christians should understand and respond to the culture’s perspective on violence isn’t always clear.  On the one hand, “polite” society pretends to disdain violence and fighting: little boys are restrained from being little boys, and manly virtues like strength and bravery are driven from our midst.  But then “mostly peaceful” protests burn and destroy whole neighborhoods in some of our cities, and some voices shout their approval. 

   Meanwhile, the men and women we pay to actually fight for us are ordered to spend time learning how to avoid “misgendering” their comrades in arms.  Which is important, because our tax dollars are paying for some misguided soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, “transitioners” who decide that God made them wrong.  That they need to become the opposite sex, as if surgery and drugs can make a man, or a woman. 

     Violence is not to be used to get ahead in life.  But increasingly, speaking true words is declared to be violence, a deception that has become a powerful weapon, deployed by those using victimhood as the means to get their way.  Meanwhile, we are becoming numb to the horror of truly evil people taking guns into “gun-free zones” and doing real violence, often destroying young innocents.  Not to mention the spiritual numbness that we inflict on women and men when we celebrate the lie that killing an unborn child is to exercise freedom and agency.  Indeed, you will be labeled as “violent” if you speak the truth about abortion and euthanasia, if you dare to say they are tragic and horrible violence, inflicted on people who can’t defend themselves.     

     We should be concerned about violence.  We should also be distressed by our inability to look away when images of violence are delivered to our smart phones.   “Entertainment” today is sooo violent. We have countless first-person shooter video games, and CGI movies that show us violence our eyes cannot distinguish from reality. 

    In sports we even celebrate flesh and blood women who fight and bleed in cages.  The most popular spectacle in America is the Super Bowl, a sanitized form of combat, yet with some fans as rabid as Romans in the Colosseum, cheering on their gladiators.  Today’s politics are largely reduced to shouting matches, full of violent rhetoric on all sides.  Lord willing, this will remain rhetoric, words about violence, and not actual violence. 

   So, maybe the Bible with all its tales of violence and struggle is God’s way of helping us understand our society.   Just trying to stay relevant to the way we really are.    Struggle and fighting and yes, violence are not going away.  But we can learn a better way to deal with them, by considering how the Holy Spirit treats them. 

     Why would God take on the form of a man for a night, and wrestle for hours with Jacob?  Well, to keep His promise.  The Lord had made Jacob a promise, the same promise He made to Abraham and Isaac.  Through Jacob, the Lord had committed to fulfilling His battle plan against the serpent.  Through the Seed of Jacob, through one of his descendents, the salvation of the world would be won.  Peace and reconciliation with God would be revealed, the free gift for all who believe.  So, to keep His Promise, God needs to keep Jacob in the fold.  He needs to create and sustain faith in the Promise, to keep the flame of faith alive in the heart of the tricky, grasping younger son of Isaac.  

     More than fourteen years earlier, Jacob fled the wrath of his brother.  Remember how Jacob dressed up in animal skins and stole the blessing blind old Isaac intended for his favorite son, Esau?  During his escape, the LORD had appeared to Jacob, descending a stairway from heaven, to assure Jacob that He would never abandon him.  The LORD then blessed Jacob, through trials, as he worked fourteen years to win Rachel, the girl of his dreams.  Jacob learns a good bit about conflict, as through his uncle’s trickery and his sister-wives’ rivalry, he ends up with four wives, and 11 bickering sons. 

    Now Jacob is headed home, back to the Promised Land, back to face Esau, and, he hopes, reconcile with him.  He travels in hope, but is also afraid that Esau will still be angry, and perhaps even kill him.  The Lord comes to Jacob in this moment of crisis, to reassure him that he is still God’s chosen, that the Lord is still looking out for him.  Also to teach Jacob that struggle is a normal part of life as God’s child, living in this fallen world.  For Jacob has always displayed a hope that God would make everything go smoothly for him, all the time.  Kind of like us.  But avoiding struggle and strife is impossible in a world shot through with sin, and for people still given to sin.  The Godly life this side of glory includes struggling and fighting.  So, the Lord needs to teach us how to struggle, and against what and whom we should be fighting. 

