In the name of Jesus, Amen.  The first Sunday of October is generally observed in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod as LWML or Lutheran Women’s Missionary League Sunday.  Many of you may know that the LWML has been around for 60 years as the official Woman’s Auxiliary of the LCMS, and during that time has raised millions of dollars for mission projects all over the globe.  I have boyhood memories of my mother faithfully putting her coins – pennies mostly – into the little cardboard “mite box” on the kitchen windowsill.  The term “mite box” came from the Bible story of the widow who gave two mites – worth about a quarter of a penny – as her temple offering; and Jesus commended her gift, because it was all that she had.  What my mother was able to put into her “mite box” wasn’t much, but remember, hundreds of thousands of Lutheran women were doing the same thing, and those coins added up.  It’s still happening today.  Lutheran women are still serving their Lord in many ways.  So are Lutheran men and Lutheran children.  As part of Christ’s church here on earth, we are called and empowered by God to do His will.  We are here to receive the salvation He has promised us, and to share the promise of that salvation with all the world.  We may feel we’ve come a long way on our spiritual journey, but we still have a long way to go.  So, DON’T STOP NOW!

 

God has set us a goal: it is to be like His Son Jesus Christ.  Just before our text Paul had been talking about sharing in Christ’s sufferings, becoming like Him in His death and resurrection.  Now what was Christ like?  What was His most important characteristic?  You could mention His compassion for people, His humility, His ability to read the human heart; but greatest of all was His loving obedience to the heavenly Father.  He said, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of Him who sent me.” In the Garden of Gethsemane He prayed to be relieved of the suffering that lay before Him, but in this way: “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”  And this Lord of ours taught us to pray, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  So let every area of your life be measured by the standard of loving obedience to the Father.  Sometimes we wonder in a situation, WWJD – what would Jesus do?  And the answer is, He would do His Father’s will.  That’s why we need to be faithful in searching the Scriptures, so that we can know the Father’s will; and the more we do it, the more Christlike we become.

 

That’s the goal, but we aren’t there yet. Everyone of us here has to say with Paul, “Not that I have already attained this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  The picture here is that of runners in a race, putting forth every effort to cross the finish line.  As a football fan, I like to think of the receiver stretching out to catch the pass thrown his way, or the runner tackled just short of the goal line, but making one more effort to press forward until the ball has crossed the line for a touchdown.  If you’re perfect, disregard these remarks; if not, then keep pressing on.  The goal is in sight, but we haven’t reached it yet.

 

With that in mind, don’t let yourself get sidetracked or distracted from our God-given goal: first of all, by what is past.   Paul says, “I press forward forgetting what is behind.”  Sometimes even the best football players will drop a pass or fumble the ball.  But they put that behind them, and concentrate on the next play.  To dwell on past mistakes can only keep them from doing their best.  It’s that way in the Christian life, too.  Sometimes we miss opportunities to serve God because we have made mistakes in the past, and are afraid of repeating them.  Or we think of all the sins we have committed and fear that they have disqualified us from serving God in the future.  Or we worry so much about whether or not we have been forgiven that we don’t have time to think of anything positive.  Forget what is behind!  The past is past; not only that, it has been forgiven by our gracious God.  We cannot undo our sins, but we can repent of them, and by faith receive God’s forgiveness of them.  We have God’s promise: “as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”  So don’t be distracted by what is past.  God has forgotten all about it.  He says, “I will remember their sin no more.”  So we can forget about it, too.

 

Something else that may distract us from our goal of being Christlike is opposition from the ungodly.  Paul reminds us that “many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.”  Some of them may even call themselves Christians.  What defines someone as an enemy of the cross of Christ?  It may be a lifestyle that goes against God’s holy law.  It may be an attitude that suggests we can do something to save ourselves, and therefore don’t really need Christ and His death on the cross.  It may even be an outright hatred of Jesus and all that He stands for. It may be the stated belief that it doesn’t matter what you believe, we’re all trying to get to the same place and we just go about it in different ways.  Enemies of the cross of Christ may be outwardly very nice people, so nice that you can end up feeling very narrow-minded if you were to disagree with them.  Or they can be people who ridicule you and your beliefs at every opportunity and question why anyone in his right mind would take the Bible at face value.  All of this is a distraction from our mission.  If we aren’t careful, the opposition of the ungodly can wear us down and make us think, “what’s the use?”

