It's not who you are, but whose you are!

Advent 3, 2023

Isaiah 61, 1 Thessalonians 5, John 1

            Today we hear again about John the Baptist, not from Mark’s Gospel as last week, but from the Gospel of John. The fourth Evangelist depicts a detailed interview of John the Baptist by an investigating committee sent from the Temple establishment in Jerusalem; they want to know just who John the Baptist thinks he is to be doing what he does. Again and again the Baptist answered them, as if to emphasize: I am not the Christ. I am not the promised one. I am not the savior. The mighty one comes after me.  The Evangelist uses the word testimony to describe this answer. It is as if the Baptist were put on trial, taking an oath as called into the dock, swearing on the Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Unsatisfied with his denials, however, the investigators from Jerusalem press him, "Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?"

Interesting question for us nowadays who seem to be obsessed with the question of identity. Who are you, John, if you are not the Christ? John answered, "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord,'" as the prophet Isaiah had foretold. See, he side-steps the question of his identity, of who he is, by pointing away from himself to the coming Christ.

If you get one thing straight about Jesus Christ, as also about yourself in your own identity, get this straight. He comes to us. You don’t go to God. You don’t have to earn points with God. You don’t have to climb mountains up to God. With a thunderbolt the Baptist silences all such falsely pious pretension and any grounds of religious boasting based upon a human identity claim. He says instead, Behold the one who comes! That means in plain English, Shush! Be quiet! Cease and desist from all nervous questioning about who you are, or what you must do, or think, or feel.

People have doubts that God loves them or cares for them. People look at themselves and sense a mess: a poor, frightened, confused, lost soul. So people throw themselves into every sort of mindless project, or latch onto some prefabricated notion what they are, to keep their mind off the emptiness within– trying thusly to make themselves right, firm, fixed, settled, an invulnerable self-same self, unchangeable identity through tempest and storm. And as such, acceptable, justified, lifting up the valleys, leveling the mountains. John says, Stop that! All such desperate, that is, hopeless human striving does nothing to prepare the way of the One who comes to us. To the extent that it succeeds, indeed, it blocks his way. It interferes with Him who comes to you, just as you are, without one plea. What, then? John summons us: Look with me instead! Open your eyes now in faith to see the One mightier than I, who comes for you, who baptizes in the Spirit, who preaches good news to the poor. Realize that who you are does not avail. What matters is whose you are!

            Jesus who comes to us is the savior, then, of all who cannot save themselves. This is his glory, the glory that is his alone. On Christmas Day, we shall hear the angel say, “Unto you this day is born in the city of David a savior, who is Christ, the Lord,” and thusly join us with the shepherds to look in Bethlehem and see. And there is absolutely nothing for us to do about that message of a Savior who comes to us but to behold with the shepherds and to believe in the sense that here the Son of God has come to seek and to find also me, indeed, to be born also in me.

As Luther used to say: it does you no good that Christ was born in Bethlehem unless he is born in you today, indeed every day, conferring his identity upon you, Christian, as you are called after Christ who has sought and found you. Later on in the Gospel of John, the Pharisees ask Jesus, “What must we do to be doing the work of God? Jesus answers, “This is the work of God: that you believe in him whom God has sent.” That’s it! Stop looking at your own selves! Stop wondering who you are, what you must do, think or feel! Stop every attempt at fixing your own identity as if to make you invulnerable, especially against the divine change to occur when Christ comes by his Spirit to be born in you! Don’t fall, then, for Satan’s subtle trick of wondering whether you have faith --  that only turns the focus back on me, myself and I. Rather, look outside of yourself with John and behold what God who so loved the world has done in sending his Son – also to you, as you are, where you are. He is the savior. Love caused his incarnation. This is his glory. And there is nothing for you to do about that but to behold and believe – and merely tell the truth, like John, so when asked who you are instead to acclaim whose you are, to testify to Christ your joy.