    So, a man comes to Jacob, a man who turns out to be God, the Son of God making a mysterious appearance in His Creation, centuries before entering it once and for all in Bethlehem.  This Man wrestles with Jacob all through the night.  He restrains His almighty power, like a father wrestling with his toddler children, teaching Jacob to hang on, to struggle and cling to God, come what may. 

   Adding words to His kinetic instruction, God even gives Jacob a new name, Israel, which means he has and is to continue to struggle and prevail, with God and man.  Keep up the fight of faith, no matter what.  Israel, both the man and the People of God, are to believe the LORD’s promises, cling to God, hate evil, and love their neighbors with the same love they have received from the Man of Promise, Jesus Christ.    

   Which is to say, we are to fight like the Canaanite mother.  Although a despised foreign woman, she has heard and understood and believed the promises of God in Jesus Christ, that He has come to be the Savior of all people.  Although a dirty Gentile, she is a true Israelite, a believer, unwilling to let go of God.  She clings like a dog to a bone, refusing to let go of the Man who is also God.  She endures rejection and insult, for the sake of her beloved daughter.  For the sake of the truth that God desires to rescue all people from the power of the devil and his demons. 

     Violence, whether evil and unrestrained, or justified violence by the earthly authorities set in place by God, in the end, all violence is the outworking of Satan’s hate, a consequence of the evil with which he has infected all of us.  Sometimes violence is even required of God’s people, to protect the family, to defeat those who would hurt Jesus’ little lambs.  But as much as it depends on us, we are to live in peace with all people.  Violence should be rare among us, a last resort used to protect our neighbor.  But struggle is to be our constant companion.  With words, prayers and self-sacrifice, we are always to struggle and fight for the weak and lowly.  Like the Canaanite woman. 

    Sometimes, the right thing to do is suffer.  Like the Canaanite mother, sometimes we must suffer the slings and arrows of the world, the insults and rejection of those who think they are better than us, to suffer in order that the truth of God be proclaimed. 

    Jesus, knowing the depth and strength of her faith, used her to teach His disciples the truth about God’s love and mission.  The greatest blessing we in South Dakota enjoy today is to still receive and rejoice in the Gospel of forgiveness and the presence of Christ.  Our blessing is an outworking of the Gospel Mission Truth that Jesus taught the Twelve 2,000 years ago, through the momentary struggle of this nameless Canaanite mother.  Praise be to God for her struggle.

   Struggle and fighting and violence are often required for true peace to be achieved.  Just consider the Man, Jesus.  For the sake of Gentiles being drawn to the God of Israel, Jesus made a whip out of cords and drove the money lenders and animal sellers out of the Temple.  Unloving Israelites had taken over the space God had assigned for the Nations, that they too could draw near to the LORD and pray.  Jesus violently re-established the Temple as a house of prayer for all Nations. 

     Jesus regularly enraged the Pharisees, Elders and Priests of His own people, in order to get them to falsely accuse Him before Pilate, so that He could die on a Roman Cross, for all of them, and for all of us.  By His glorious battle, on our behalf, Jesus has forever changed the state of the war.  As citizens of the world, the reality of evil and the call to protect the weak and defenseless mean that violence may still at times be required, even of God’s people.  But normally, daily, as the Church of the Resurrected Victor, we seek peace, even risking to turn the other cheek, to suffer for the sake of showing forth the truth of God’s peace.  For we know that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual powers of evil, still at work in this world.  We fight demons and even the Devil, without fear, because we know Jesus has already defeated them. 

   And so, as Church, we have but one sword, the Word of Peace and Reconciliation with God, Peace and Reconciliation that Christ died to win, for all the ungodly.  This Word of Christ is the weapon we the Church have been given wield, and it’s the only weapon we need.  By the Word, the Holy Spirit keeps us clinging to the Man Jesus and all His promises.  Through the Word, God grants us repentance for our sins, and also washes us clean again, by the blood of Jesus.  Through the Word, God sustains the world and restrains evil, for the sake of His Mission.  With the Word, the Holy Spirit convicts sinful hearts and reveals the Peace of Jesus, to all who hear. 

