181202 Sermon for Advent 1, December 2, 2018
A couple weeks ago we had a reading from 2 Peter where he
said that in the last times scoffers will come scoffing, wondering where Jesus
is. He is supposed to come, but things
are continuing on like they always have been since the beginning of Creation. This point of view is the major alternative to
thinking like a Christian. “Things
have always gone on the way that they have, and they are going to continue to
go on that way.” Over the centuries
this message gets tweaked here and there, but it is mainly the same.
Among us, therefore, we hear about what sounds like the
opposite of things going on like they always have—the story of innovation and
progressivism. The times, they are a
changin’, but let’s not forget that that song is over fifty years old. The message of modern times is even older—at
least a couple hundred years old. They
all say that with our own natural human smarts and ambitions we have discovered
what is really useful, equitable and good.
The old ways are over and done with.”
President Obama, a few years ago, spoke according to this
old narrative when so-called “marriage” was invented for people of the same sex. He spoke about being on the “right side” of
history. What he meant by that is that
things are going to stay the same. We
aren’t ever going to go back to those Neanderthal days when only men and women were
married. The times, they are a changin’,
but then they are going to stay the same.
Supposedly we’ve figured out yet another thing to make life more
pleasant for ourselves, and now life will carry on like it always has.
Modern Man has forgotten about God because it doesn’t seem
to increase his quality of life. And so
he has become an expert at finding the little comforts and
improvements—tweaking this and that. He
isn’t able to life his mind above the bushes and berries that are right in
front of his nose. Everything is
mundane, but he wants to believe that the final frontiers are being conquered,
and that the greatest changes are afoot.
But this is just blindness caused by pride.
The season of Advent affords us the opportunity to speak
about real change. The word “advent”
means “coming” or “arrival.” And there
is a two-fold coming that we consider during this four week season—Christ’s
first coming and his second coming.
Christ’s first coming is at Christmas, when he came down from heaven and
was incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy
Spirit. His second coming has not
happened yet. He sits at the right hand
of God and will come again to judge the living and the dead.
Jesus, the Son of God incarnate, is the great change. By the redemption he has worked, we are
prepared for a land, not just of milk and honey, but where righteousness
dwells. As King David puts it in Psalm
23, “Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and
I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Through Jesus we are acceptable in God’s
sight and may live together with him. By
Jesus’s actions 2,000 years ago as well as his actions today through his Word
and Sacraments, he is bringing this about.
The final step of his total deliverance has not yet happened, but fast
approaches. This is the radical
alternative to the way that the world thinks.
The thinking of the world has been the same from the
beginning. You see it already in Adam
and Eve. After they fell into sin they
thought, “Well, that stinks. We really
screwed up there. But I suppose we
should try to make the most of it.” And
so they engage in busyness. They try to
deal with the effects of their sin. They
try to put out of mind that thing that the Lord had said: “In the day that
you eat of it you will surely die.” Busyness
and forgetfulness became the new normal for them.
But God brought about change for them through the preaching
of the Gospel. God promised a seed of
the woman who would set them free from their slavery to the serpent. Peace with God was given to them through the promise
of the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then, even though they still had to busy themselves with making clothing
and gathering food, their hearts weren’t really in it anymore. That’s not where their joy was located. They were looking for and hastening the day
when things would be changed. They
already had fellowship with God by faith.
By being redeemed by Jesus, they wanted to also have fellowship with God
by sight, and live in the land where righteousness dwells.
Wherever the Gospel is not preached, or where the Gospel is
preached but not believed, you will find that people have no other choice than
to pour their entire selves into this present life. Everybody has their own thing. Everybody has their own particular likes and
dislikes and interests. But amid all the
diversity, they are all the same. They
all are trying to make the most of it.
New discoveries or social experiments give the impression of change, but
it is all mundane busywork. Like Adam
and Eve the unbeliever does his best to ignore the word of the Lord: “In the
day that you sin, you will surely die.”
It seems to them that there is nothing that can be done about death, who
knows what is going on with God (if there even is a God), and so we might as
well get busy doing things that seem as though they will matter.
In a strange way people get what they want. If people believe that there’s nothing to be
done about death, and who knows what the truth is about God, and that the one
thing we can be sure about is the material stuff that is right in front of our
noses, then they will live accordingly.
Jesus says that wherever your treasure is, there your heart will be
also. And so if the thing that is
really valued is the quality of one’s earthly life, then that’s where the heart
is going to be. That’s where all the
time and energy is going to be directed.