Like John, we Advent people of God point away from ourselves to the one who is coming, to Christ. We are different –not because we have made ourselves better than others-- our lives are just as broken and needy as any others. But in the midst of our common human brokenness, our lives are transparent to Jesus Christ who comes to us to make us his own. We become different because He is different who claims and wins us, on whom the Spirit of the Lord came and stayed forever, the LORD’s anointed sent to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners. We are different because our lives point with John the Baptist to Christ, because we for our own selves identify with the oppressed, brokenhearted and captive to whom he comes to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor. That means: it is not who you are, but whose you are!

            Martin Luther once commented on a psalm verse with a similar meaning: ‘The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His steadfast love:’ “According to this verse,” wrote Luther, “God is by definition nothing else than grace and favor, but only to the humble and afflicted… Therefore He forbids despair as the highest wickedness. He wants us to bear the tribulation in faith; He does not want us to add despair. Presumption about our own righteousness and despair about our unworthiness are equally great sins… Each of us should bear his cross and affliction so that we are not crushed by our sorrows and fall into despair, for that would rob God of his divinity, which He shows primarily in His mercy…” (LW 12:406-7).

All week long you, dear Christian people, you are with John the Baptist put on trial for the Kingdom of God, whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not; on the job, in school, at home, you claimed and baptized people of God are put on the witness stand of life. In whom do you hope? In what do you trust? The only real question here is whether you will point to Christ, the friend and savior of all failures whose self-made identities have shattered on the hard rocks of life. Why is that sometimes so hard?

The devil’s first move is the sneak attack, assailing you with all your failings as if to say, “Look at yourself! See, what as miserable excuse for a Christian you are! How can God love or care about you? What a shameful witness you make!” So he gets your eyes off Christ and back onto your own worthiness. If that fails, the devil then tries the frontal assault, slinging at you the arrows of outrageous fortune, until it seems that the sunshine of the Lord’s favor is beclouded in thickest darkness and the whole world is lost and spinning out of control. Then you go looking in the darkness for some other work of God than the one light that shines in the darkness, the work which God has done in sending his Son to the poor, the captive, the oppressed. Then you get to thinking that you can help God out, by taking charge and straightening things out. And what a mess of things we make then! Now we are going to save not only ourselves but also God. Where do you think that will lead? History is red with the blood which has flowed from those who thought to take the kingdom of God by force, motivated as these were by the secret sin of despair.

            Joy in Christ who comes to us is the Spirit’s antidote to despair. Faith is tested and tried and to the eyes of the world it seems like nothing, as no real identity at all, just religious illusion. But we rejoice always. Waiting on God, pointing to Christ who comes to us instead of boasting of our own works or wisdom or self-made identity, trusting that he comes to us in our sadness as well as our happiness – this patience of faith does not occur naturally to us. It comes by John the Baptist’s model testimony and the Spirit with whom this Mightier One baptizes.

Luther taught us preachers and indeed all Christians to be like John the Baptist: always to urge Christ, provide Christ, point to Christ! Feed the people of God with this message of the One who comes to them, who baptizes them with his own Spirit, who himself preaches good news to the poor so that you who know how tough the life of faith can be may have your joy renewed. I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God, says the prophet on behalf of all those to whom and for whom the Lord comes; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. See now how the Lord now identifies us who merely receive and believe!

Joy springs renewed from the knowledge of divine love that comes for us, works for us, wins us now and forever. This knowledge is Christ, whose people we are. He who came in humble birth at Bethlehem will come at last with power and great glory. But in this interim, Christ comes by the Spirit's testimony that began once and for all with John the Baptist. The joy of the Advent people of God, we poor, oppressed, and captive who are nevertheless beloved, will be complete and never end, singing God all the glory for all his rich mercy in Christ. Amen.

Longing for a New Earth Where Righteousness is at Home

Advent 2, 2023
Isaiah 40, 2 Peter 3, Mark 1

But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. Can you imagine a world in which righteousness is at home? A world in which no child is unwelcome, neglected, abused, unable to sleep at night for pangs of hunger? A world in which love is never betrayed? A world in which addictions and obsessions do not drive otherwise precious people to madness and the lives of their loved ones into chaos? A world in which greed gives place to generosity, suspicion to trust, and malice to goodwill? Where wars and oppressions shall cease? Our reading today from 2 Peter asks us not only to imagine such a world but to long for it with all our hearts -- and so we do, every time we pray with Jesus to his heavenly Father, the God of Israel, Thy kingdom come! Thy will be done!

