Sermon for Second Midweek Service. Stir Up the Power of Preparation

Transcription

1 1 Sermon for Second Midweek Service Text: Matthew 3:2-3 Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.... Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight. Stir Up the Power of Preparation I remember once visiting with the adult daughter of a pastor and talking about our family Christmas traditions. (No, this was not Mary Beth) Here s basically what she told me: I m not crazy about Christmas. In my home, because my father was the pastor, we were so busy with church work we really didn t have time to enjoy Christmas. It was exhausting. I know what she meant. Pastors, and often their families, are so focused on helping others have a wonderful Christmas that they don t have much time or energy left to enjoy it themselves. One pastor came home from church one

2 2 Christmas Day, fell to his knees, and prayed, I thank thee, Lord, that this Christmas thou hast given me is over. Maybe it s the same for you. Maybe you re so focused on helping your family and friends and church have a happy holiday that you wear yourself out and aren t experiencing the joy of Christmas yourself. If that s true, maybe it s time you and I step back and look at our preparation for the arrival of God s Son. The Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent, the second stir up prayer for our midweek, helps us get on the right track: Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready the way of Your only-begotten Son, that by His coming we may be enabled to serve You with pure minds; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. Maybe you remember from English class in school that when a sentence begins with an active verb and there s no subject before the verb, it s understood that the subject is You. So what the collect really says is, You stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready to prepare the way. If Advent preparations exhaust us, maybe we ve got it wrong. See, we actually don t do the preparing. God does. God Prepares Us, through Word and Sacrament, So When Jesus Comes We Serve Him in Purity. Here s how God does it. First, through Word and Sacrament, God prepares us to serve his Son in purity as we confess our sins. Christ s advent, his coming, whether as a baby or at the end of the age, is always in the shadow of judgment. God s hope

3 3 for man, his highest creation, was that we would love and serve him in holiness forever. It didn t work out that way. God created us with a mind of our own, and we ve all freely chosen to love and serve ourselves rather than God. That s called sin. And sin calls for judgment. For sinners to get back in fellowship with God, for sinners to escape judgment, we need to repent. We need to confess our sins. We need to turn from sin and seek God s forgiveness. We need to bring forth the fruits of righteousness, all in the context of faith in Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away our sin. That s the message of John the Baptist. Prepare the way of the Lord, John cries (v 3). Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (v 2). If we don t heed his message, we can expect a terrifying encounter with God when Jesus comes: His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire (v 12). Flee from the wrath to come (v 7). The axe is laid to the root of the trees (v 10). That s pretty violent stuff! Scary stuff! It s supposed to be. This is God s Law. God s intent here through his Law is to move you and me to see the danger we re in so that we ll repent, turn in faith to Christ, and amend our ways. As we do, we have God s assurance of forgiveness. That s Gospel, the Good News. Gospel is also part of John s message. As we repent of our sins, as we are baptized, God s gift of forgiveness is ours. Mark tells us, John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. All the people were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins (Mk 1:4 5).

4 4 If you want to be prepared for Christmas, if you want to be prepared to meet the Son of God when he comes, confession, repentance, Baptism, and forgiveness are what you need. And all of these God makes happen through his Word and Sacraments. You don t have to buy a thing. God does all the work. He gives us his Word in proclamation and Sacrament. Through these, the Holy Spirit opens our ears to hear and our hearts to receive. As we hear and receive the Good News of Jesus suffering and death for our sins, we re forgiven, we think differently about sin, and we start walking in a new direction, toward God, not away from him. When that message sinks in, we can relax and have a happy Christmas. And we ll be serving our Lord in purity. Second, through Word and Sacrament, God prepares us to serve his Son in purity as we bear fruit. I experienced what I thought was a profound insight not too long ago. I was at the funeral of a man who wasn t a Christian and didn t attend church. I knew him pretty well, but as far as I knew, he didn t have a spiritual bone in his body, so to speak. Nevertheless, it was just assumed by everybody there, by his family and friends, even by the speaker, that this man was now in heaven. I ve heard the same thing at other funerals. It s just assumed that the deceased is in heaven, laughing and happy, doing the things he or she enjoyed on earth. So what was my insight? My insight was that most people, even those who profess to be Christians, think everybody goes to heaven regardless of faith. It s no longer that you have to be good enough to go to heaven which is a false doctrine in itself but you have to be bad enough not to.