   This is the struggle we, the New Israel of Christ, His Body the Church, have been called to engage.  With prayer and praise and sacrificial service to our neighbors, we are used by God in His ongoing work, to give true peace to all people.  So, as we go forth and continue in the good fight of faith, we pray the Lord will help us to also rest in this peace, the peace of God which passes all understanding, and which keeps our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord, unto life everlasting, Amen.      

Our Champion - Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent - Invocabit

First Sunday in Lent - Invocabit
February 18^th, Year of Our + Lord 2024
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
Our Champion – 1 Samuel 17 and Matthew 4

Audio of Sermon available HERE 

   What can we say about David?  Goliath, the arrogant, blasphemous champion of the Philistines, the great enemy of God’s people Israel, is no more.  This terrible warrior, who struck fear into all the peoples’ hearts, lies dead.  Young David has taken the giant’s own sword, and cut off his head.  And so, a question: Does this victory make David the greatest hero, the greatest champion that ancient Israel ever had?

   He’s got some competition.  There’s Moses, the plague-bringer, the sea-separator, the Law-giver.  Or Joshua, who fought the battle of Jericho, and dozens more.  And there were some great judges, like doubt-filled Gideon, who nevertheless led Israel to great military victories.  And Samson, the strongman who killed enemies by the dozens with the jawbone of a donkey.  In the end, blinded and brought out to be mocked by his Philistine captors, Samson prefigured Christ, sacrificing himself to destroy them.  He used one last gift of strength to topple the stone columns of the place where they tortured him, bringing tons of stone crashing down on them all.  After David came Elijah and Elisha, prophets with an edge, who slew false prophets and pagan priests.  It’s quite a list of champions.  So, where does David rank?  Is he the GOAT, the Greatest of All Time, of Hebrew heroes? 

    Hard to say.  But, at the time of David’s victory over Goliath, pound for pound he had to be the greatest champion of Israel.  All these other heroes were mature men when they fought.   David was just a youth; did he even weigh 100 lbs?  

    David’s faith in YHWH, his trust in the LORD God of Israel, and the bravery which this faith created in him, made him an ideal warrior for the Almighty.  David’s heart dwelt in the LORD Most High, no evil would befall him.  The shepherd boy did not fear opposing Goliath, who was mocking Israel and denigrating the LORD.  Though armed with just a slingshot, he knew he would be victorious, because the LORD would fight for him.  David’s battle speech is epic:  David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.   ⁴⁶ This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, ⁴⁷ and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hand.”

    David believes he can defeat any external enemy, any foe who speaks ill of God, or opposes his people, Israel, because the LORD will fight on his side.  And he’s right.  David will go on from this battle to win many, many more.  David will defeat enemy after enemy.  Under his bold military leadership, Israel gains safety from her foes, is united under David’s reign, and becomes a great power. 

    But there was one enemy that David could not defeat.  The enemy within.  David performed marvelously against countless external enemies.  But within his heart there lie an enemy that was his master.  As when David saw Bathsheba, the beautiful wife of Uriah, one of his most loyal warriors.  To want to steal Uriah’s wife was wicked.  No matter, the lust of David’s heart led him to take her for himself.  When she became pregnant, instead of confessing, David sought to cover up his sin, more and more desperately.  Finally he involved his general Joab in a plot to abandon Uriah on the battlefield, murdering him through the weapons of the enemy. 

    Later, David’s pride led him to take a census of his warriors, to measure the greatness of his power, an arrogant project which led to God severely punishing all of Israel.  David’s heart tripped him up again and again.  His sinful weakness kept him from properly disciplining his children; as a result, hateful rivalries tore his family apart, and led to civil war in Israel. 

    When the enemy was out there, threatening from the outside, David was as great a champion as any.  But David could not defeat the enemy that was his own sinful heart.  To defeat the enemy within, a very different champion would be needed, and a very different battle would have to be fought. 