 

Paul also cautions us against the distractions of this world.  He says of those who are enemies of the cross of Christ, “Their destiny is destruction, their God is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.  Their mind is on earthly things.”  He is describing self-centered pleasure-seekers who are proud of what they ought to be ashamed of, people who live for this moment only; and if they don’t change, are headed for eternal destruction.  I doubt that Paul is describing any of us.  And yet, sometimes we are vulnerable in moments of weakness, sometimes we are susceptible to the same temptations.  Spend too much money on some luxury we really can’t afford?  No problem.    That’s what big credit lines are for.  Unwanted pregnancy?  That’s why abortions are legal.  Tired of your spouse?  Have an affair or get a divorce.  Too busy to go to church?  That’s okay, you can worship God anywhere.  Besides, there’s always next week.  To get caught up in this type of thinking is to be weighed down, held back, distracted from our goal.  And as long as we live in this world, we are surrounded and sometimes tempted by these distractions.

 

At times like this, we need to remember who we are.  We live in this world, but we are not citizens here.  Our real home is heaven.  Paul writes, “But our citizenship is in heaven.”  We are like immigrants who are here making a living, establishing families, getting an education and all the rest; but who still hope to someday return to the land of their birth before they die.  That is our hope, too, and it’s not just wishful thinking.  It’s going to happen.  How do we know this?  Because “we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Think of family members or dear friends whom you haven’t seen in a long time – years, maybe.  And one day you get a letter or a phone call or an e-mail that tells you they are coming for a visit on such and such a date.  You can hardly wait for that day to come!  You may even mark the days off on the calendar.  Everything is put into a state of readiness for that visit.  That’s the way it is for Christians as we wait for the arrival of our Savior, except with one difference.  We don’t know the exact date of His coming.  So we have to be ready all the time, yet in the meantime we keep going about our everyday lives.  But one day He’ll arrive, and what a day that will be!

 

How can we be ready for Him?  It is because He has the power to transform us to be like Him in every way.  We await the Savior “who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.”  A great transformation has already taken place. He has taken us sinners and made us holy.  It didn’t depend on us.  We were spiritually dead, unable to do anything to save ourselves.  But in His death on the cross He accepted the punishment for our sins, and for His sake, God declared us forgiven.  That forgiveness became ours in our Baptism, and it was renewed and reinforced as we heard the Gospel message and as we received our Lord’s body and blood in the Sacrament of Holy Communion.  So the transformation of sinners into saints has already taken place.  But remember, we still haven’t reached the goal of perfection.  We’re on the way, but don’t stop now!  Hold tightly to that Savior of ours, because when we finally come home, the best is yet to come.  These bodies of ours – burdened by sin, weakened by sickness, bowed down by age – will also be transformed.  They will become like the glorious body of Christ Himself.  At last we shall be like Him in every way, in our souls and in our bodies.  We will have reached the goal that God has set before us.

 

We know that this is not only for us, but for all people.  God loved the whole world, not just a select portion of it.  And so  His love compels us to keep reaching out to others.  Since our Savior could come at any time, we may not have a lot of time left to do this.  This is no time to get bogged down in disputes among Christians or to get distracted by what’s going on in the world.  Paul writes, “Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.”  Whether we are men or women, today we have the example of the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League, who for 60 years have faithfully and sacrificially funded mission projects all over the world, even as the Lutheran Laymen’s League has brought Christ to the nations and the nations to Christ through the Lutheran Hour Ministries.  May God continue to bless both of these great organizations within our church – and may He bless each of us as we make His love known.  There are a lot of people who still don’t know about it.  Don’t stop now!  Amen.