St. Matthew's Evangelical Lutheran Church Welcomes You!

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A Message From The Pastor

Our Lenten Journey

     It’s hard to think of Ash Wednesday as beginning something, yet that is just what it does for Christians each year. Once again we gather together to begin the journey of Lent. We must begin again and again, because the old Adam in us must “by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lust. . . .A new man should daily come forth and arise, who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever” (Small Catechism, Baptism, Fourth Part).

     But why? Why take the same journey to the cross? Why recount the same sins ad hear the same words of forgiveness? Surely the church has something more important to talk about!

     The reality is that there is nothing more important for us to talk about. Martin Luther also wrote: everything, therefore, in the Christian church is ordered toward this goal; we shall daily receive in the church nothing but the forgiveness of sin through the Word and signs, to comfort and encourage our consciences as long as we live here. So even though we have sins, the grace of the Holy Spirit does not allow them to harm us. For we are in the Christian church, where there is nothing but continuous, uninterrupted, forgiveness of sin. This is because God forgives us and because we forgive, bear with, and help one another. (Galatians 67:1-2 & Large Catechism, Part five,)

     This is the beginning, middle, and end of our identity as Christians. When we speak about Jesus Christ, we are speaking about the Gospel. Lent points us back to the simple and beautiful reality, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.