Sermon for the Fifth Wednesday of Lent 2025

In the Name of the One God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            I bring you greetings from your sisters and brothers at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church here in Gastonia, and from the Southern Piedmont Mission District of the North American Lutheran Church. My name is Cody Carpenter; I’m a seminarian at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Director of Christian Education at Holy Trinity. It’s a joy to be here today as we wrap up our Lenten worship series, and as we prepare to enter once again into the Great and Holy Week, the most exhausting—yet glorious—week of the Church’s year. Pray for your clergy, musicians, altar guilds, decorators, and others who are preparing to help celebrate the week of weeks which ends with the Queen of Feasts, Easter. And maybe, along with your prayers, slip them a cup of good coffee; they’ll need it. But I digress.

            If you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’d like to ask a question. What are we doing, here? I don’t mean that in some deeply existential way, but in a very practical sense; what are we doing here, at 12:30pm on a Wednesday afternoon. What are we doing at an ecumenical Lenten luncheon and worship service? There are, I suspect, a variety of possible answers. The most obvious, I imagine, is “Well, we’ve been doing it for thirty odd years, now. It’s a tradition!” That’s nice. I like traditions. But “we’ve always done it” doesn’t really answer the question. So, ponder. Why are we here? Are we here to see friends? Are we here to get a nice lunch—really, $8 for a lunch like this is the best deal in town! Are we here to make sure the other churches don’t outdo our church on the food, or the quality of decorations? Are we here to one-up our brothers and sisters in Christ? Perish the thought! If that’s the case, we may as well all go home and call the whole thing off.

            Folks, we are here for one reason: because we have been called into the life of almighty God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have been called into the community of His Church, whether the sign out front says Baptist, Reformed, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, AME Zion, and yes, even Lutheran. We have been made God’s people through our Baptism, called, made holy, and gathered by the Holy Spirit in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. We have been brought out of darkness and into the splendor of the Light of Christ Jesus, made heirs with Him of the Kingdom of God. And as God’s people, it is fitting—necessary!—for us to gather with our fellow Kingdom-heirs, for both fellowship and worship.

            So, dear folks, make no mistake: we aren’t here to outdo other churches. We aren’t here to show off our church. We aren’t here just for a nice lunch. We aren’t here for decorations. We are not here to boast in our buildings or our China cabinets or our kitchens. We are here because we are God’s people, and today we gather around His Word and in fellowship with one another. So, with that in mind, I invite you to attend to that Word. Many of us, I suspect, heard a portion of our reading from Philippians on Sunday. St. Paul is addressing several issues present in the Philippian church, but especially what we might call the “hyper religious goodie two shoe” folks who thought they had some reason to boast in their accomplishments or their standing. Ray Stevens—for those of you who know that name—would call them “Sister Bertha Better-than-you.” They had placed their confidence and hope—not in Christ Jesus—but in the flesh. In other words, they trusted in their own works rather than the completed work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

            St. Paul had more reason than most to be confident in the flesh. He was, after all, circumcised on the 8th day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the Law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the Church; as to righteousness under the Law, blameless. But none of that mattered. St. Paul had an impressive pedigree. He could boast a pure bloodline, and the strictest observation of the Jewish faith. He was the poster child for faithfulness. But he counted his pedigree and his accolades as rubbish—nothing!—compared to the worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord. St. Paul could no longer boast of his own works and status; his only boast became Jesus Christ, crucified, dead, and risen.

            And so it is with us, whichever corner of the Church that we occupy. Whether our churches have grand facilities filled to the brim with people every Sunday, or whether we can barely keep the lights on. Whether we’ve been lifelong Christians who have never strayed from the straight n’ narrow path, or whether we—like the Prodigal Son—have wandered as far away from our Father as we could possibly get. Whether we’re Lutheran or Baptist or Pentecostal or Reformed, whether we’re Biblical scholars or can barely name the four Gospels. Whether we drove here in a Lexus or a 1999 Accord. Our only boast is Jesus Christ, crucified, dead, and risen.

As we approach the Great and Holy Week, as we approach the joy of Easter, I invite you to enter into this week of weeks clinging, not to your own works, but to the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, for you.Cling to the life of freedom from sin, death, and the devil, which is yours in Christ. Cling to the promises He made to you, that you are His, and He is yours.