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Advent 3 - 2002
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for today is the Gospel lesson just read, as well as Isaiah’s words, Behold your God.
This is Gaudete Sunday. That means that this is the Sunday when we take a little break from the penitential season of Advent, and look more at the blessings we receive from Christ’s birth. Are you the Coming One? John the Baptist is one of those people who ask good questions. Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another? Where do you place your hope? Jesus sets us on the path of righteousness with His coming to Jerusalem; He shows us the end of the path with His Second Coming, and now John wants to make very clear to them and to us that Jesus is the Path, the Truth and the Life, and that no one goes to the Father but through Him.
Where do you look for help? That is really the question for the spiritual at heart. And given all of the talk about Christmas and Jesus that goes on this season, most people are thinking about spiritual things at least a little bit more than usual right now. Of course, our temptation is to look inside ourselves, or to the happy decorations and festive mood of the day to find satisfaction. You don’t have to look at that for long, though, to realize that there is no satisfaction to be found there. It is an empty promise. No matter how hard we try to create that Christmas spirit, it just never seems like it is quite what I thought it should be.
But Jesus’ response to John is a helpful one for us, because He really points us in the right direction about spiritual matters. This is Jesus’ response:
Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.”
Now notice the pattern of how Jesus responds to John. He starts with the smaller things and works toward the most important. The blind see and the lame walk. Now those are both terrible and debilitating, but they probably won’t kill you. Leprosy, now that will kill you. And deafness was considered worse than blindness, because if you were deaf you couldn’t hear the Word of God, you were cut off from the world. Of course, the most obvious to us is that the dead are raised, but even that isn’t the most important of Jesus’ works. The most important one of all is that the poor have the Gospel preached to them. Now that phrase, Gospel preached to them, is really just one word. We might translate it evangelized or maybe that they are Gospeled or something like that. But the most important thing about that great, most important word about Jesus’ word is that it is something that God does to you. You don’t evangelize yourself. You don’t decide to become a Christian anymore than you comfort yourself or raise yourself from the dead. It’s God’s work; not yours.
So when Jesus tells John about all these things that He is doing, He is basically saying, “I am doing the things that only God can do. I heal. I make things alive that are dead. And most importantly, I give people the comfort of the forgiveness of sins won by my impending death and resurrection. No one else can do that.”
I don’t think we realize sometimes how unique and powerful God’s work in Jesus Christ really is. Jesus came down to earth to do what no one else in the entire history of heaven and earth could do. He comes down to comfort hurting sinners by forgiving their sins and drawing them into His loving embrace. No one else can do that. Only Jesus.
This is the work of Christ’s Church in a nutshell. This is the sole content and reason that we are here today. If you leave this church without receiving the comfort of Christ’s Gospel, then there is something seriously wrong. Do you realize what a wonderful treasure is here in this place? Where else are you sins forgiven, your life restored, and you are put in communion with the very Son of God right before your very eyes. No where else. You can receive this no where else in all the world.
One pastor about a hundred and twenty years ago put it this way when it comes to spirituality and where we look for answers:
...the Word of God is not rightly divided when sinners who have been struck down and terrified by the Law are directed, not to the Word and the Sacraments, but to their own prayers and wrestlings with God in order that they may win their way into a state of grace; in other words, when they are told to keep on praying and struggling until they feel that God has received them into grace.[1]
Your life as a Christian is completely connected to Jesus. He is your path and your hope. This is why Isaiah says to you, behold your God in our Old Testament reading, and our introit Psalm exclaims, Rejoice in the Lord always…the Lord is at hand. For you see, when Christ your Lord comes to you through His Word and Sacrament, you have everything. Your God is right here, in your very midst. No searching. No wondering. No self-obsession and guilt. Look and see. Here He is. Right here. Right now.
This is why John the Baptist is the great Advent preacher. There he is, stuck in prison, about to lose his head because he will not bow his head to anyone but Jesus the Lord. He is in prison, and yet he is free, because Jesus Gospeledhim. Jesus gave Him the good news of salvation and the eternal life which is to come. And with that freedom, the chains which held him no longer mattered.
Another pastor who was imprisoned for his faith put it this way: “A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes, does various unessential things, and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent”.[2]
This is the door which Christ opens for you through His Word. It is a door which only He can open it, and He opens it for you. Believe it, come out of your prison. You are free of sin and death. They hold you no more. Trust in Christ. He has come in the flesh, and He will come again with a mighty arm to save you. As the Psalmist declared for you and me: I will hear what God the | Lord will speak,* for He will speak peace to His | people (Ps. 85:8). Amen.
And now the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
[1] C.F.W. Walther’s The Proper Distinction Between Law & Gospel, Thesis IX.
[2] 1943 German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, while imprisoned by the Nazis, observed in a letter:
This page was created on 01/08/2007 and last edited on: 01/08/2007