The text from 2 Peter today tells us that God’s patience with our wicked world will not last forever, that God’s suffers with the sinfulness of this world in order to give time for repentance, that God’s repentant people therefore live by faith in his promise as those on the way to a new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

This was also the message of John the Baptist, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Live, he demands, as God’s people on the way to a new earth, where righteousness is at home! Come out, then, from that unrighteousness world of the old humanity, take a bath in the river Jordan for all to see as if transiting from wilderness wanderings to a land flowing with milk and honey! Wash the dirt from your skins as a sign of turning from the filth of sin, with the hope and plea for forgiveness and inclusion on the great day when God’s new world arrives. People of God! You are not at home in the world of unrighteousness but rather yearn for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

This is also message of the remarkable central section of the Book of Isaiah, chapters 40 to 55. Here the prophet preaches to exiles who had been uprooted from Jerusalem by invaders and for forty years now had lived exiled in foreign Babylon. Babylon was the most spectacular city of the world at this time, a monument to imperial glory, decked with slave-built gardens and juggernauts and the temples of many gods. But God’s people have not been at home here. They have not been able to settle down. For all the splendor of ancient Babylon, they longed for little Jerusalem, for Mount Zion and the Temple built by Solomon – how can they sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? They have longed for God to deliver them from exile – as might we all, exiles from Eden that we are.

So after 40 years of exile, the prophet suddenly preaches the gospel: Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, "Here is your God!" And what is the good tidings or gospel of God’s presence which the prophet proclaims to the exiles? See, the Lord GOD comes with might… He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep. God’s people, who cannot settle down in wicked Babylon, howsoever great and glorious! God’s people, who cannot be at home in a city saturated with idols! God’s people, who cannot go along with the wickedness all around you! Lift up your hearts! God comes. He is on the way. That is the gospel --He will gather you up to bring you to new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

            Are you ready for that? Are you really ready to leave behind this world of unrighteousness, no longer to hanker after its fleshpots but like Abraham to follow in faith to new heavens and a new earth? Would you leave the gilded cage of Babylon to return to broken-down Jerusalem? Would you wash away the privileges of our world of unrighteousness in naked hope for a world as yet unseen? A bird in the hand, they say, is worth two in the bush. Better the devil we know, they say, than the devil we don’t. For all its misery and wickedness, this world of unrighteousness all around us has the virtue of being visible and familiar; so we become accustomed to it, settle in and make peace with it. We learn to go along in it to get along and our hearts become attached to its bread and circuses. The season of Advent with John the Baptist wonders about us: Can we tear your hearts free?

In fact when the Jewish exiles in Babylon heard the good tidings that God at last would bring them home to Jerusalem, many resisted; they objected to the uncertainty of the promise and the long difficult travel through the desert through mountain and valleys – new wanderings in the wilderness, like their ancestors had once endured on the way from Egypt to the Promised land.. To this objection, the prophet cried out, in words that Martin Luther King Jr. often voiced to summon courage for the passage: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. In other words the LORD who calls you to His new world also promises to be with you on the journey to it. He will make your passage safe and make the road level. He will lead you on the way as a shepherd leads his flock, for He is not only at the goal waiting for you at the end, but guide present now on the difficult road leading you to that new world where righteousness is at home. So do not object that the way is too hard, do not resist because the trip is too demanding, do not doubt that the goal is uncertain. For the glory of the LORD shall certainly be revealed, and all people shall see it together.

            Are you ready then for your Advent journey? Perhaps it is not the fear of the trip or the uncertainty of the goal, but something else, deeper and sneakier, that weighs you down and holds you back. Perhaps you are paralyzed not by fear or doubt but by guilt. Perhaps feelings of shame and unworthiness are such that secretly you do not want that new earth, where righteousness is at home, knowing that you yourself are not righteous, that you would not be at home there. Perhaps like Peter you would respond to the Lord’s call to follow him to a world in which righteousness is at home by saying, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man!” The prophet of the Babylonian exile sensed this same resistance when he preached the good news that God is coming. That is why he began his gospel of deliverance for sinners complicit with their exile announcing God’s majestic forgiveness: Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Never mind, in other words: no matter how bad you feel or how guilty you may really be: God is ready and rich with mercy, ready to forgive and just so God makes you ready, just by saying so with divine enforcement authority. God’s Word does it all.

