What I wasn’t saying

Pretty much every Sunday, I try to listen to my own sermon. No, it’s not because I’m a narcissist who loves to hear his own voice. It’s sort of because it’s not fair for you to have to listen to me if I don’t have to listen to me. But mostly, it is so that I can be the best preacher that I can for you – and that involves catching myself in mistakes and goofs.

This past Sunday, I came away from listening to the sermon that I delivered to you all and said, “hmnn….that could have been misinterpreted.” So I want to explain what I WASN’T saying this Sunday:

This Sunday, I was talking about how the leaders of recently returned Jerusalemites told the people to stop their weeping. They did this because according to the Law, it was a day for celebration. I tried to connect that with how we have a “day of celebration” when we remember our Baptisms. God has told us to stop grieving over our sins, specifically because Christ has died for them. Sometimes, we need to hear the Gospel and believe it, letting God have our sins rather than keeping our sins so that we might groan over them some more. God wants us to move on from forgiven sins, because…well…they have been forgiven.

But I wasn’t saying is that there isn’t a time to weep. There is certainly that time in all of our lives. God doesn’t hate us because we’re not happy all of the time. He grieves with us. He grieves with us when we are victimized by our own sins. He grieves with us when we are victimized by the sins of others. Just as Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, so God grieves with us in our worst moments. 

So please don’t hear in my sermon from last Sunday that you should never grieve. That would be an abuse of God’s Word. Instead, hear what I was trying to bring forth – and that is that God has forgiven our sins, and because of that, He has given us a great reason to rejoice. God has taken your forgiven sins out of the list of things that you have to weep over, and He has placed them as far as east is from west. 

Because we live in a sinful world, we still have to deal with the sins of this world. But take heart, God has promised us a day when all of those sins will be erased, and with them, all of our tears and all of our weeping. Amen. 

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