Doing Hard Things

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sometimes it is difficult to get things done. You set out with a plan for the day, a list of things to get accomplished. And, almost as soon as you get started, it seems, things are derailed. An unexpected phone call. A slew of activity on Facebook. A breakdown of equipment. Something is bound to come along and lay waste to your best-laid plans.

It is even more difficult to get things done when you do not want to do them in the first place. There is always something more interesting on the internet. Something is always wandering about in the yard outside the window. Some other project, whatever it might be, is always more intriguing or seems more important. Anything at all that you can come up with in order to avoid doing the things you do not want to face.

Face it – how many people actually – really, truly, honestly – enjoy hard work?
How many people enjoy being dirty, sweaty, stinky? How many people enjoy toiling for hours on end to accomplish something that no one will notice? Or to finish some job that will be undone by the end of the day and have to be done again tomorrow? Sure, you hear people wax eloquent about the pleasure of an honest day's labor, but if you are really honest with yourself, I reckon you would not find that you genuinely enjoy hard work. Even the most dedicated worker always has something he would rather be doing than whatever is demanded of him in the daily grind of life. This is how life is.

St. Paul says, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.” This is the way of things. When you want to do right, when you plan to do good, when you think you can do what is necessary, evil lies close at hand and the devil does his best to frustrate and destroy your plans for good. And at this the devil excels.

Of course, the best way for the devil to prevent you from doing what is good and right is to discourage you from doing it, or even from wanting to do it. If you do not start, you cannot finish. If he can prevent you from wanting to do good, then you will not do it.

Your old sinful nature is complicit in this plot against you. For the old Adam is selfish beyond all else. Your flesh wants what it wants, when it wants it, and the rest of creation can buzz off. You do not want to be a faithful Christian, a faithful child, a faithful spouse, an honest citizen, a devout worker or employer, a godly parent, or any of the other God-pleasing stations into which the Lord has placed you. You do not want to do these things, and you do not have the ability to do them, either. Sin corrupts the members of the old man so thoroughly that you can accomplish nothing good or right, no matter what you want or plan.

This is why you fail at your vocations. You are not a dutiful child because you want to throw off the yoke of parental discipline and filial respect. You are not a faithful husband because you want to serve yourself, to help yourself to whatever suits your tastes and desires. You are not an honest worker because you want to sit at home and play games rather than do the hard labor required for your work to get done. You are not a godly parent because you do not want to change diapers or wash clothes that have been soiled for the umpteenth time or wash the same dirty dishes you washed at this time yesterday. Evil lies close at hand. Right in your hand, in fact. I am sure you have already been tempted to stop paying attention to this sermon, and you probably were daydreaming during the reading of the Scriptures moments ago.

This is part of the reason God calls you according to various vocations in the first place. To serve your neighbor is to deny yourself. To deny yourself is a crucifixion of the old, sinful nature within you. This is a matter of the Law. You must be put to death so that your neighbor can live. You must be emptied so that he can be filled. In order for him to have, you must do without. This is the reality of life.

However, faith must come first, or you will be destroyed. To serve your neighbor as he needs to be served requires that you first be served by God. You must be crucified with Christ, be drowned and die, and be raised to life in Christ. Then – and only then – can you serve your neighbor. For if you are to empty your self for the sake of your neighbor, you must be filled with something outside yourself. And what can fill that yawning void? Nothing but Christ Himself.

To attempt to serve the neighbor without Christ first runs into the problem of impossibility. You cannot do this, because the old Adam is incapable of being unselfish. The unbeliever always serves the neighbor with some other end in view. Whether it is the good feeling of being altruistic, or the pleasure of being recognized for your generosity, or the attempt to earn some sort of merit for whatever cause, all these are flawed motives, and will fail. You serve yourself under the pretense of serving your neighbor.

Secondly, even if you did manage to serve your neighbor completely without Christ, you would implode. You must be filled spiritually with something, and if you give it all away, there is nothing. Of course, if you are a Buddhist, that is the goal, but their idea of salvation is basically implosion of the self into nothingness.

You must be filled with Christ before you can empty yourself in service to others. For only in being assured of life in Christ can you serve freely, without thought for the personal cost or consequences, or care for the future. In Christ, you serve because your neighbor needs.

St. Paul reminds us, “I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind.” So long as you are in the flesh, you experience this warfare raging within you. On one hand, you have the new man, arisen from the Font holy and pure, filled with the Holy Spirit and ready to do good for the sake of his neighbor. On the other hand, in the same mind and body you have the old, sinful nature which clings to the flesh like a plague, defiling and destroying whatever the willing soul attempts to do in service to God and neighbor.

In this way, you are compelled to keep your eyes on Jesus, to focus your attention on His works for you, and not on your works for Him, or for anyone else. The death of Christ is complete. He has died your death once for all. He has done all that is necessary. He has accomplished your redemption with the price of His holy, innocent blood shed for you, for the forgiveness of your sins. There is now no condemnation for you who stand clothed in the righteousness of Christ that comes only by faith.

God's forgiveness of your sins is perfect. It is absolute. Your sins are removed as far as the east is from the west. They are annihilated as much as a spark banishes the darkness. They are expunged from the record and remembered no more.

But you are not yet perfect. The sin of Adam still clings to your members. You are still corrupted with the desire to sin, and your flesh is not able to completely resist the temptations of the devil, the world, and your own sinful heart. You must be chastised by the Law. You must be whipped by the demands of God. You must be crushed with the hammer of divine Law. And you must thank God for it, that He in his divine forbearance chastises you and does not hand you over to destruction altogether. The hammer of God is good, even though it hurts bitterly. You are broken, but not crushed.

