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  Joel 2:12-19; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 What the Lord God said to Adam in Genesis 3:19, he also said to all of us this evening at the imposition of ashes: You Are Dust . . . and to dust you shall return. We’ve entered the season of Lent. Lent is a holy season of prayerful and penitential reflection which begins with today’s solemn Ash Wednesday assembly. Ashes ... just like my crucifix ... visually confess that the wages of sin is death .  We die because we are sinners, who are corrupt through and through, body and soul.  We die because we are sinners.  Sin sticks to us. Unlike these ashes, we are not able to wash them away. We are not able to make ourselves clean. We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. We are born that way. Sin is a total corruption that leads to all kinds of unfaithfulness, unrighteousness, deceit, immorality, ruin, and misery.  Our sin is blacker than these ashes. We are like the diseased tree...

The school playground is the last place you want to be if you’re the smallest, the weakest, or least agile. Captains don’t think too much about a kid’s feelings when picking teams. They want the fastest, the strongest, the best. They want the players who are most likely to give them victory. The weak only get to play because you have to fill the teams.  Thanks be to God that the Lord’s Church doesn’t operate like a playground.  At the beginning of his three-year public ministry, Jesus chose a dozen men as his apostles. The evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke all described this selection process. Of the three, only Mark provides a job description. He writes in chapter three of his gospel that Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, had all been hand-picked, called, chosen to become eye witnesses to the glory of the Lord, and chosen to go forth telling the world about Jesus....

The world is filled with all kinds of false religions. Most of these systems all follow the same pattern: Someone allegedly sees or hears something that he calls “god.” Then, upon this chance encounter, he immediately sets up an altar and declares it to be holy. Since he “saw” or “heard” god there, some people think, maybe this god will speak to them. In the years to follow, people bring all sorts of sacrifices to this altar in hopes they will find blessing by presenting their “wonderful gift.” All the while, others set out to write down holy words they say “they saw or heard.” More than one religious system in the world today has been set up this way. Today, the Mormons are the fastest growing religion in the United States. Islam is the fastest growing in the world. And the spiritual but not religious, although technically not a religion, are growing even faster. All of these systems were built the same way. Someone saw or heard something. And presto, a new experience was born. If you...

CHOOSE LIFE ! How could such a positive, biblical statement stir up such controversy? As if I would really want to choose the alternative. CHOOSE LIFE! The world says it loves life. That it loves to live life, to take life to the fullest, to live the life you love. Yet as soon as we say CHOOSE LIFE , the world immediately associates it with the abortion debate, and that always stirs the pot.  CHOOSE LIFE ! Some say, “Abortion is a political issue.” Others say, “We might offend someone, so we shouldn’t talk about it.” Still more say, I will CHOOSE LIFE for myself, but I will be silent about whether others should CHOOSE LIFE for themselves or their babies. Maybe someone here has been involved in an abortion decision, and it’s uncomfortable hearing others talk about the choice between life and death.  Brothers and sisters in Christ, we who love the way, the truth, and the life, that is we who believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ, we must CHOOSE LIFE .  Choosing death, of cours...

Was Saint Paul just a poor student, or was he a bad teacher?  Had Paul failed to grasp what Jesus was saying, or was he flat out disregarding it as he wrote to the Corinthians? In listening to our Epistle and Gospel lessons this morning, did you sense a problem? Did you hear something in the words of Jesus and Paul that just didn’t seem to jive? Listen again, very carefully. First, from our Gospel lesson, the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot ... a “jot” or a “tittle” ... will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. (vv 17-19a) Sounds good, doesn’t it?  We certainly agree with that, don’t we?  Every word of the Scri...