Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

From the Epistle of the Day: Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. [Galatians 4.28]

From the Holy Gospel, according to the Greek text: Jesus then took the loaves and when He had given thanks, He distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. [John 6.11]

     This Fourth Sunday in Lent, is known by the beginning of the Introit: “Laetare,”  in Latin, “Rejoice ye!” in English. Whether in Latin or in English, the theme of this  day is “Refreshment Sunday.” On the historic Christian calendar, there is a Refreshment in the Season of Advent, leading up to Christmas, and there is a Refreshment Sunday in the  Season of Lent, leading up to Easter.

Both Advent and Lent are known as Penitential Seasons – seasons of preparation; seasons of repentance. In the midst of each, Advent and Lent, there is a Sunday of Refreshment. Why this is so, we shall shortly see, but that this is so is marked by a special liturgical color – Rose. Please look at this color today, and repeat after me: “This …  is … rose!”

The focus of these Rose-marked Sundays is on the refreshment that God gives His people through the Preached Word and Received Sacraments, for the life-long journey in the world as it is, with its promised conclusion in life everlasting as it will be, for you, in the New Heavens  and the New Earth after Christ has returned. So, on this 4^th Sunday in Lent, your devout attention is invited to “Refreshment Today.”

I.

     That there is such a thing as a “Refreshment Sunday,” in Advent and especially in Lent, is a testimony to our need as sinful creatures. For just as the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent are reminders that all of the Christian life is a life of repentance, even so, the refreshment Sundays in midst of Advent and Lent are reminders that the life of continual repentance by sinners  becomes a life of frustration. After all, perpetual repentance, sooner or later, reminds us of three painful things: one,  that we aren’t all fixed up; two, in particular, we're not even getting better; and three, if we even think that we are getting ahead –  getting better, we are simply deluding ourselves.

     Yes, there is Christian growth in your lives, by the presence and working of the Holy Spirit. But, even in the midst of Christian Growth, there still is the stubborn fact that we Christians remain, perpetually, sinners in need of repentance. No one in this present life graduates from confessing, “I, a poor, sinner confess unto Thee.” That’s just the way it is, and the way it will always be, on this side of the grave and on this side of the beginning of life everlasting on the new earth.

Yet, within this perpetual earthly experience of repentance, God gives refreshment. Indeed, refreshment comes in the every Sunday gift of the Sacrament of Holy Communion, as Jesus foreshows this blessing in the Feeding of the 5000. But, this “pause that refreshes” also comes in the every day – and indeed, every moment – application to your life of the gift God has packed into your Baptism.

II.

     In the Holy Gospel of the Day, God reveals to you that He has sent His only-begotten Son into this fallen human existence on earth. This God-Man is born into this fallen world as the Baby Jesus, when God the Son takes upon Himself our human nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Jesus grows and lives in this world as the substitute before God for you and for all of fallen mankind. His suffering and death on the holy cross shows God the Father’s purpose in sending our Savior to us. By His suffering and death Jesus, the Savior, the Christ, takes to Himself the sins of the whole world, atones for those sins completely, and provides His own perfect goodness and righteousness, in exchange for our sins, as the birthright of every sinner who is born from above by the waters of holy baptism.

     Note how earthly refreshment comes to you and become your possession through your baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. From the moment of your baptism,  you become and remain a child of our heavenly Father. You are a sinner, but by baptism you are a totally forgiven sinner, and therefore an entirely righteous saint.

     These things – complete forgiveness, complete  righteousness – come as refreshing news and refreshing promises to you precisely because Christ puts them into baptism, and the Holy Spirit then transfers them out of your baptism and into your life. They don’t come as a down-payment to Christian forgiveness and freedom, as though by them you are responsible of producing the final product of righteous living.

Rather, the gifts of baptism delivers the whole package of what Christ has done for you. God thus, reveals to you that you are, indeed, a forgiven Christian.

III.

     St. Paul’s reminds you of this birthright as a Christian through his inspired pen in the Book of Galatians: “So then, brethren, you are not children of the bondwoman but of the free.” He means: You are not children of Hagar, but rather you are children of of Sarah. You are not brothers and sisters of Ishmael, but rather you are brothers and sisters of Isaac. You are not alive before God because of the covenant of the Law, but rather you are alive because of the covenant of the Gospel. You are not children of Mt. Sinai. but rather you are children of Mt. Zion. You are not supposed to live your Christian life in the bondage of climbing Mt. Sinai, the mountain of the Law, attempting to live before God under the law; but rather you are given the birthright to live each moment in the freedom of the forgiveness of sins, in the righteous standing that you have for Christ’s sake, which is a free, open, and loving relationship that you have with your heavenly Father. That is what God gives you in your baptism into Christ!

     Dr. Luther points out this daily refreshment and daily renewal of Holy Baptism this way, in answer to the question: “What does such baptizing with water indicate?” Answer: “It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evils. And that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

     Notice what you do, according to the Lutheran faith: You daily admit sin and repent! That’s it! And then, through the daily consequences of your once-for-all baptism, the Old Adam – the sinful nature – daily is drowned because of your baptism, together with all sins and all evils. And, in the place of these things, God – not you – raises up a new person, created in and by Holy Baptism, who lives before God in total righteousness and purity without end.

This daily message about your once-for-all-time Baptism is the true pause that refreshes your daily experience in this present life, and it – the daily message of baptism, not the daily efforts at renewal of Christians – brings forth newness of life in your daily experience, however partial and halting that newness will happen to be in us all.

     This is how the message and promise of your baptism becomes, for you, the pause that refreshes. It doesn’t signal some obligation to change your life – rather, it marks the manner in which God Himself, through the waters of Holy Baptism, creates and sustains your Christian faith and changes your Christian life in this fallen existence. In your Baptism, God assures you that the complete and total renovation of your life is found in Christ now, and in you in the life of the world to come. That, is the true daily pause that refreshes!