    David’s victory over Goliath is certainly a foreshadowing of Jesus’ victory over Satan.  Goliath represents Satan, who mocks God and God’s people, and is too strong for any man to face.  David, a youth, without armor, armed only with a sling and five stones, does not appear capable of the victory.  And yet David wins. 

    Jesus, the promised Son of David, is mild-mannered and gentle.  He doesn’t seem the type to defeat the Devil.  But in fact, beating the Devil was the easy part. 

    The Gospel for this first Sunday in Lent recounts that victory.  Adam and Eve in the Garden easily gave in to temptation.  They gave in to tempting but forbidden food, gave in to doubts about God’s promises and provision, gave in to the temptation to make themselves like God.  The New Adam, the New Man, Jesus of Nazareth, heads out into the wilderness to avenge this defeat.  After weakening Himself with a 40 day fast, Jesus quickly defeated Satan’s attack.  For this New Adam trusts in His Father completely.  Instead of doubting like the woman, Jesus uses God’s Word to reject temptations to sin with food, to test God’s protection, and to gain worldly power by worshiping someone other than God, namely the Devil.  Jesus, the Son of God now entered into human flesh, easily rejected and defeated Satan.  This was not that hard for Him.  Indeed, Jesus could have easily annihilated Satan when he first rebelled. 

    The much harder battle was saving David, and all the rest of us, from the enemy within.  Ever since we fell into sin and so became enslaved to Satan, destroying the Evil One would also have meant destroying us, destroying all men, women and children.  So long as our sin left us bound in Satan’s chains, defeating him would have also cast us into the outer darkness with the Evil One, to suffer there, forever. 

    This defeat God would not accept.  His whole objective was always to have us as His holy and beloved people, forever.  So, the real challenge of Jesus’ mission was overcoming our internal problem, our problem with sin, in order to set us free from the Devil’s power. 

    And so the confrontation with Satan in the wilderness was just the first skirmish in the war.  The hard part to come was submitting to evil, to give in to Satan and his human minions.  The hard part was volunteering to load up all our sin on His own back and carry it to the altar of the Cross.  There Jesus offered Himself as the atoning sacrifice, to redeem sinners, to buy back David and you and me and all the rest of humanity.  Jesus has freed us from the power of Satan, by destroying the power of our sin to accuse us.  Now that Jesus has paid the full price, in Him, sin and its threats are finished, once and for all, forever.    

     Jesus could face and win this immense battle only because He was more than just a man.  He was and is a man, a true human being, drawing his humanity from David, through his descendent, the Virgin Mary.  But Jesus is also the eternal Son of God.  Truly a man, but having no sin of His own, Jesus could both suffer and die for our sins.  Truly God, the eternal Son of the Father was great enough and strong enough to take into Himself all human sin, and bury it forever.  Jesus Christ, Son of Mary and Son of God, could and did accept the full price that God’s Justice, His perfect Righteousness, demands.  Once and for all.  One Savior, one sacrifice, one time, sufficient for all people, and all our sins.  So, Jesus is the true GOAT.  He is by far the greatest Hero of all time, the Champion of Champions, without equal.         

   Do you struggle with the enemy within?  Do you have a desire to flee from sin, but find yourself still falling?  Of course you do.  As do I.  Even St. Paul did.  Every human being, indeed every Christian in this world, still struggles with the sin of the heart, from which also flow outward, visible sins.  We cannot conquer our inner enemy on our own, anymore than David could.  And so we need our Hero, our Champion, to be with us, every day.  We need to be reminded of His great victory for us, on the Cross, every day.  We need to turn to Him, confessing our sins and asking His pardon, every day. 

   Many people, Christian and non-Christian, do a pretty decent job with outward sins.  We can usually avoid murder and violence and terrible crimes.  We can see the benefits of appearing to be a good person.  So most of us do pretty well maintaining this image, most of the time.  But we know how we are on the inside.  We know how we are when we think no one can observe us.  This is the harder problem, that plagues us all, the inner problem we cannot solve. 

    The blood of Jesus is the only medicine to heal this inward weakness, the stumbling block that is our sinful hearts.  The victory of our Champion is the only thing that can defeat the enemy that is within us all.   

