For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

Many of us may not be aware of it but parts of the east have been receiving rain by the bucket full. All that rain and our recent trip to Boston brought to mind the week we spent in Virginia with one of our sons, Aaron, and his very pregnant wife, Robyn. Ruth Ann arrived there a week ahead of me and helped them move into their new home. It necessitated lots of cleaning and scrubbing, painting, and lots of packing. I went there to do some little odd jobs but primarily to help build a fence to keep the dog and our soon be born grandbaby safely in. Since I was only going to be there a week Aaron and I had to make the best of time and work no matter what the weather was like. Having experienced a little bit of back pain in the past few weeks, I look back fondly on those days we worked from before dawn until after dark.

Building a fence is an outside job, which comes as no surprise, but what was unexpected was the remnants of then Hurricane Bill. No longer a hurricane, Bill was a Depression who carried with him the tears of his depression- it rained and rained and rained. At one point it nearly filled a five inch high, three inches across, cup on the back step with rainwater in just three days. Needless to say we were soaked by rain, drenched by the humidity, wringing wet with sweat and caked in this Virginia mustard colored mud, which because of the clay, sticks to everything! It sticks to everything and it seems to work its way up your body as the day progresses.

Paul writes, For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. This earthly tent to which Paul refers is not so much one’s body but one’s earthly life. In today’s Epistle, Paul makes wonderful use of some opposites. On one hand we have this life of ours described as an earthly tent - on the other we hear of a permanent building erected on a solid foundation. Tents speak to temporariness verses the enduring quality of a well built home, a home built by God’s own hands, built on His promises.

In the writings of St. Paul he often speaks of the life that we live, and how often our lives are hit with storms. We, at times, find ourselves blasted by the hard winds of unexpected hurt, soaked by downpours of disappointments, hardships, and dilemmas. Sometimes it is storms of disease, depression or accidents that crash and blast into our lives striking like bolts of lightning. All this and more tear at the tent of our lives in which we huddle.

Adding to the storms is the mud that comes from buckets of rain. All those storms and rain create buckets of mud and the mud was everywhere and got on everything. I remember that yellowed color. It stuck to our shoes making them impossibly heavy and even at times threatens to suck the shoes from our feet. The mud is like sin. It too is heavy with clay. It sticks to the shoes of our lives which once may have been tolerable now they can seem to bog down with resentment, hurt, anger, indifference towards others, and even rebellion towards God.

And that mud wasn’t content to stay on the bottoms of our shoes, before long it worked its way up the sides of our shoes and on to the bottoms of our pants and it moves up from there. No matter how hard we try it gets everywhere- shoes, pants, under your nails, on our belongings. So it is with sin. As we pass through it gets on to our shoes, then the cuffs of our lives, we track it everywhere we go and before long it is on our hands, in our hair, on our tongues, streaked on our faces in our minds, and in our hearts. We even track it into the lives of those around us.

Paul writes, Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling….For a while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwellings, so that what is mortal my be swallowed up by life.

Each evening my son and I would hose the heavy mud from our boots. Ruth and Robyn would wash our clothes so we could have a fresh start in the morning. It was wonderful to get up the next day to clean clothes even though we knew they’d be dirty in short order. That fresh start was great!

We, too, are washed cleaned given a fresh start by the water’s of confession and absolution. For it is written, If we confess our sins. God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Jesus himself takes the mud of our sin from our shoes, shoes that are often so heavy we can’t lift them. He goes so far as to take His clean boots and exchanges pairs with us. He tromps off in our rain soaked boots and we are given clean dry ones.

Through the hearing of His Holy Word and partaking of His sacraments He takes the mud caked clothes of our sin and provides us daily clean clothes: the clean shirt and pants of His forgiveness, held up by the belt of His truth, the clean socks and dry boots of His peace, and the hat of salvation emblazoned across the front with the Word of God.

Our sin drenched and mud caked clothes he pulls on. The rope of a frayed belt we once called truth now tattered by our sinful compromises and rebellions against God He wraps around Himself. He willingly pulls on our socks filled with the holes of our faulty logic. Our boots are broken down and caked by the heaviness of our sins. All these He takes to the cross where He cleans them with His once for all time sacrifice.

It is His blood raining down from the cross that washes our clothes clean and transforms that which was worn out making it new. By His death and resurrection we can arise to don new clothes not just once, but every time we confess our shortcomings to God. He forgives us and forgives us and forgives us.

The job of building a fence in the mud and rain was made bearable because I did it with my son for his family. Because of him and them it wasn’t so bad. It was at times, despite the fatigue and weather, down right enjoyable. And there will be stories to tell around the table at family gatherings to come- lots of bragging as to who worked the hardest and who made the most mistakes. Working with him it wasn’t so bad.

So it is with this life that we are living. We can endure it, even flourish amidst hardship, hard service, and even boredom knowing that one day we will see the Lord face to face, sit around His table not just for communion but in our heavenly home.

St. Paul writes, On one hand we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in body we are away from the Lord. In simpler terms: we are homesick for our heavenly home, our home in heaven with no more tears or hard times, yet we are confident, we have faith, we will get there one day. We long to see the Lord face to face, and we are confident that we will one day because He has given us the Spirit that we might live by faith and not by sight. He has given us the Spirit as a deposit of things to come. What we only see and hear dimly now we will one day see and hear face to face. We long for His touch having experienced a foretaste of it in communion, but we are confident that one-day we will by His grace sit forever at His table.

St. Paul wrote, Of this life, of this living in a tent amidst a tent city, For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. …I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.(Phil 1.21, 23-24) I would prefer to be away from the body with all its struggles, and I prefer to be at home with the Lord. Doesn’t this sound like us at times or someone we know? But as long as He has tasks for us, good works prepared in advance for me to do, it is better for us that we remain. Like Paul we can confidently tolerate hardships and live a life in witness to whose we are, God’s children. We can do this because we have the promise of heaven for He is with us and with HIM it ain’t so bad.

Out here in Boulder with our quarter inch of pea gravel soil over endless feet of granite and rain storms that sprinkled rain drops here and there it may be hard for people to think in terms of buckets of rain and mud so thick it seeks to suck your shoes off, but the storms are there and we do get dangerous storms here. We see those warning whenever we go up the Big Thompson Canyon. But the storm I worry about even more is the storm of sin that is raging all around us and even continues now on such a nice day. People need to warned, they need a safe place to come and they need dry clothes that come only from God’s enduring word. They need you and me to go out into the storm and warn them.

Amen.