The lilies grow, they do not toil;
How fair is their fragility –
If God clothes these, which quickly spoil,
Will he not clothe both you and me (St. 2)
That stanza we just sang is based around Jesus’ Words in which calls us to consider the lilies and He gently calls out our sometimes little faith, and says again to us Why are you anxious?
Our window has us doing what Jesus calls us…consider the lilies.
There are many things we should see when we see the Lily.
We should God’s Word telling us not to be anxious.
We should also see a flower that fades and be reminded that we too will fade.
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord endures forever.
And you hear that Word here. These words last forever. We can get very hung up on so many things that will last only a little while that we need to be pulled back to the Word, to the promises that will last forever.
Our Psalm said,
15 As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
16 for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
17 But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children’s children, (Psalm 103)
Consider the lilies…
The final thing we’ll consider is that we should also see beauty.
God is beautiful.
God gives us many beautiful things to consider…
And we can marvel that God considers us beautiful…
Christ calls us His bride. Because He gave Himself up for us, He presents us spotless, holy, blameless, without blemish, righteous, holy, beautiful.
If there was a plant that should describe us in how God should see us, it should be something like a dead, dried up, diseased, prickly cactus that is surrounded snakes and birds devouring parts of it –
That’s how we deserve to be seen.
Our sin and rebellion should make us ugly, but we hear in that enduring Word of God all that Christ has done for us, taken all our ugly and sin and shame, received what we deserved for it, so that He may present us as beautiful to the Father.
When He hears us pray and sing,
when He sees us repent and want to do better and love more,
when He dines with us at His table,
He delights in us. We’re beautiful in Christ!
We should never forget that.
And we should never forget why we are beautiful – because we are in the beautiful Christ.
And that this beautiful Christ was willing to die an ugly death to make us His own.
Apparently the bulb of a lily is quite ugly. But it is from this ugly bulb that comes forth such a beautiful flower.
So for the Christian, we understand the ugliness of Jesus’ death for us. Most especially the ugliness of our sin to God, but also the external ugliness of the
Betrayals,
Denials,
Lies,
Mockings,
Beatings and spittings,
Whippings and strippings,
We understand the external ugliness of the hanging and the bleeding and the dying.
But we also understand that it is in this ugliness that comes the beauty of us being God’s children, freed and forgiven and with Him for eternity.
Jesus calls His death His glory.
It is also from this ugliness that comes forth in us a changed heart toward God and neighbor and the continual producing of the fruit of good works.
Jesus says it this way in our reading this evening:
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Jesus then calls us to not love this life, for then we’ll lose it, but instead to be willing to hate this life and serve Him, to be His servant and to follow Him
There are these three things that you can see when you consider the lilies and ugliness and beauty.
- Jesus’ ugly death makes us beautiful to God. His dying and going in the ground bears the fruit of you always being with Him.
- Our ugly death will finally be what ushers in to the most beautiful life we can imagine. Luther calls it a blessed end, in which God will take us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven.
- And finally, we can consider Jesus’ call to deny ourself, to crucify and die to our sinful nature. The lily seems to live a life of death and life. To be beautiful in the spring, it seems to have to die in the fall and winter. So also us. We should die daily to our selfishness and worldly desires and seem them as quite ugly, so that we can rise to the newness of the beautiful life of Christ. To always see God as beautiful, His Word and His ways, His Law and His Gospel, as the most enduringly beautiful thing we have in this life.
So why are you anxious? Consider the lilies….
And why cling to this life? Consider the lilies…
And don’t you see how beautiful you are in Christ? Consider the lilies…
And don’t you know what’s going to happen when you die? Consider this stanza from another beautiful hymn….
5 When I’m growing old and feeble,
Stand by me (stand by me);
When I’m growing old and feeble,
Stand by me (stand by me);
When my life becomes a burden,
And I’m nearing chilly Jordan,
O Thou “Lily of the Valley,”
Stand by me (stand by me).