"See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'" Whether it is the prophet preparing exiles to march across the desert from Babylon to Jerusalem or John the Baptizer preparing the people of first century Judea for the coming of the Messiah, or your preacher today in our little corner of a world where righteousness is not at home, God’s Word does it all, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken. God’s Word makes us ready: it forgives sins, it makes us long for the Promised Land where righteousness is at home, it frees us from addictions to the unrighteousness goods of this world. God’s Word does it all. The people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.

The eternal gospel, the mighty Word of God spoken beforehand as in prophets like the second Isaiah, but once for all in the coming of Jesus Christ at his birth in Bethlehem makes us God’s people; it puts us on our Advent way to join true and faithful Israel, to await new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. There proud Babylon will be but a dim sad memory. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!” says the Bible’s final book. But the word of our God will stand forever, just as we heard Jesus say last week, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will last forever.” Are you ready?

Lend your ears to God’s glad tidings, set your hearts on His promise of a new earth, where righteousness is at home.  Pray fervently and mean it, Thy kingom come thy will be done on earth as in heaven! – and look, just so Lord has made you ready! Christ is born anew in your hearts. He is our righteousness, and He makes himself at home even in our wayward hearts, so that we are no longer at home in our world of unrighteousness. But with Abraham who left his home and family to go the place that God would show him, with the Hebrews on the way from the dark Egypt of this world through the wilderness trials and testings to the promised land, with the exiles returning through the desert, deserting the ill-gotten glories of Babylon to embrace lowly Zion, city of our God, so we too are set out on our Advent journey, looking for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah, the coming King of the new earth, where righteousness is at home. Grant it, Lord, to us all. Amen. 

ADVENT 1, 2023

Advent 1 – 2023

Mark 13:24-37

The End of All Things

            The end of all things! That has been the topic for the final weeks of the church year this past month, and look, once again it is the topic at its new beginning in the season of Advent. For the end is already present in the beginning.

The end of all things! The expression has a double meaning. Our word, end, is used in two ways. We use the word, end, to say, ‘It’s over, it’s done, it’s finished’ – like when time runs out on the clock, the ref blows the whistle, the game has ended. But we also use the word, end, a little less commonly to say: ‘Here’s the point, the goal, the purpose’ – like when we say, ‘The end does not justify the means.’ You can have good goal, say, winning the war on terrorism, but that does not justify any means of winning, say, like using terrorist tactics in turn. So the word, end, has a double meaning: the finish of things and the goal of things. This is also true of the Greek word, eschatos, found in the Bible, from which the theological word, eschatology, comes, meaning the doctrine of the end of all things. When Jesus speaks of the last things in Mark 13, he speaks both about the finish of history and the goal of history. Because we believe in God, we don’t think either the beginning or the end of things is an accident. God created the world with a purpose and when that purpose is achieved, we have come to the end of all things. So the end is already present in the beginning.

            People are fascinated by the last things. Notoriously, some ransack the Bible looking for clues about the day and the hour, expressing disobeying the word of Jesus that we have heard today: But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. The timing is not part of the revelation of Jesus Christ. We are meant to be ignorant of the day and hour, so that we live everyday ready for the end of all things. From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. But doesn’t that sound like timing? Knowing the signs of the times? Here’s the difference: the cosmos may not yet be finished but your little world within it might. In fact this 13th chapter of Mark was originally composed to interpret the coming doom of Jerusalem as the Roman legions approached, advising the Christian community there to flee to the hills. Discourse put this foreboding historical event into the larger framework of God’s purposes. Likewise so are we to do. The cosmos may not be finished, but are little worlds within it might.

