Romans 7:21-8:8

So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, with my mind I am enslaved to the law of God, but with my flesh I am enslaved to the law of sin.

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Sermon Text

 This month has been a lot. We’ve looked at how Jesus’s death, the sufficiency of that death to cleanse of our sins, and the need for us to truly put away sin to live our life in Christ to its fullest. Grace, it turns out, is not just something that we say before a meal or write on our sign. Grace is the lifegiving gift of God that invigorates every aspect of who we are. To be a Christian is to be a recipient of Christ’s goodness, and in the goodness that God has given us, we have a great deal to give praise for.

As we gather today for Palm Sunday, we do not tell the story of people gathered outside Jerusalem, as we usually do. We do not recount our humble Lord riding into the city on a donkey. Instead, we gather to be that crowd. We who have seen Christ’s salvation, having been reminded over the course of Lent what it means to receive grace upon grace, have a prerogative toward singing of God’s goodness. We declare, today and always, that there is power in what Jesus did two thousand years ago precisely because Jesus is still saving us today.

The Church year begins with Advent, just a month ahead of the secular calendar. In that season we await Christ to be born into our hearts once again. Christ, living in the flesh, is an inspiration to us across our walk through January until the end of Lent. Those forty days of preparation begin with the reminder that we are just ash given life for a time. They conclude today with the cheers we raise to our one true savior who has never stopped saving us. Today as we sing “Hosannah!” I hope you are not just doing it because it is in the hymnal or written on the bulletin, but because you truly feel that call in your Heart. “Save us, O God!”

Today, though we are in Keyser and not Jerusalem, we remember the truth that Paul restates in our scripture for today. “There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” We are rescued from our “body of death,” which chooses sin over righteousness again and again, not through anything we do, but through the all sufficient and wonderful sacrifice of Christ. We see, with the benefit of hindsight, what the crowd gathered that day never could. We know that Christ’s crucifixion waits on the horizon. It is a dark and cruel day on which the price of our salvation must be paid. We celebrate today more fully than they ever could have, and yet we also are bound up with the weight of Good Friday’s terrible cost.

We ought to wave the palm branches we have, because we are alive and more than that made fully alive by what Christ has done. Sin has no power over us, nor does death keep its sting. For even as our flesh fails, we have the promise of a future resurrection. The wonder of God is not limited only to the three score and ten of a human life – it stretches into eternity through the wonderful work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Today is a day to praise God for all God has done.

We end our series on grace with a simple declaration. Grace is truly amazing. Whether it is the grace which calls us to be part of God’s church, or the grace that allows us to get rid of sin, it is that grace which makes this life we live in Christ possible. The same grace equips us to move from evil and into good, a move we would never make on our own. Grace, the blessing of God delivered to us through the work of Jesus Christ, is always available and always at work. All things are reconciled to God through this force of good and all good is made possible through the same.

As we wave our palm branches, especially here in a moment as we bring forward the elements for Holy Communion, I hope you will be able to reflect on God’s grace in your own life. Maybe you have just started a serious walk in faith, God’s grace just now bringing you into understanding what it means to be saved. Maybe you have faith, but have not yet chased off the lingering sin you hate in yourself. Maybe the next step of developing goodness is where you are. Maybe your somewhere in between any and all of these stages of life. Wherever you are, as we gather to celebrate our coming salvation, the grace that God offers us is here, ready for you to receive.

We read through the book of Romans throughout Lent. A book written by a man who devoted his life, at one point, to the persecution of Christians. It was written to Roman citizens who had celebrated the expulsion of Jews from the city, and now were being asked to welcome them back into the congregation. It remains for us today as a book that tries to make sense of God’s grace by specifically looking at how it interacts with the real lives of God’s people. The righteous, the wicked, Gentile and Jew, killer and healer, all are invited to a table that can set all things right… If only we can take seriously our call to make use of it.

If God’s grace is sufficient for all people, then it is certainly sufficient for us individually. If we are so saved by so amazing a God, then I hope that we can truly celebrate the work of God today. Let those palms wave, let your voice rise up, let your praise be true! For God’s grace is amazing, and it is given freely to you and to me, to all flesh that we may be saved. – Amen.