5 5 Only really bad people are barred from heaven. That s what many people think these days. But if that s what we think, we re not prepared to meet Jesus when he comes or to serve him in purity. According to the Bible, spending a happy eternity with God is in the context of repentance of sin and faith in Christ, which always leads to bearing the fruit of righteousness. Bear fruit in keeping with repentance, John tells the crowds who come to him (Mt 3:8). Otherwise, Every tree... that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire (v 10). John s message wasn t too popular with some people. Herod was more than happy to let John do his preaching and baptizing as long as John required nothing of the king personally. But repentance wasn t just for the common people or the religious people; it was for the ruling people as well. So when John rebuked Herod for stealing his brother s wife, Herod threw John in prison. And later, he ordered that John s head be cut off. John s message still isn t popular. Many of us like to think of ourselves as Christians but have no real concern for repentance or bearing the fruit of righteousness. We re materialistic, always wanting more than we have. We re sexually immoral, even celebrating it in our entertainment. Our culture is becoming meaner and ruder, egged on by popular music, radio and TV talk shows, video games, politicians, and Internet bloggers. And if those things aren t true of us, we re probably selfrighteous. Clearly, we think, we re better than everyone else, and God must be happy with us. Well, he s not. If you read the Gospels, the people Jesus scolds and condemns aren t the tax collectors and the prostitutes or the thief on the cross dying beside him. No, it s the self-righteous, those who think

6 6 of themselves as good. These are the people John calls a brood of vipers! (v 7). The point is, everyone needs to repent, or we ll end up in the bonfire on Judgment Day. I don t want that to happen to me. I doubt that you do either. So we need God to change us through his Word and Sacrament. Through these, we learn repentance and faith and what constitutes the righteous fruit God wants us to bear. And through the Sacraments we gain the strength to grow it. So what kind of fruit are we talking about? One text always comes to my mind, Gal 5: There St. Paul tells us, The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Elsewhere, Paul says, The greatest of these is love (1 Cor 13:13). But you can t legislate how the fruit of the Spirit grows. In repentant, faithful people, the fruit of the Spirit grows in different ways and in different quantities. Nobody s the same. Nobody s fruit is going to look exactly the same as someone else s. John told those with extra food and clothing to share with those who had none. He told tax collectors to collect no more than they were authorized to. He told soldiers to be content with their wages and not to threaten or falsely accuse people (Lk 3:10 14). You could also say the fruit of the Spirit is just living according to the Ten Commandments, loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself. The point is that the fruit is outward focused. As it grows in our lives, it benefits others. Finally, through Word and Sacrament, God prepares us to serve his Son in purity by giving us the Holy Spirit. John tells us, I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is

7 7 coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire (Mt 3:11). Now that s a Baptism to look forward to Spirit and fire! My, how we need the Holy Spirit! We need him because without him we are dead in our sins and powerless to do anything. We can t work up repentance and faith. We can t produce the fruit of righteousness in our lives. Without the Holy Spirit we aren t alive to God; we aren t sensitive to his will or empowered to do it. We re helpless. But with the Holy Spirit, who comes to us through the Word and Baptism, we can do and be everything God wants. I think key to understanding why this is true is knowing what the Holy Spirit s name is in Greek. It s pneuma, meaning breath or air. If you and I don t have breath or air, what are we? We re dead! But with breath or air, we re alive. Remember what God did when he made man? Genesis says, The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Gen 2:7). The breath of life is the Spirit of God without which man is dead to God. When Adam sinned, you could say the Spirit left; Adam died to God, even though he was still walking and talking and moving around. But through the Word of God and Baptism, the Spirit comes back. Life from God is breathed into us once again. We come alive to God and are enabled to serve him and worship him in purity. But without the Spirit, we can t. Jesus once had a conversation about this with a Samaritan woman at a well. She was feeling uncomfortable with some of the things Jesus said. He seemed to know everything

8 8 there was to know about her, even though she d never before met him. So she changed the subject. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you [Jews] say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Do you recall how Jesus answered? He said, The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth (Jn 4:20 23). How do you worship God in spirit and in truth? Clearly it has nothing to do with location, whether on a mountain or in a temple in Jerusalem. But it has everything to do with spirit and truth. Spirit means life. And this life comes through the Holy Spirit as we hear the truth of God in the Word and as we are baptized. As we hear, as we are baptized, as we confess our sins and repent, as we believe in Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away our sins, as we bring forth the fruit of repentance, we are ready to serve our Lord in purity and meet him when he comes at the Last Day. Lord Jesus, through your Spirit, working repentance and faith in our hearts through Word and Sacrament, make us ready to greet you now as we serve you daily, in the hour of our death, and when you come again. In your name we pray