1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our
Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The message from God’s Word in our 2nd
Advent Midweek service is taken from Matthew 3:1-12 and it’s entitled, “Advent’s Fiery Preacher,” dear brothers
and sisters in Christ.
2.
December 6th
may hold little meaning for many of us. It’s not a day that many Americans
consider a special part of our Advent and Christmas celebrations. And yet, this
time of year we commemorate a man whose remembrance would change the way
Christmas is celebrated. December 6 is the day set aside in the Church to
remember Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. One of the best-known stories from the life
of Nicholas takes place long before he became a Bishop of the Church. Historians
tell us that Nicholas was orphaned as a small child, but his parents had left
him heir to a modest fortune. While still a young man, Nicholas learned that a
certain family in his village had grown so poor that the father of the house
was at the point of selling his daughters into the worst form of slavery. And
so late at night, Nicholas crept to the house and dropped three bags of gold
through the window—left to be discovered by the family in the morning. This begins the tale of a midnight bringer of
gifts, laden with heavy sacks and a heart breaking with generosity.
3.
But the
Nicholas we often see visiting the children of Europe at Christmastime, the man
clothed in the fine robes of a wealthy churchman, is no doubt a far cry from
the ancient bishop of Myra. In Benjamin Brittin’s cantata “St. Nicholas,” Eric Crozier reminds us of this simple man. The Nicholas who walked the streets at night
on errands of charity, who turned the parish hall into a clinic during a
plague, who refused to eat during a time of famine until all had food, who was
thrown into jail for protesting the injustices suffered by his people, this Nicholas certainly
didn’t
spend his time in silks and cloth woven of gold and silver, in fine fur. He
would no doubt be shocked to see the way people “dress him up” in order to decorate their Christmases today.
4.
If it takes a
little work to fit into our Advent the man of the day for December 6th, it
takes a lot of work to fit in the man of the day in our text: John the Baptist.
Matthew 3 tells us, “In those days John the Baptist came
preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand.’ For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said,
‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make
his paths straight” ’ ” (vv 1–3).
5.
It takes a
lot of cleaning and dressing up to fit this man of the wilderness into our
holiday gatherings. Everything about him—from his camel fur and leather
clothing to his diet of bugs, from his lack of political sense to his offensive
preaching—everything about John stands in opposition to the mood we seek to
create for our “holiday season.” Like
an uninvited guest at the Christmas open house, John barges in, throwing both
hosts and guests into dismay. John the Baptist and the “Christmas spirit” just don’t mix.
“You brood of vipers!” John
cries out to the highly respected religious people of his time. Do you realize
what he’s saying? He’s saying, “Your
mother was a snake!” He’s telling them they’re all children not of Abraham
but of that old serpent, Satan. How’s that for a “Season’s Greetings!” and a “Happy
Holidays!”? There was no sentimentality here. John’s preaching of the Kingdom and his
Baptism for repentance weren’t to be trifled with. This wasn’t for those
interested only in religious duty. In fact, for all who thought that repentance
was easy work, John had sobering news.
6.
Luther summed
up John’s message well when, in the Smalcald Articles, he identified John as the
fiery messenger of the Apocalypse who announces the time for the fulfillment of
the mystery of God. Luther writes: “But here comes the fiery angel of St. John
[Revelation 10], the true preacher of repentance. With one bolt of lightning,
he hurls together both those selling and those buying works. He says: “Repent!”
[Matthew 3:2]. Now one group imagines,
“Why, we have repented!” The other says, “We need no repentance.” John says, “Repent, both of you. You false
penitents and false saints, both of you need the forgiveness of sins. Neither
of you know what sin really is. Much less your duty to repent of it and shun
it. For no one of you is good. You are full of unbelief, stupidity, and
ignorance of God and God’s will. But He is present here, of whose ‘fullness we
have all received, grace upon grace’ ” [John 1:16]. Without Him, no one can be righteous before God. Therefore,
if you want to repent, repent rightly. Your works of penance will accomplish
nothing. As for you hypocrites, who do not need repentance, you serpents’
brood, who has assured you that you will escape the wrath to come and other
judgments?” [Matthew 3:7; Luke 3:7]. (SA III III 30–32)
7.
