Many years ago, when I was just out of college and in my first years of the teaching ministry, I had a bank account with a card to use the ATM. Back then, the ATM at this bank had a plexiglass screen that would slide up after you put your card in and entered your PIN so that you could operate the keyboard and get your money. On one occasion, after bank hours on a Friday when I really needed cash for gas and groceries, I learned a lesson I will not soon forget.
You see, I was one number off on my PIN the first two attempts. At that point, the machine swallowed my card and flashed a message that said “invalid PIN” as the plexiglass window slid back down, shutting the ATM off as well as my source of cash. There I stood, looking up at the security camera, pleading for someone to help me, begging an invisible and absent entity to have mercy on me for putting the wrong number in. But there was no answer. There would be no answer, no matter how long I stood there or how much I pleaded. After all, I was pleading with a machine.
How blessed are we that our relationship with God is not like that. Really, as sinners, we are condemned—no matter how hard or how many times we try to make it right. In our sin, we stand before God the same way that I stood before the security camera. There is nothing we can do to get that plexiglass window back up to help us. We are instantly cut off from all communication, all fellowship with God. No amount of pleading, no amount of “if I just do this” will fix this broken relationship. Standing on our own in this place of judgment, there is no hope. We put the wrong number in, and that is that. There is no one who hears us because there is no relationship. There is only a security camera that records our useless and failed attempts at reconciliation. Being fully aware of this condition makes the next part even more comforting and amazing.
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We can speak to God, and He listens and responds. Through prayer we can talk to Him, confident that He hears us. “Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; listen to my plea for grace. In the day of trouble I call upon you, for you answer me” (Psalm 86:6-7 ESV). Through prayer, we speak to God; we plead with God. We thank and praise God for all the blessings He surrounds us with every day. Perhaps we even argue with God. And we confess our sins to God, the God who speaks of mercy to us through His Word and His Sacrament of the Altar. And He speaks His comforting message of salvation through the imperfect and often awkward speech of His servants here on earth. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, those of us in the ministry of Lutheran schools are God’s voice of comfort speaking to His children. We can point them to God’s Word, such as the words of His promise in Hebrews, “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12 ESV). This broken relationship has been fixed through the death and resurrection of God’s own Son! The barrier which separated us is no longer there. There is communication between God and man. There is an everlasting relationship which we share with our students each day of our ministry. How blessed we are together as members of the body of Christ.