The truth, then, is that not only is there the Big End, but until and up to that cosmic big End of all things, we experience in history and in our little lives such endings, Christians are to understand these as dress rehearsals so to speak – not the end of time but the time of the End breaking in upon us. The death and resurrection of the cosmos at the big End is prefigured in our little experiences of trial, testing, loss, grief, when our own little worlds come crashing down. Christians need to know how to read such ‘signs of the times,’ lest they despair and think that even God has lost control of things, so that they persevere in adversity. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Christians live between the first and second comings of Christ, having the promise that the end of all things is in His almighty hands, living now by faith and not sight, trusting, praying, working their own little worlds into the goal of God. Therefore, keep awake-- for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.

In other words, if you are not prepared today, you will never be prepared. I remember when my mother was suddenly stricken and lay dying. I remember praying, ‘Lord, I am not ready for this!’ As painful as losing her was to me, however, I was by the grace of God prepared for this little end of my own little world – just as all faithful Christians are. For believers know that life is a gift, that life can never be taken for granted, that God entrusts us with our time that we may spend it wisely not foolishly, that we live alert and awake to God, ready every day to render an account. Every time of trial and tribulation is for us but a dress rehearsal of that great Day of God, the end of all things – if only today and ever day we live alert and awake to God whose kingdom comes, knowing that whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

We can live this way because of the word and promise of Jesus:  Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake! See, what he said to Peter, James and John, he also says to us today. If that were not bold enough, however, he says that his own words endure forever. What an astonishing contrast. All that we take for granted as fixed and immovable, the sun and stars and moon and earth, the very cosmos, right down to our own little worlds, has had its beginning at God’s command; having served its purpose, so too at God’s command, all comes to completion in the consummation of all things. But the human words of Jesus, uttered in a breath and evaporated into the air, in one ear and out the other, nevertheless outlive the cosmos.

Careless readers think that Jesus in our text admits ignorance of God’s timing and thus makes himself inferior to the Father. But they should read on a little longer to see that Jesus speaks of his human words as divine and eternal words. . Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. And this is why we have peace that passes all understanding, in life and in death, good times and bad and indeed, best of all, nothing to fear on that great Day of God, the end of all things. We may not know how things finish, but we do know that the Father of the Son Jesus Christ works all things for good to them who love Him, that the goal of God in our own little lives and indeed with all the cosmos, is the creation of Beloved Community, a fellowship of love divine, and that we are by grace included in this – and even taste it already now, amid trials and testings, by faith. Revealed in the eternal words of Jesus Christ is the goal of God: beloved community.

For when we see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory... he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. To gather God’s people forever – that is the end of all things, the goal, the purpose, the point of God’s creation from the very beginning! St Paul called it the Body of Christ, knit together in the Spirit’s love under Jesus its Head. St John in the Revelation sees the peoples of many families, tribes, and nations streaming into the New Jerusalem. St Augustine called it the City or Society of God, immensely diverse and variegated in its peoples of every age and race and epoch of history, yet united by a common love for God above all and all things in and under God. Martin Luther spoke of God’s people baked together in one loaf, ‘a little holy flock or community of pure saints under one Head, Christ.’ Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke in the words from the Apostles’ Creed concerning the communion of saints/communion in holy things, both their sharing in the holy things of the Eucharist and their sharing of life together now and forever. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in the same Christian tradition of God’s Beloved Community, where people would not longer be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Now we still live tangled up with what God does not choose, but what sinful humanity chooses with its wars and rumors of war. But we persevere as those who in faith know the end of all things. For the present, this is life is becoming not being, labor not rest, the journey not the destination. The City of God is the goal, to which in its fullness and glory and final victory we have not yet arrived. But we are on the way, thanks be to God, to His end of all things! And even if we stumble and fall on the way, even though scattered and oppressed, at the end of all things we await the Lord who gathers us to Himself forever, to whom be all glory now and forever. Amen.

Announcing the Sermon-of-the-Week feature coming soon

Every Monday, in anticipation of the coming Sunday’s appointed Scripture lessons from the Revised Common Lectionary, this blog will publish a model sermon of exegetical and theological seriousness for the task of preaching. Readers are free to contextualize, adapt or otherwise utilize the model sermon without need of attribution. The blog will begin with the first Sunday of Advent 2023.