Sermon for The Third Sunday after Trinity, 2026

God does not brighten the old worn face; there is no face left to brighten. Rather, He strikes His emblem upon you. At the Font His Name was spoken over you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the sign of the holy Cross was traced upon your forehead and upon your heart, the King’s own mark come down upon the silver. It is not the face lost in Adam; it is the Cross of Christ, the sign that you are His: bought, claimed, and current again in the kingdom. The emblem is struck, the image begun; still, the likeness is not yet whole. Only when He raises you on the Last Day will the face stand restored, bright, without blemish, forever. Until that Day you are a coin still being minted: marked with His Cross now and awaiting His face. Found, yet rolling again by week’s end into the same dark, and swept again into the light by the same lamp. 

You are never a coin that stays found. That is the whole of the old Adam’s error: to reckon the sweeping a one-time work and the bag safe thereafter. On the contrary, the One who found you is finding you still, finding you, even now. Every Lord’s Day the lamp is lit again above you. Every Absolution is the hand sweeping the dust from you. And at this altar the King who minted His emblem upon you gives you Himself, His very Body and Blood, placed upon your lips, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. The coin does not buy its way up out of the dust. It is found; the hand of the One whose emblem it bears closes round it and lifts it. 

Readings:

• Old Testament: Micah 7:18-20

• Epistle: 1 Peter 5:6-11

• Holy Gospel: Luke 15:1-10

Sermon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldtmdjHI61U