“Listen to a True Advent Preacher” Luke 3.1-14, Advent 2C, 2015

1. Please pray with me.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer.  Amen.  The message from God’s Word today is taken from Luke 3:1-14.  Today we hear John the Baptist cry out to us this Advent season as he urges us to turn from our sins and as he invites us to receive God’s salvation.  The message is entitled, “Listen to a True Advent Preacher.”  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.   
2. Advent is a season of preparation. At home people are cleaning, getting out their Christmas decorations, purchasing a tree, baking, hosting and attending parties, and simply getting ready for Christmas. But into our Advent “busy-ness” each year enters John the Baptist. He interrupts our schedules and demands that preparations of a different kind be made. John demands that we get ready for Jesus. Before we can bask in Christmas joy and the birth of a special baby, John forces us to examine ourselves and our world. In the style of the Old Testament prophets before him, John challenges Advent people with a message of personal self-examination. Advent, John reminds us, is a time to prepare to welcome Jesus and not simply our invited Christmas houseguests.
3. When I was a teenager, I used to tease my mother about some of her most particular preparations for company. She would get down on her hands and knees and clean the kitchen floor with a bucket and a wash rag making sure that there wasn’t a single spot of dirt. It looked beautiful when she was finished—so neat and orderly. I tried to point out that there was a speck of dirt in the corner of the kitchen that she missed. She wanted everything to be perfect when we were preparing for guests. She attended to every detail.
4. The advent of guests causes the host not only to straighten up, but also to fix things around the house—a broken doorknob, a loose towel rack, the burned-out lightbulb, the leaky guest toilet. Preparing for company often causes the hosts to look at their home, to examine their surroundings with a whole new perspective. Suddenly the countertops are too messy, the broken chair inadequate, the silverware too tarnished. Preparing for guests demands self-examination as much as it involves a “to do” list.
5. John the Baptist doesn’t seem like a character who would have likely understood all that’s involved in welcoming company to our homes. He spent most of his time in the wilderness eating locusts and wild honey, after all—hardly the place for a bed-and-breakfast. But, John did understand how a people ought to welcome their God. His bold preaching in the wilderness called people to preparation. His challenging words called people to self-examination, along with a “to do” list, if they were going to be ready to receive the one coming after him. John’s prophetic message called people to get ready to receive Jesus.
6. This Advent season John the Baptist calls us to examine our lives, our values, and our priorities. If we are to prepare to receive the Prince of Peace at Christmas, we must be willing to go through the detailed preparation process just as we do when planning for company at home. Outside the church, people are drinking eggnog with their neighbors, singing along with Bing Crosby in the elevator, and hanging their ornaments and lights on their Christmas trees. But, in worship, we as the people of God hear the challenging words of John the Baptist, calling for a different kind of preparation. John the Baptist and his message of repentance can’t be avoided.
7. John the Baptist is a true Advent Preacher.  He’s the very prophet whom the Lord appointed to clear the way for his coming. He marched right in where angels feared to tread and laid it on the line to all who heard him: “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees,” he announced. All the dead wood was to be cut out of the Lord’s forest. “Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (v 9).
8. Now that’s a little unsettling, if we have the ears to hear it. And it should be. For the sad truth is that more often than not, you and I don’t produce the good fruit our Lord expects. We simply don’t love God with all our heart and soul and strength, much less love our neighbor as ourselves. Despite our best efforts, there are those we have hurt and those we have failed to help. Our thoughts and desires are soiled with sin. There’s nothing good within us, in our sinful nature.
9. That’s how preparing the way for the Lord’s coming begins, when you and I are laid low by the hammer blows of God’s Law, so that we might be lifted up and comforted by the Gospel of God’s grace in Christ Jesus, his Son. The way of the Lord is the way of repentance, you see. That is, it calls for change. A change of mind and heart, which only God can work within us by the power of his Spirit working through his Word.  That’s what we need this Advent season: a change so that we can straighten up—straighten up our hearts, clean out our messed-up hearts so cluttered with sin, and clear out our lives, littered with shame and death, so that they might be filled to overflowing with the life of Jesus Christ instead.
10. Not that such a change comes easy. It means the death of the habits of the sinful heart. And such habits always die hard. It’s always much easier to love and serve ourselves than it is to love and serve God. It always comes naturally to the sinful heart to lash out with anger when we’re hurt, to return evil for evil, to repay injury with injury. It is much easier to cut down other people than to love them and build them up. It’s easier for the sinful heart to curse and swear, to lie and deceive by God’s name, than to pray, praise, and give him thanks. That’s why the way of the Lord leads first to the cross before it leads to joy. That’s why the Christian life is a life of constant repentance. First we confess our sins, then God “is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9). First the cross and then the crown, such is the way, the road, we walk.
11. So let’s stir up our hearts this Advent season. It’s time for a change, a new way. Let’s lift up the valleys of our deep despair, bring down the mountain peaks of our lofty pride, and straighten out our crooked ways. How is this done? What does this mean? you ask.
12. What this means for you I can’t tell. It means different things for different people, depending on who they are and where they are in life. You can tell that from John, the true Advent preacher’s instructions to those who heard his preaching. For tax collectors, the way of the Lord meant to be honest; for soldiers, it meant to be content and not take what didn’t belong to them. For everyone, it meant generosity and mercy, giving food and clothing to those who had none. But how is this done? That I can tell you: by the grace of God.
13. Jesus the Son of God, who came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, will change your hearts and make them new. He who left the Father’s throne in lowly humility to be cradled in a cattle trough and wrapped in swaddling clothes is closer in his Word to you than your little child with his arms wrapped around your neck.
14. This Lord Jesus will sweep the cobwebs out of our hearts and make them fit for his coming. He will straighten up the crooked paths by which we have wandered far away from our Father’s house and bring us home again. He will tear down our stubborn pride and melt our hardened hearts to enfold us in his love. He will lift us up out of the pits of our despair and grief to comfort us with the presence of his Holy Spirit and restore to us the joy of his salvation.
15. So get ready. Get ready for Christmas, but above all else prepare your hearts for the coming of Christ. Let this Advent season be your comfort and joy as deep within takes root the reality that Christ has actually come in the flesh and will come again at the end of time. But he comes this very day in his Gospel and Sacrament to make you new, whole, and free.  So prepare the way for his coming.  John the true advent preacher wants it to be so for you. Let this be your constant Advent prayer: “Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready the way of your only-begotten Son.”  Amen.