The Swedish Luther scholar Gustav Wingren once wrote, “Man is not able to let his civil righteousness, in all modesty, be something which God has effected on earth through man's vocation.” That is, you do not want to let God use you for the good of your neighbor. You do not want to give yourself over in service, and simply be a dutiful servant. You are not even capable of allowing this, owing to the sin that still clings to your members.

Love is the willingness to do everything required of you in your various stations in life. It is the glad and cheerful service to your neighbor, to those near and far from you who need and desire your service on their behalf. Love does not resist this service or grumble about its rendering, but does what is needed, and beyond, and simply says, “I have done my duty.”

But you experience the law of sin of which St. Paul complained to the Romans. You do not love like this. You do not take out the trash simply because it needs to be done. You do not change diapers simply because it is good for your baby. You do not pay your taxes simply because it is necessary. You do not render an honest day's work simply because it is your duty.

There is a new catch-phrase making the rounds in popular Christianity these days: “Do hard things.” Books have been published with this title, blogs and web articles abound, and churches hither and yon are speaking and studying this idea, as though it were the newest and greatest thing. The premise goes that we need to get in the habit of “doing hard things”, that is, things that require a great deal of faith.

Much of this talk inevitably leads to one of two ends. Either you “do hard things” by giving up your lifestyle and moving to some strange place and setting up camp as some sort of missionary, or you “do hard things” by adopting one or more children – generally, the more disadvantaged, the better. Now, neither of these things is evil in itself. The world needs missionaries, and children need parents.

However, admirable as these things are, they often betray a lack of understanding of the good, right, and salutary vocations into which God places each believer. Yes, the world needs missionaries, but you can bear witness to the faith delivered to you by fulfilling your callings in life, by being a perfectly dutiful servant to all who rightly make demands upon your time, your talents, and your support. You can spread the Gospel by speaking it in your homes, in your daily conversations, in your interactions with the people who cross your path.

Yes, the world is full of children in deplorable situations who need parents desperately. Adoption is a great and beautiful gift, one to be lauded and supported for those whom God has so called. But you do not need to adopt a child, or a herd of them, in order to fulfill the Law of love for your neighbor. You can do God-pleasing work by praying for parents to do their duties to the best of their abilities. You can support the bodily needs of women who find themselves pregnant in less-than-optimal circumstances. And you can be the parent God has called you to be to the children He has given you already. That is hard enough work for a lifetime!

Instead of searching around for some “hard things” to do that look and sound impressive to your friends and relatives, how about you start doing the things God has put in front of you? You could pray for your spouse and your children. You could honor your husband or cherish your wife. You could teach the Word of the Lord to your children. You could go to work as you agreed and do the work you were hired to do. You could follow the laws of our land and give due respect to the government and authorities God has placed over you.

Sure, the impressive things make people feel good, but they are not really the “hard things.” The truly difficult work is the daily drudgery. The never-ending diaper changing. The repetitive washing of the same dish day after day. The same trip to the grocery store for the same gallon of milk for the same hungry children. These are just a few “hard things” that need done.

These are hard things to do because they are thankless jobs. They are monotonous and boring and stinky and unexciting. You will never get applause for grocery shopping. You should not expect a prize for showing up to work on time every day. But these are the stuff that daily life is made of, these are the things that must happen for the world to function.

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” God knows that you do not want to do the things He has called you to do. He knows that you are not even able to do what the Law and the love of your neighbor require of you. That is why He sent Jesus to you.

Who will deliver you from this mess? Who will liberate you from the boring cycle of life? Jesus will, because Jesus already has. He has already died your death to sin once and for all. He has put to death all that is evil and alien to God within your nature. He has redeemed you from the curse, from the power of the Law to accuse you and bind you over into hell. He has loved you to the end, so that you who were unlovable and undeserving might be the beloved sons and daughters of the King of the Universe, marked with the very Name of God for your salvation. He has called you by name – you are His!

Do you want to do hard things? Then come up to this altar, kneel before heaven and earth, and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord for the forgiveness of your sins. Let your sinful flesh be crucified with Christ, and be filled with the Holy Spirit, who continually calls out to you, testifying of God's love for you, His all-consuming love that fills you to overflowing.

Then you can go forth and do the hard work that this world demands. You can change the diapers, take out the trash, teach the children, love your wife, and the thousand other things on the to-do list. Do not worry about doing the big, impressive things that the world eggs you on toward, but do the insignificant, menial things that keep life going.

The hard work is done for you. No one is asking you to die for the sins of the world. No one is asking you to redeem your brother from his transgressions or intercede between God and man. Do not let the world, or even voices in the Church, lay guilt upon you for not doing flashy works and making outrageous leaps of faith. Make the leap of faith to believe that when you pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” God is really doing His will, even in the small stuff. Don't sweat the big stuff; just do what God has called you to do. Seek to serve your neighbor in the needs you can meet.

Your life is secure in Christ. You have died the death to sin, and been raised to new life again. You serve the law of God with your mind. Feel free to give of yourself – of your time, talent, treasure, and prayers – completely and utterly, because you know that you will never exhaust the incomparable riches of the grace of God. God will give you the strength to do the good works He has ordained for you to do. Trust in Him, and you can do anything, even the little stuff. Do the hard things of everyday life.

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.