Lent 3A

3rd Sunday in Lent, Year A

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

Brothers and sisters in Christ: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We are now in the third week of our Lenten journey. How’s your Lenten discipline going? Speaking for myself, the adjustment to “doing Sabbath” properly is a difficult adjustment. I’m still working on it, and I’m thankful that my family is helping me with the journey. I don’t know if I’ll get it “right” by Palm Sunday, but I’m certainly going to keep trying.

And I think that’s part of the lesson I have to learn here. It’s the proverbial “it’s a journey, not a destination” right? I may never arrive at a place where I’m always keeping the Sabbath perfectly the way God wants me to, but the more I try, the more I learn, and… well… if you can bear another cliche: practice makes perfect. I’ll keep getting better at it, and I’ll keep getting closer to what God is hoping I’ll get to…and that means closer to what God wants for me.

That’s sort of parallel to what St. Paul is describing in our epistle lesson today. Prior to this part of the letter, he explained that all of us are sinners, and could not possibly work our way to righteousness, but that Christ made us righteous (“justified” us) as a gift, and we receive that gift through faith… which is where we pick up with today’s reading.

Faith gives us access to the gift of God’s grace, and in this faith we stand. As if that gift of God’s grace and peace wasn’t enough, there’s more. “Not only that, but...” we rejoice in our sufferings. This phrase perplexed me. How can Paul be rejoicing in his sufferings? Well, after studying this for a bit, I found some explanation that was helpful. First, let’s back up to the previous verse: “…we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” THAT is what Paul is rejoicing in. As we will learn in Romans 8:18 “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Paul knows that the fullness of God’s glory will be made known to us once all that is broken is made right - at the “End of the Age” as the Gospels call it. Judgment Day. We know how the story ends, and God’s glory is revealed. “In the entire work of salvation God’s glory, this radiant attribute of God, reveals itself. The fulness of this glory will be revealed in the consummation at the end of the world and will be final, all-glorious forever.” [R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Columbus, Ohio: Lutheran Book Concern, 1936), 336.] This is why we have hope, and it’s what we hope for.

But we’re not there yet, and we don’t know how long it will be until that happens. So while we wait, life happens. And as we all know far too well, there will be some “suffering” of some kind. The word here can also mean “tribulation” or “affliction”. Paul said in Romans 2:9 “There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek,” and since we have all “done evil” (a.k.a. “sinned”), then we will all have tribulation and distress, or suffering. But God has different ways of working through suffering: “…[while] tribulation is nothing but penalty for the wicked, it is used by God as a means for drawing the believers nearer to himself.” [Lenski, 337]. This is not to say that God *causes* our suffering! No, what this all means is that when we suffer, God goes to work in that situation. So as we who believe in Him go through this suffering / tribulation / affliction, God is working to draw us nearer to Him. When we draw near to Him, that is certainly cause to rejoice, right?

But what Paul is saying here is not that we rejoice “because of” the suffering. Remember the previous verse: we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Because of that hope, even in suffering we have reason to rejoice. Perhaps a better wording would be “we rejoice in the midst of our suffering...” We rejoice in spite of our suffering. We rejoice even though we are suffering. We know how it ends: God’s glory revealed to us.

So if we rejoice even though we are suffering, that makes the suffering more bearable. Which means we can get through it. So as we “suffer” through it, we build up “endurance” or “perseverance”. Now this is really quite an interesting word in Greek. Dr. Lenski says this "is not merely ‘endurance’ or 'patience’ but the brave patience which we call ‘perseverance,’ which ‘remains under’ the load of affliction without faltering or complaint and goes right on no matter what the load may become… The connotation is brave, manly courage without discouragement or weakening.” [Lenski, 337].

Now, I hope that word “manly” didn’t turn you off. I’m not saying (and I don’t think Lenski is either) that women can’t have this kind of endurance…of course they can. But this kind of endurance is definitely part of what it means to be the kind of man that God intended men to be. When Hollywood decided to go on a rant about something they called “toxic masculinity” in an effort to make men and women totally and completely equal and without any difference, the only way to do that was to blur the lines between male and female. Women had to be aggressive and independent, men needed to get in touch with their feelings and become timid and submissive. How’s that working out for us?

Both of sides of this is based in a lie, trying to force both women and men into roles they were not designed to play. God’s design for us has purpose and it works. When we fight against it… when we try to alter that design artificially… problems ensue. If in doubt, just turn on the television or your favorite online media source and watch for a few minutes. It will become glaringly evident very quickly.