   Since you need Him so much, your Champion does not leave you.  You may feel small and alone on the battlefield, a puny David facing the Giant Goliath of sin.  But you are not alone.  Christ who claimed you in Holy Baptism has given you His Spirit, the Spirit who prompts you to cry out Abba, Father, forgive me my sin, wash me clean.  And so you are clean, forgiven, and washed, a beloved child of the Father. 

   Do you want to do better, to sin less?  Would you like to avoid some of the terrible consequences our sins still inflict on us, and on our loved ones?  Then confess your sins daily and seek the forgiveness of the Lord; make this your daily habit.  For we daily sin much.  But, whenever we come to Him with contrite and repentant hearts, seeking forgiveness for the wrongs we have done, God renews our hearts.  By the blood-bought forgiveness of Jesus, God the Holy Spirit renews our hearts, and we begin again to pursue a Christ-like life.  Forgiven and restored to God’s family, we pursue holiness, not from compulsion or threat, but from joy, the joy of Christ’s holiness, poured out upon us.  This is the source and rhythm of true Christian living.    

    Satan has no true power over you.  Jesus has totally disarmed him.  He can only lie, whispering in your ear when you sin, whispering that God will not forgive you, God will not love you, you should run and hide.  But you have the answer for the Evil One:  Be gone, Satan, for Christ is my champion.  The Risen Savior has claimed me, and so your lies mean nothing to me.  I trust in the voice of the One who has won the battle for me, today, and forever and ever, Amen. 

Your Forever Valentine, Rising from the Ashes - A Sermon for Ash Wednesday

Your Forever Valentine, Rising from the Ashes
A Sermon for Ash Wednesday
February 14th, Year of Our + Lord 2024
Our Redeemer and Our Savior's Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD

                                               Audio of this sermon available HERE

   Two ancient, annual, and Christian observations collide this afternoon/evening.   One, Valentine’s Day, is ancient and still widely observed, although corrupted beyond recognition.  The other, Ash Wednesday, is ancient and largely neglected.  Indeed it is mocked and eclipsed in popular culture by the party that just precedes it.  This pre-Lent party goes by several names: Mardi Gras, Carnaval, or Fat Tuesday, parties that are at turns gluttonous, lewd and decadent.  What are we to make of all this, in this A+D 2024, when Valentines and Ash Wednesday coincide? 

     Well, as the mythical Phoenix rises from the ashes to reveal its new life, the true King of this Ash Wednesday, (and of every other day) will rise in our hearts and dispel our confusion and distress. By His Spirit He will point us to a brighter day, illuminated, ironically with an ashen cross, a symbol of hope for those wise unto salvation.  

   Which is older: St. Valentine’s Day, or Ash Wednesday?  We would say St. Valentine’s Day, which was declared a feast day by the Roman Church in 496 A+D.  Ash Wednesday as we observe it didn’t really get established until sometime in the 11^th century.  But, repenting in dust and ashes goes back much further, at least to Job.  And of course the Lord reminded Adam, as He drove him and his wife out of Eden, that he was dust, and to dust he would return.  You can barely get any older than that event, which is the negative touchstone, upon which, partially, our Ash Wednesday observance is built. 

    St. Valentine is most likely an amalgamation of three or four different heroes of the Early Church, all named Valentinus.  They were pastors or other servants of the Church who stood up to evil and paid for it with their lives.  Worthy of our consideration. But as we still do with our heroes today, the truth becomes too boring, or too spare, or too difficult to consider.  We want extra stories of amazing, brave and even miraculous deeds.  And so, many legends were appended to the memory of these Valentinuses. 

    Their faithful ministry and martyrs’ deaths, which led the Church to celebrate February 14^th as St Valentine’s Day in the first place, receded into history.  Slowly the romantic, shallow, and saccharine sweet traditions which make up our Valentine’s Day took over. 

    Jesus promised His disciples that they would do greater works than He did, after the Resurrection.  Instead of a day to see this promise fulfilled in the faithful and brave words and actions of Christ’s followers, Valentine’s Day all too often is a guilt or shame trap.  Many are guilted into spending too much in order to please their significant other.  Many others pass the day in quiet sadness, as they worry they are the only soul left in the world without a significant other. 

