MONDAY IN EASTER IV 12 MAY 2003

KRAMER CHAPEL-CTS FORT WAYNE, IN

Ephesians 4:17-24

It's about vestments. If "clothes make the man" then what you wear does matter. Cassock and surplice, alb and stole, chasuble and cope-put them on your wish list as a graduation or ordination gift, but these are not the vestments that our text puts before us. The Apostle has something much more foundational that ecclesiastical attire. Paul wants to defrock you of that garment he calls the old self. He is concerned with your being clothed in the vestment of your baptismal vocation, your putting on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Paul, apostle and prisoner of the Lord, urges us to walk worthy of the calling to which we have been called. Now he comes to speak concretely of the character of that vocation. "You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds." The old way, that broad path that leads to destruction is the highway of hell. Those who travel on it walk not by faith but by the blind futility of a mind that is darkened to the life of God. In fact, Paul says they are alienated from the life of God because their hearts are as hard as the pavement underneath their feet. With such callous hearts they lack sensitivity to the kindness of God that leads to repentance. And so they give themselves over to the practice of impurity, a rebel life that is greedy to grab for a thousand idols in a dead-ended attempt to shield the self from the one God who alone is holy.

But that says the Apostle is not the way you learned Christ- assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus. Paul is no spiritual environmentalist; He does give you a set of do's and don'ts, a handbook of principles for cleaning up hell's highway. He does not offer you Jesus as a guide or example. He does not even direct you to facts about Jesus. Instead, Paul directs you to that truth which you were taught-the truth that is in Jesus. What is this truth? It is the truth that you came to know in the Catechism. The truth that Jesus Christ is true God begotten of the Father and true man born of the Virgin Mary is your Lord. He has redeemed you, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won you from all sins, death, and the power of the devil; not with gold or silver but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that you may be His own, and live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness, even as He is risen from the dead and lives and reigns to all eternity. That is to say you were bought with a price. You do not belong to yourself but to the Lord who has made you His own in your Baptism.

Baptized into Christ, you put off the "old self." Putting off the old self is more like being skinned alive than merely changing your shirt. It is called repentance. It is the daily dying to sin and being made alive to walk before God in righteousness and purity forever as the Catechism tutors us. To put off the old self is to be stripped of "the leather garment of Adam" as Luther put it. It is to lay aside the ragged and worn out overcoat of the old man with all of its deceitful desires that promise heaven but give hell, that tease with the prospect of freedom only to enthrall in a deeper slavery. The wardrobe of the old Adam fashioned by that terrible trio of sin, death, and the devil is forever out of season now that Christ has been raised from the grave. Out of date as white shoes and leisure suits. The old nature is just that -old and worn out. Buried with Him in Baptism you are now vested in the white robe of His righteousness. You are in Him and the life you now live you live by faith in the Son of God who loved you and gave Himself up for you.

Augustine told of the catechumens in his day as they would come to the end of Lent unwashed and decked out in rough animal skins. Before going to Baptism, they would strip off these smelly old hides, trampling them underfoot as with howls and hoots they jeered the old evil foe, renouncing all his works and all his ways.

None of our liturgical archeologists have yet suggested that this ceremony be incorporated in our baptismal rite! But Baptism does involve a stripping. Not of old clothing but of the old man- that corrupt and corrosive life of sin that we have inherited from Adam that will not fear God and refuses to trust in Him. Those garments cannot be patched up. They are beyond a trip to the dry cleaners. The only thing you can do with those tattered rags is throw them out. With the righteousness of Christ here, they are forever obsolete and unnecessary. Clothed in Christ you are renewed in true righteousness and holiness. I will let Dr.Luther have the last word: "In baptism, then, it is not the garment of the righteousness of the law or our own works that is given, but Christ becomes our garment. But he is not the law, not a lawgiver, not a work; he is the divine and inestimable gift that the Father has given us to be our Justifier, Lifegiver, and Redeemer. To put on Christ according to the gospel, therefore, is to put on, not the law or works but an inestimable gift, namely the forgiveness of sins, righteousness, peace, comfort, joy in the Holy Spirit, salvation, life, and Christ himself" (AE 26:352-353). Amen.