Sermon for Sexagesima Sunday: February 20, 2022 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝
The Church calendar designed three Sundays to follow the Transfiguration of Our Lord with themes that get us prepared for Lent, which this year comes up with Ash Wednesday on March 2. They are Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima. Those names are quite a mouthful, but if you can follow these numbers in their Latin forms, you see there’s a countdown: Seven, Six, Five. Indeed there is a countdown to the two full weeks that we’ve been given to examine the Passion of our Lord. Before we get to Jesus’ passion, His love mixed with pain, and in order fully to appreciate what those memorable events in the Gospel records do for us sinners, we need preparation. To be sure, Lent itself is a preparation for Easter, forty days’ worth, but Lent at times needs its own preparation, so it doesn’t get lost on our minds and hearts. We can’t afford to waste the opportunity we’ve been given!
Today, on Sexagesima Sunday, before we jump into Lent, we need to be absolutely rock-solid convinced that the Word of God is a doer. It is much, much more than just instructions for us to follow. The Word of God is a mighty, active doer, a creator, and even a preserver. If the Word of God were only instructions, then there would be no need to believe in it and put your whole trust in the Word of God. You would just follow the instructions, the seed would be sown in your heart, and the plant would grow—all would be well. And yet, we know that life as a Christian can get more complicated than that, so we need the Word of God to do for us and within us the mighty work that God has given His Word to do.
First, the Word of God is a seed. Even though it looks tiny and insignificant, a seed is a miracle of life. You can have a clump of cells smaller than a poppy seed, but that is still a fully human baby girl that has started to grow in her mother’s womb. The Seed of the Word of God comes to someone who is born a sinner, dead, cold, lifeless in the spiritual sense, and in that barren environment brings to life a forgiven, redeemed, holy believer. This miracle is called faith, and it can only be created by the Word of God.
It was our heavenly Father’s great pleasure to call you out of the spiritual darkness called sin and death and bring you to new life. That was what the Word of God as a seed did in your heart. When you were baptized, and remember baptism is the same powerful Word of God joined together with water, when you were baptized not only were your sins and just punishments removed, but you were also made a child of God, a receiver of many precious gifts, forgiveness and eternal life being at the top of the list. This forgiveness was declared upon you in a particular form of the Word of God that is called absolution, and it was paid for by the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Your promise of resurrection of the body and life everlasting was guaranteed when Jesus rose from the dead. This forgiveness and life is not given to you just once, but constantly, week after week, as you come to the Divine Service for the Word of God in scripture and sermon and as you eat and drink the Lord’s Body and Blood in Holy Communion. Our Lord constantly plants the seed of His Word in your heart and He intends for it to grow and produce fruits of good works that give Him glory and help the neighbors that God has given into your life.
Secondly, the Word of God not only plants faith in Christ within your heart, but that same Word waters, maintains and grows that faith for the rest of your life unto the life everlasting. Think about that story Jesus told about the sower casting seed over all kinds of soil. He explained the parable immediately afterward, saying these different soils are different people who have differing responses to the same Word. But I would challenge you today to think of those different soils as they occur within your soul. Sure, you may be hearing and meditating on God’s Word now and it produces great fruit in your heart. Your neighbor, your child, your loved one is benefiting from those good works that God has used you as His instrument to perform.
However, there are also times in your life when your soil is of a different quality. Sometimes we become callused to the Word of the Lord; too familiar this great gift and so our fear, love and trust in our heavenly Father doesn’t take deep root. Other times the cares of this passing world distract us from the Word. We get worried and concerned about our world’s political leaders; we get caught up in who said what on this social media platform or that 24 hour news station and who wants to do yet another crazy, yet very predictable act of robbing our freedoms. Satan is constantly active all around us, threatening to choke out the seedling of our faith like a nasty thorny weed that appears unwelcome in the garden. Our nightmarish pandemic has surely tested our mettle in not a few areas of life, but have you taken the opportunity it has provided for you to grow in the Word of God, or has that growth been hindered by the lack of what you thought you needed in the so-called normal pattern of life that we used to enjoy? Put it simply, have you grown in your trust in Jesus Christ your Savior?
What can you do when your soil is not as productive as it should be? What is the way that will improve your relationship with your heavenly Father and bring you closer to Him? The answer is the Word of God. And it’s not like those billboards that say, Are you scared? Jesus can help. Of course He can help, but how exactly does He help? What really helps is repentance. We’ll hear a lot about that during Lent. What do I mean by repentance? For that you can turn to the catechism: Consider your place in life according to the Ten Commandments. Have you been self-serving, rude, quarrelsome with others? Have you failed to fear, love and trust in God above all things? The sharp, two-edged sword of the Word cuts deeply into you, revealing the sins that you have done, even down to the very thoughts of your heart. Without the powerful doer that is the Word of the Lord, you would be powerless to change your heart and be the fruitful, productive soil that would cause God’s good seed to grow. For Lent to do its work that it needs to do, you need to have full faith and confidence in the Word.
And when you realize that God’s Word not only plants your faith in you but also nourishes it when times in your life are not going as well, then you understand the true power of that Word. Not only are you informed about Jesus and the sacrifice He made for you on the cross, but you also are taken up into His resurrection from the dead, forgiven of all your sins, consoled in your mourning heart, strengthened and preserved in the one true faith unto life everlasting. The Word of God does it all for you, beginning and sustaining your life-saving trust in Christ for eternal life. You were dead, but through His Word Jesus called you back to life, breathing His blood-bought forgiveness into you, and then you breathe out the same Jesus-filled forgiveness to your family members and neighbors who have sinned against you. This brings great pleasure to your Creator, for this is exactly how He made you to be and to act in accord with His Will.
The Word of God flows from God to us and back to Him again, as Isaiah sang. It’s just like rain coming down from heaven, watering the earth, flowing together into whatever body of water our Lord has designed to collect that rain as a sort of congregation, if you will, be it a small puddle like our church is or a vast and wide ocean. Then that water of God’s Word is spent in good works and returns to the Lord who gave it in order to complete the cycle that will not be halted until the end of time itself. If anyone can appreciate the precious resource that is rain for our land, it would be we who live in a land often ravaged by drought. Let us also appreciate just as much, yes, even more, the precious Word of God that He allows to rain down upon us, granting us the seed of faith, as well as the nourishment of that faith that leads to the good works of love that we owe to one another.
Next week, after one more helpful preparation called Quinquagesima Sunday, we will begin the season of Lent on Ash Wednesday, which is not only a six-week preparation for Easter, but also commence a deliberate exercise of our hearts and bodies in repentance. If our observance of Lent only consists in making promises to modify our diets, cut out meat or sweets or renew whatever New Year’s Resolutions that we broke in the first week of January, then the whole point would be lost. What would truly make Lent a useful practice of repentance for you is, in addition to those outward disciplines and personal training, to focus your attention on the Word of God. Recall its great power to reveal your sins, but also the even greater power to wash those sins away in the flood of forgiveness that streams to you from the pierced side of your Savior Jesus Christ. He has planted His Word in you. He will even use His Word to cultivate that faith He has created in you. He will also bring your life to its completion, His good work that you are in His sight, on the coming Day when the final harvest will be gathered in and the eternal life we’ve been promised is realized in full. May the Word of God be for you from this day forward not only a talker, but a doer. His Holy Spirit has made it so.
In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Readings:
Is. 55:10–13 My Word…shall not return to Me void
Psalm 84 Even the sparrow has found a home
Heb. 4:9–13 let us be diligent to enter that rest … Word of God…sharper than any two-edged sword
Luke 8:4–15 A sower went out to sow