+ Lenten Midweek 3 – March 27, 2019 +
Beautiful Savior Lutheran, Milton
Genesis 3:7–21; John 19:1–5, 23–24
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We get dressed in the morning for the day ahead. We put on a coat if it’s raining or cold outside. We change into the appropriate clothing before heading out to work. Clothing is such a normal part of our daily lives; it covers us, protects us, comforts us. Without clothing, we’re vulnerable. Exposed. Embarrassed for anyone who has a wardrobe malfunction.
Life wasn’t always this way though. There was a time when the Adam and Eve were both naked and not ashamed.
That’s life in Genesis 2. No sin. No shame. No guilt. No death. Only innocence. Perfection. Holiness. Only a knowledge of everything God created and gave to them and declared “very good”.
Sadly, and tragically, life didn’t stay this way. Genesis 3 happened. Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
Adam and Eve were exposed. Vulnerable. Guilty. Sinful. Dead. Ashamed.
This is what sin does, it curves our eyes inward upon ourselves. And like Adam and Eve we try and hide behind our own fig leaves. But we sure try, don’t we. We try and cover our gossip and hurtful words by feigning concern or trying to explain what we really meant. We try and cover our greed and lust by saying, I’m just getting what’s rightfully mine and all I did was look.
But it never works, does it? Fig leaves couldn’t hide Adam and Eve’s sin, guilt, and shame. Neither can they hide ours. We stand before God like Adam and Eve in Genesis 3: naked, exposed, vulnerable, and ashamed.
And our sin can only be covered by one thing. Not fig leaves. Not even the best clothing money can buy. Sin can only be covered by sacrifice. By blood. By the skin of another given for you.
We often think of Genesis 3 as the greatest tragedy of the Scripture, of God’s great judgment on Adam, Eve, the serpent, and all creation. And there is judgment to be sure. There is sin, death, and the curse. But Genesis 3 also reveals one of the greater love of God for sinners. Even after Adam and Eve disobeyed. Ate the fruit. And blamed each other. Still, the Lord loved them. Covered their nakedness and shame. God clothed them.
the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
Their nakedness was covered at the cost of an even deeper nakedness. God sacrificed an innocent animal to cover their shame. And so the first death, the first bloodshed, happened at the hands of the Creator Himself. Sin can only be covered by blood. By a sacrifice.
What animal was it? No one knows. But many Christian artists throughout the middle ages and Reformation painted a lamb in the garden, a sanctified guess that it was an innocent, unblemished, lamb that gave its life for Adam and Eve pointing forward to Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. 2 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. 3 They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands.4 Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!”
Behold, the Lamb of God who is also a man with skin and blood who is exposed for you.
Behold the man scourged by the Roman soldiers with their evil flagrum, designed to shred the skin from the back of the whipped one, tearing away flesh so deep that the internal organs are nearly exposed. Behold the man on whose head the soldiers pressed the crown woven of thorns to ridicule Him as a madman. Behold the man on whom they drape a soldier’s dirty purple robe.
Behold the man who, when He was nailed to the cross, stripped naked, whose clothes the soldiers divided amongst themselves, whose seamless tunic was gambled. Behold the God who is naked, exposed, and shamed for you.
Jesus will bear your sin and shame. Will suffer in your place. Jesus’ nakedness answers for Adam’s. Jesus hung on the cross naked and unashamed, with nothing to hide, with no sin of His own, only bearing our own. Behold the man stripped bare to bear our own sins. All of them. The ones we try to hide and obscure, the ones we pretend are not there, the ones that cause us the greatest shame. All of them hang there on the cross with this man, this God, Jesus, naked and dying for you.
Behold the man, stripped naked so He might clothe you in new skin. Behold the man who will hide your sin with His own righteousness. Behold the man who gives you Himself to wear. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. In the washing of Holy Baptism you are clothed in the incomparable perfection of His own righteousness. Jesus, our new Adam, covers our sin with His own sacrifice, blood, and death. Your sin is gone, your guilt removed, and your shame covered forever in the blood of Jesus shed for you.
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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