    We might be tempted to burn it all down, and forget St. Valentine forever.  But, since there’s money to be made selling flowers, candy, expensive dinners and whatever else on February 14^th, Valentine’s will not be discarded easily.  We might try, but likely Valentine’s Day would rise from the ashes, like the mythical bird, the Phoenix.  Trying to get rid of Valentine’s Day in our culture would be a fool’s errand.  And besides, kindergarten students exchanging Valentine’s cards with their friends is a sweet and relatively harmless tradition.  Some husbands and wives, and some future husbands and wives, do use the day well, as an opportunity to simply and truly celebrate the love they share. 

    Rather than burning Valentines Day down, what say we redeem it?  In this Year of Our + Lord 2024, when Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s coincide, let us accentuate our Resurrected One, who, like the Phoenix legend, went through a fire, and came out on the other side.  Indeed, and whether this was wise or not I’ll let the hearer consider, pious Christian writers throughout the centuries have tried to use the legend of the Phoenix as a way to introduce and proclaim the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus.  A beautiful and powerful being descends into flames and dies, only to rise again, rising from the ashes of defeat to reveal new life.  Certainly, there are similarities between Christ and the legend of the Phoenix. 

    Similarities, yes.  But even more differences.  For the Phoenix has never been seen.  The date and place of its supposed death and resurrection have always been hidden in the mists of time.  And the significance of the Phoenix is left to the interpretation of those who ponder its legend. 

    Not so our Christ.  In a specific, known place, at a specific point in known human history, a particular man, Jesus of Nazareth, died on a Roman cross, suffering the baptism by fire appointed for Him by His Father.  He did this to buy the whole world back from the damning accusation of Satan.  Five hundred eyewitnesses, led by the Apostles, boldly confessed the truth of Jesus, recorded the writings we cherish as the New Testament, and faced incredible trials and suffering with confidence and eternal joy, all because they had seen and believed.  And blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed, by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, the only way for sinners to come to Father. 

    The specific historicity of the Gospel narrative allows critics and scoffers to try to disprove the Christ event.  But they fail, and they always will fail.  Indeed, while we have only scant evidence to support the existence and deeds of the various men named Valentinus, the existence and impact and reality of Jesus are un-assailed by serious historians.  Unbelievers can and do still deny the miracle of His Resurrection.  But the evidence that Jesus lived, and taught, and was crucified outside Jerusalem around the year 30 A.+D., is beyond reasonable doubt. 

    And there’s more evidence to consider.  The growth of the Church the disciples of Jesus founded is indisputable, and incomparable.  From a few hundred backwater Jewish Christians to a movement that took over the Roman Empire in 400 years.  How did this happen?  Why were they so bold? 

   Because Jesus really did rise from the ashes.  On the Cross He suffered the worst that humanity had to inflict.  Even more, much more, He passed through the Hell of fire that human sin deserves, burying our guilt in His own body and paying our debt to God, once and for all.  Then, on the third day Christ rose again to reveal the love of God, poured out for all sinners.  The Phoenix pretends to rise from the dead to inspire misguided people to strive towards a better life.  Jesus rose to forgive and renew and claim dying sinners as His very own.  He rose to share His indestructible life, a free gift, for all who trust in Him.   

   Whoever the various Valentinuses were and whatever they did, they along with thousands upon thousands of other Christians went to their deaths confessing the Name of Jesus, their Risen Savior.  Brave Christians today continue to face persecution and death, rather than deny Christ Jesus. 

 

 On this Ash Wednesday, we begin again a six-week journey with Jesus, to Golgotha, that we might grow in our faith, and learn again to abhor our sin and love our Savior.  Knowing how God brings victory from defeat and life out of death, we step off on our journey marked with Ashen Crosses, knowing that He who passed through the fire for us is still with us.  He  will bring us through to the end, to enjoy His victory, come what may. 

A Happy, Ashy Valentine to you all, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.