In God’s design, men led their households in the faith. This was the pattern for thousands and thousands of generations. Statistics offer some support for the goodness of God’s design. Looking at families who come to faith in Christ, 3.5% of them come when the mother and father come to faith together; 17% of families follow when the mother comes to faith first; 93% of families follow when the father comes to faith first. This design is important. Rejecting it will not lead us on a Godly path.

Brave and patient endurance that does not falter or complain. We don’t see much of that today… at least not on the national stage. Which is both disappointing and troubling, if we look at what this kind of endurance produces, according to Paul in verse 4: “…and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,…” As we develop endurance, this will eventually become “character”. The meaning here is also quite interesting. Think of this as “tested in battle and found worthy”. The suffering certainly contributes to that “testing” doesn’t it? And if you’ve endured, you’ve built character - you’ve been tested and found worthy. Character.

Developing such a character comes over time. With the explanation so far, I would hope that would be obvious. The important thing to remember here is that we’re not talking about huge, life-changing tragedies or crises. Honestly, most of us will really only have that sort of experience 4 or 5 times in our whole lives, spread out over decades. That’s not character-building. President Woodrow Wilson once said “Character is a by-product; it is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.”

So as we practice our Christian faith day-to-day, we find through our faith that joy which brings us to be able to persevere through the tribulations of life - a reason to rejoice that outshines the darkness of any suffering we might face. Doing this in our daily lives builds our endurance…our brave and patient endurance that doesn’t fail us when the burden gets even heavier. Like a muscle, the more we exercise it, the stronger it gets, and it becomes more and more who we are: our character. Day by day we build it and we grow in the way God wants us to. Remember how we said that God works in the midst of suffering for those who believe? He uses it to draw us closer to Him.

The world today doesn’t seem to have any endurance or perseverance for suffering at all. Do we know how to endure any more? Frankly, I’m not surprised - how could you endure without that hope that God gives us? If you don’t have that hope to focus on, you’d be forced to focus on the suffering. I can’t imagine you’d be able to endure much if all you could focus on was the suffering and misery and how bad things were. But we’re not “of the world”… and since we believe in God, we *do* have hope, which is the “personal assurance concerning the future and the fulfillment of God’s promises, ‘the great courage that remains firm in all affliction’. [It is] the prospect of a condition that satisfies all needs, fills all wants, frees from all of life’s hindrances.” [Lenski, 338.] *THAT* is our hope.

“And this hope does not put to shame” Paul says. “or, as we may also translate, “does not disgrace” by remaining unfulfilled when the hour for fulfillment arrives. All other hopes put to shame; they do not rest on realities.” [Lenski, 339.] In other words, this hope is real. All other hopes, or other things in which we put our hope are false hopes. They will never be fulfilled. They will “be put to shame”. They will end in despair. Hope in God will not.

Paul tells us the reason we are so sure that our hope will not disappoint us is “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” The Holy Spirit gives us our faith, which is how we are able to receive all of this: grace, mercy, peace, hope, joy… God’s love is not sprinkled, by the way. It is *poured*!

Shortly, we’ll be sharing the Lord’s Body given for us and His Blood POURED out for us. When we partake of this Holy Meal, let’s all reflect on all that this meal means: it is God’s love FOR US. It is Christ’s sacrifice FOR US. It is the reminder of what God did to ensure we could always enjoy His Promise to us. And most importantly, it is God’s Son present in these elements: His body broken and given FOR US and His blood shed FOR US to protect us from God’s wrath and to bring us closer to Him.

When we eat this meal, we are reminded of exactly what Paul says in verse 6: “For while we were still weak (that is, while we were without spiritual life or strength, utterly lost and helpless), at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” Since the ungodly are those who are hostile to God, those who don’t obey His laws (and Paul has already proven that includes us all), then Christ died for all of us. Each and every one of us. And Christ didn’t just die for the righteous or the good (which none of us actually are anyway…) - He died for ALL. In other words, Christ made this ultimate sacrifice WHILE WE WERE STILL SINNERS. The “right” time. When we all needed a Savior. When we were lost and helpless. This is what Christ has done for us.

We have much to rejoice about…particularly that God’s Son would do this for us when we least deserved it. So let us accept this great gift, that we may have our hope, endure our suffering, build our character, and grow closer to Him.

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