On the other hand, if your treasure is in heaven—if it is in the new
land where righteousness dwells and where you will dwell in the house of the
Lord all the days of your life—then that is also going to have an effect on the
way that you live your life.
For our advent midweek services that are coming up this
Wednesday and the Wednesday following I’m going to use the theme of heaven
being our home. We’ll look at the
stories of two of the patriarchs—Abraham and Jacob—who confessed themselves to
be strangers and aliens to this present life.
Both were taken out of their homeland, and, in a sense, lived as exiles
with the Lord God as their companion and their hope. Although I chose only to look at Abraham and
Jacob, I could have chosen any number of saints in the Scriptures who lived
having their hope in the great change God brings about in Jesus—that he will deliver
us out of this old life of sin and bring to fruition a new life.
Each of our readings this morning speak to this great change
in Jesus in its own way. Our Old Testament
reading is from the prophet Jeremiah who lived several centuries before Christ
was born. He prophesies about Jesus’s
advent. He calls Jesus the branch of
David because Jesus was from the house and lineage of David, but there was no
longer any great tree of David at Jesus’s time.
The earthly rule of the house of David was put to an end by the
Babylonians. Jeremiah says that Jesus
will be called, “The Lord is our righteousness”—an interesting name and
highly significant. This is testimony to
the justification that we have in Jesus that is outside of ourselves. Normally righteousness is a matter of what a
person does or doesn’t do. In fact, our
reason is incapable of conceptualizing any other kind of righteousness besides
this earthly righteousness. But Jeremiah
says that Jesus will be our righteousness.
Jesus is perfectly and powerfully righteous. He gives this righteousness to us, even
though we are unrighteousness, so that it becomes our own. This righteousness makes us fit to live
together with God, which otherwise is impossible.
At the end of our reading Jeremiah points to the greatness
of the change that this Branch of David will bring about. He says that it will be greater than when God
led the people of Israel out of Egypt into the promised land. There was nothing more fundamental and
important to the Jews than that they were delivered out of Egypt, were
confirmed as God’s own special people, and given the land of milk and
honey. That was their whole
identity. But because of Jesus and his
deliverance, people will no longer talk about Canaan as their inheritance
because this is too paltry and small.
Our promised land is heaven. No
eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the imagination of the
heart of Man, what God has prepared for those who love him. The old fundamental curse of the Garden of
Eden was placed upon Jesus, so that it is done away with. The new life, free from sin, is different
from anything we have ever known. This
is greater by far than the mighty acts of God in Exodus.
In our Epistle reading St. Paul speaks about how the time is
short. Our salvation is nearer to us
than when we first believed, and so we should live accordingly. Just as worldly people believe that they are
going to live forever in this life and so they live accordingly—greedily snatch
up whatever money, goods, or experiences they can—so also we should know that
the new life and the new land of heaven is here. Our fleshly desires need not all be satisfied,
because this is not where our true joy is to be found. Our true joy is in Jesus. Therefore we do not live just like everybody
else. We do what needs to be done to get
by, but our eyes are on the horizon: when is the bridegroom coming?
Our Gospel reading, also, focuses on the big change Jesus is
bringing about. He makes his advent into
Jerusalem during Holy Week to bring about the transformation of life as we know
it. By his blood he will propitiate the
sins of the whole world. The enmity that
exists between God and men because of Man’s uncleanness will be done away with
and there will be peace on earth, God’s good will toward men. These people who are welcoming Jesus are
witnessing the way that the Lord is becoming their righteousness and their words
testify to it. They need that righteousness. They say, “Have mercy on me, O Son of
David. We believe that you are coming
according to God’s will, you are coming in the name of the Lord, and we rejoice
at it.” This is the song that
Christians of all times sing: “Have mercy on me, Jesus, Son of David.” We still sing that in the liturgy today,
before Christ’s advent to us in the Lord’s Supper, and may we sing that song
from our hearts.
Advent gives us the opportunity to look up from the bushes
and the berries, and consider the great things that God has done and is doing
and will do. The world likes to brag
about how much it changes and progresses, but all they are doing is rearranging
the deck chairs on the Titanic. Real
change is brought about by Jesus. He
came at Christmas and redeemed the world.
He comes today among us, preaching the forgiveness of sins and giving us
his own righteousness. He will come
again with his final advent and all things will be changed totally and
completely—more radically than anyone can understand. He will bring his own to the life of no sin
and only joy and righteousness, but the scoffers will be confined in hell,
because they did not want to have anything to do with God’s beloved Son. Each, in a strange way, gets what he or she
desired. May God give us good desires,
because our own desires are evil.
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