2022-12-4 Second Sunday in Advent

 2022-12-04 Advent 2 Isaiah 11:1-10 Romans 15:1-13 Matthew 3:1-12

In the name of the Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Why are people going to the wilderness to listen to preaching, confess their sins, and receive a washing for repentance? This story is so familiar to us that we may very well miss the fact that all of this is happening in the wrong place. Good people of faith are supposed to go to the temple.  

In the temple, there are worship services that include preaching, teaching, and the reading of Scripture.  Priests are on hand to receive your confession.  Communal and individual repentance is a part of the Jewish faith at this point.  Priests are on hand to lead you through that process. So, if people have all of this at the temple, why go out to the wilderness?

Perhaps it is because the faith and it’s practice is too regular and staid? Perhaps the people sense that what the Torah and the prophets proclaim is somehow getting lost in the routine of worship and the external demands of the faith? Have the priests lost their passion for the faith?  Or is it all about obligation now? Perhaps the people have discerned that the real concern is making sure that everyone pays their due for the maintenance of the temple program?  And that, somehow, along the way, most are no longer looking for a Messiah that will make great demands upon us, but will do what we want Him to do. 

There are various answers to why people made the hike into the wilderness to receive John’s ministry.  But, what is clear is that the people recognize John as a prophet.  He is proclaiming a truth they are not hearing in the temple.  John says, Prepare yourselves. The Messiah is coming. John is demanding repentance in order to prepare for the Messiah.  And, the Messiah is going to bring much, much more than what anyone imagines.  

John’s preaching on repentance is not gentle or sweet sounding. He is not a flowery preacher.  He cuts to the chase. There is no gospel of “acceptance” or “you are beloved.” No, John’s message is that you are a sinner, through and through.  You need a good cleansing in order to get ready.  The soul, the mind, the body, all of it needs a washing. And, it begins with identifying every sin. John demands faith in the one to come.  Pure, unaccompanied faith. From this baptism of repentance, your attitude, thinking, and very behavior are going to be different.  

John says, bear fruit in keeping of repentance. Part of what this means is giving up any presumptions that we fall back on as a defense or security.  John uses the Pharisees and Sadducees as an example.  There is comfort, there is pride, there is identity, in being a faithful son of Abraham.  The Pharisees and Sadducees can bring their hard earned righteousness that is demonstrated by their keen knowledge of Bible and tradition as well as their fastidiousness to the tasks of keeping all of the holiness laws. They demonstrate that they are faithful sons of Abraham at every opportunity.  They bring their status as righteous ones to God.  

Before a prophet like John, before a Messiah like Jesus, no sin is safe, no sin is tolerated or encouraged. John, speaking in the power of the Holy Spirit, lifts the veil to let God’s light in. Your pride is a sin. Your judgmental looking down on others because of the confidence you have in your own righteousness is a sin.  Repent, John says. Prepare for the coming Messiah, by turning away from everything, but the coming Christ. For Christ comes to fundamentally disrupt your life and make you into a completely different person. 

John the Baptist’s words reach us through the ages and continue to convict us. There is nothing that we can do to make ourselves pleasing or presentable to God.  We cannot impress God, nor can we obligate God to be merciful to us by our ethnicity, moral or religious convictions, pride, the people we hang out with, by exercise, by eating a particular way, having a certain kind of job, being rich or living in poverty.  However it is that we think we may sparkle or be righteous before God through our own efforts, John says that we are wrong. We are sinning. We need to repent to God of all of our sins.  Through repentance we prepare for the coming Christ. 

John’s promise to us is that the coming Christ is going to completely disrupt our lives. Christ will baptize with the Holy Spirit and then there is the winnowing fork. 

What John said came true.  The winnowing fork is the cross that Jesus died on for our sakes.  Jesus calls us to live into John’s repentance, look upon his cross with faith, trusting that Jesus has died for us. The Holy Spirit comes upon us through the Word to create this faith and create the opportunity to follow Jesus where he leads us. Where Jesus leads us is into the community of faith that gathers around the Word and the Sacraments. In the community of faith, that is where the disruption of the cross is lived out.  

I have always loved the word picture of Isaiah 11. It is so peaceful and calm. The wolf dwells with the lamb. The leopard, the goat, the calf and the lion are all lounging in the pasture together without a concern in the world. The children play with snakes without harm.  The picture is beautiful. Except for one thing.  It is not natural.  This is not how nature works.  There is predator and prey; strong and weak; those that run and those that chase.  That is just the way it is. Except,  of course, when the cross of Christ is involved. Because the cross of Christ bring forgiveness, grace, love, hope, and harmony.

Isaiah 11 is a picture of a community that has the cross firmly at its center and has entered into the way of discipleship.  Our Lord’s sacrifice on the cross and the gifts that he brings us, disrupt the normal and natural way of doing things.

In his commentary on Isaiah 11, Martin Luther writes, “There will be supreme peace and harmony in Christ’s kingdom, and people will neither offend nor destroy one another.  They have and make peace.  Christians are peacemakers among ‘among those who hate peace’ as Psalm 120:6 says, yet in such a way that the church is not changed, but the wolves, leopards, lions, and bears are.  Those who hold our teaching have peace.  The true knowledge of Christ begets harmony. Later, in chapter 53:11, he says, ‘By His knowledge He shall make many to be accounted righteous.’ It is a cause of strife when everyone defends his own opinion.  Those who know Christ forsake all human opinions, rely on the Word alone, and on the life and righteousness of Christ alone.  In the world and in external affairs there is indeed inequality, but in Christ’s kingdom all things are one.  Laws cannot bring men into agreement.  Faith in Christ creates unity and makes men equal, while every other kind of righteousness is condemned.  He says, the knowledge of Christ will pervade and fill all things like a kind of deluge, and human opinions will be overwhelmed in it.  Christ is our peace ‘and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility,’ as Ephesians 2:14 says. (page 123, Lectures on Isaiah Chapters 1-39, Luther’s Works, vol 16. American Edition. Concordia Publishing House: St. Louis, MO. 1969.) 

The Apostle Paul observes this too. A Christian community is going to be focused on lifting each other up, bearing one another’s burdens, not demanding “my rights and privileges” for the sake of the others. Paul says, “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” 

Those of us who would naturally be at odds with those around us, prefer some kind of social Darwinism to take effect, and seek to strengthen me and my own, find ourselves, on account of Christ and his cross, doing the exact opposite of what is natural. Also, those of us who have a hard time trusting others, depending upon others and being depended upon, and would normally just prefer to be only responsible for ourselves, find ourselves, on account of Christ and his Cross, doing the exact opposite of what is natural to us.  Just as unnatural as the wolf dwelling with the lamb. 

Now, that is a disruption.  And, it is a disruption that bears a powerful witness to those who do not yet have faith, but the Holy Spirit will use that witness to work on their hearts and minds. 

Enjoying the fruits of this disruption begins by heeding John the Baptist’s words.  Prepare for the coming Messiah by repenting of yours sins.  Give it all up. Step forward in the faith that the Spirit is giving you so that you may receive the benefits of the cross. 

In the course of those 13 verses from the Apostle Paul, we received, what to my ear sounds like two benedictions.   As we prepare to receive our Messiah in the Sacrament, I leave you with these words, “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

In the name of the Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.