- Psalmody: Psalm 25:6, 2b, 22; 1–2a; Psalm 25:17–18; Matthew 15:26–28a; Psalm 119:47–48a; Psalm 5:1b–2
- Lection: Genesis 32:22–30; 1 Thessalonians 4:1–7; Matthew 15:21–28
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We call this second Sunday in Lent Reminiscere, because we pray Remember, O LORD, Thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses; For they have been ever of old. He must, for our sake, He must, for Christ’s sake, remember His tender mercies for we are always in great need of them. We need Him to remember them, for we go about this life of faith remembering things ourselves. We remember how we have sinned, how we like sheep have gone astray in our hearts, in our minds, in our very own bodies. In order to remember God’s mercies, in order to call upon Him to remember them, we must remember for ourselves why we are desperate for His tender mercies. It is a beautiful gift in the Christian life; that we remember how we have failed Him, yet call upon Him and trust in Him that, by His grace, tender mercies are rained down upon us, and not wrath. It is a basic teaching of the Gospel: that we are sinners and that the Lord is a merciful Forgiver of sins. It is basic. It is sweet and relieving. It is fundamental. It is received in child-like faith, yet we are not to remain there, content in the flesh to survive upon spiritual milk. We are to struggle with the flesh, just as Jacob struggled and prevailed. We are to struggle and grow as St. Paul says, “We urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God; for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus.” By this we see that we must never rest in the pursuit of holiness after having received the Gospel, including in matters of the body, for our souls are so closely intimate with and affected by how we carry out life in this flesh. We must never rest in, be content with, or carry on in wayward thoughts, words, and deeds simply so that fundamental grace may abound. By Christ’s victory over the darkness of sin and death, we have been called into His light that we remain not shackled and bound to the old ways of the sinful flesh, but have been loosed, set free, and are alive and well abounding more and more in the free Spirit of God.
For this is the will of God, your sanctification. Justification is the declaration before God Almighty that you have been redeemed and made righteous all on account of Christ. Sanctification is the ongoing process throughout the entirety of every Christian’s life of putting to death the old Adam in us and rising to live in Christ in His righteousness and purity that have been bestowed upon us in our baptism. Let us not remain in our cradles but walk as children of the Light abstaining from sexual immorality. Indeed, sexual sins grow less tempting as we get older, which is why this exhortation is especially important for those among to us with youthfulness, in varying degrees, still coursing through the veins. Nevertheless, such temptations to gratify the flesh by looking at vile images and things not given for righteous hearts or eyes to ingest, temptations to treat graphic and obscene things as a normal part of modern life, continue on even into our later years. We are all to take heed lest we fall. Pray that the Lord guard and keep us against desires for those who are not ours by what we see and think, whether it be physically, emotionally, or in our minds’ brief or prolonged fantasies. Let us pursue holiness instead, so that we do not dishonor ourselves, our spouses, our families, our homes, our church, our God, for the exhortation need not be restricted to sexual sins of the flesh, but to how we conduct ourselves in the body. Each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor. This means paying attention and being on your guard as to what you allow to enter into your eyes and ears, and thus your mind and heart. Examine what affects you in body and spirit in what you allow not only to enter in, but also to sit there in your mind, mulled over, entertained, and petted; unrighteous thoughts that have no place in a mind that belongs to Christ your Lord. Your mind is a justified and sanctified place where no unwholesome thought should be welcomed, much less made to feel at home.
We rightfully consider how we may keep from sinning against God and against neighbor, but sins of the flesh are indeed sins against our very selves. We are not to think too highly of ourselves in pride, nor are we to think too lowly of ourselves in debased ways of giving in to fleshly desires so that we treat our own bodies dishonorably. Everything that we do in the body matters. It is God, the Father Almighty, Who has made us, given us body and soul, and it is Christ, the Son, Who has redeemed us in the body, making us temples of the Holy Spirit, so that we no longer dwell in or live by the desires of the flesh, but in mastery and rule over them and the body. Our bodies have been entrusted to us to be used for the glorification of God. It is He Who has saved us from the fiery pit of hell that we may be His own and grow in sanctification so that we do not sin against ourselves or how God has intended us to be.
No one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter. Sexual sins of the flesh are sins against ourselves and they are sins against others; against the ones in the images and against the ones so closely living life next to us, our true neighbors. In fleshly sins, we take advantage of and defraud our brother in this matter because it pertains to our purity, upon which not only we depend and benefit from, but others as well. When we engage in and tolerate sins of the flesh in our lives, we are degrading what has been given into our care for the love and benefit of our brethren, our neighbor, for we are not secluded islands existing in the sea of life until the earthquake of death submerges us into the deep. Our lives are meant to be lived together; thus, impurity of the body that is invited, welcomed, or tolerated in our lives is robbery of what God intends for those He gives to be around us. So, for our sake and each other’s, let us fear that the Lord is the avenger of all such sins and be forewarned unto good works of struggling against sins of the flesh with great intent and at whatever the cost it takes to cast them out as the leaven that they are. Let us not be the leaven that leavens the whole lump.
Let us rather pursue holiness in this regard, for sexual immorality and other sins of the flesh are not only sins against ourselves and our brethren, but also against God Himself. He has given us His mercies to remember as sinners. Remember your sins. Then, remember your baptism. Remember the death of sin out of which you have been raised. Remember the newness of life into which your Redeemer has called you to walk. You have not received an empty call to do what your dead flesh cannot do alone, whether before or after your baptism. But it is in that holy sacrament that you were given power from on high to fulfill the desire for holiness and to joyously obey God in the help of the Holy Spirit. All the natural cravings of a fallen flesh belong to you no more; they are not yours to cling to any longer, for the tender mercies of the Lord include a sanctified nature that the He seeks to have thrive in those baptized into Christ. The wicked desires of the flesh are intruders to holy lives. They are not the way of God nor of life in Him. Thus, let us continue to remember our temptations, our sins, and to call upon God to remember His tender mercies so that we may fulfill His will of our sanctification. It is a matter of will; God’s will and now our own, that we may believe, trust, struggle, and strive with the Holy Spirit in order to prevail over sins that seek to keep us from the Good Lord’s will, our sanctification.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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