“Now there’s
a fiery preacher for you! If only we had preachers like that today!” we’re
tempted to think. “He could put the fear
of God into you, and I bet he’d get results! If we’d get back to that kind of
preaching—then we’d have some spark in this church.” But, for all of John’s preaching power, for
all his bold claims and stinging criticisms, he’s not the fiery preacher of today’s text. Nothing could
be more wrong. In fact, it’s John himself who warns us against making that
mistake: “I come with water only and a
message to repent, but he comes
with the Spirit and with fire!”
8.
Nicholas the
bishop, Isaiah the prophet, John the Baptist—they’re just little lights on the
Advent wreath, shining in our dark nights to call us to hope and readiness. They
fade when the true light who enlightens every person, the dayspring from on
high, the sun of righteousness, appears. They can’t help but decrease as Jesus
increases, though their work isn’t finished until they’ve pointed us to him.
9.
But why do
they have to point us to this Jesus? Matthew 3:12 says, “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). Why in Advent do they have to point us to such a
fiery Jesus?
I think it’s one of the greatest ironies of our Christmas celebration that at
the one time of year when the malls will pipe in songs about Jesus, the gentle,
innocent baby, at the one time of year when the world will acknowledge at least
a smidgen of joy at the coming of the Child, we, the Church, proclaim a Jesus
with a pitchfork ready to put the world through a Baptism of fire. And the sad
side of this irony is that many in the Church are ready to side with the malls.
10.
Jesus knew
what the world needed, and he knows what we still need today. Not just good
memories to make us feel good about one another. Not just warnings that we’d
better watch out and better not cry, warnings to be nice and not naughty. The
world needed God’s righteous judgment and new life, life that could come only
from the Holy Spirit. The world needed a Savior, one who would take our sins into
himself, would die so that we could die in him, be buried with him, and in him
pass through God’s judgment and be
raised to newness of life. That’s what it means for Jesus to baptize with fire:
it means that all of us who’ve been baptized into Christ have already passed
through the fire; we’ve been judged, purified, made clean and new. When this preacher says to us,
“My child, your sins are forgiven,”
his words are final. No John or Isaiah could speak with that kind of authority.
His words were final and his words were fire, words that leave our hearts
burning.
11.
It’s true,
Advent calls us to repent: in Isaiah’s visions, in Nicholas’s challenge to
charity and justice, in John’s cries to make our crooked lives straight. But
that’s not to say that Advent is telling us each year that our Baptism and our
Jesus have lost their power. Advent isn’t telling us that having once
celebrated our Jesus we now need to return to the Law to be saved. Advent calls
us to prepare for the Jesus who will come by learning again the Jesus who has come, Jesus the
child of the Virgin, and the Jesus who comes to us now in Word and water and
bread and wine. Advent calls us to return to our Baptism and live in that
Baptism. Advent calls us not to try to clothe ourselves in our own
righteousness but to put on Jesus and live in him.
12.
Advent is no
season of gloom, nor is there nearly as much doom in Advent as some would have
us believe. Compared with the world’s “happy
holidays” of artificial cheer and baseless hope, Advent is a season of
genuine joy. Restrained joy to be sure, as is always the case in the
preparation for the arrival of one we love so dearly. If we’re consumed by Advent’s
work of preparation, it’s because of our passion for this fiery guest. Our work
of Advent preparation is no chore, it’s the very work that gives our lives
purpose. We’ve seen the Lord. With Jesus, we’ve walked and died and risen
again. Jesus, the Fiery Preacher of
Advent, Has Seen Us through the Judgment and Set Us on Fire with His Love. In his love, we now work to make ready our
hearts, our homes, our world for his coming. And on our lips is the prayer, “Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.”
Amen.
