Preparing for Something Good

A Sermon given to St. Timothy Lutheran Church

December 7, 2014, Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85; 2 Peter 3:8-14;  Mark 1:1-8

Something to Sing About
When I was young, my parents would often take us to a performance of the Messiah during Advent. The first recitative is based on Isaiah 40:1-3, “Comfort, Comfort, Ye My People”. Though it starts out calmly, the music soon becomes more dramatic as the tenor sings:  "The voice of one crying in the wil-der-ness, Pre-pare ye the way of the Lo-rd. Make straight in the desert, a high-way. For our G-od! (And the orchestra goes: “Bum-Bum.”)

As Christians, we know that the 'one crying in the wilderness' was John the Baptist. John is not a real warm-fuzzy kind of guy.

 Although he did wear fuzzy animal pelts for clothing, his demeanor was not exactly meek and mild. It was more like:

"COME OUT HERE YOU MISERABLE SINNERS! CONFESS YOUR SINS! FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME! - RIGHT NOW!

And he wasn’t the kind of guy who was real good with church potlucks: …“Hey, John what did you bring?....

Eww…Locusts and honey?! EWWW!

But John was crying in the wilderness.   His was a ministry of calling people to repentance - of asking people to make their hearts straight before God.

And while it’s easy to imagine this rough character in rough clothing preaching a rough message – the amazing thing is that the people were going out to him in droves to be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins.

Now just think with me a little about this story and about what is NOT said. Why in the world were the people going out to John in droves to be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins?

Was it because John was personally attractive – he had good hair, a good preaching style and was doing amazing miracles of healing?  ….No…just the opposite.

Was it because John preached in an attractive building, that had attractive interior design, good seating and a killer audio-visual system? …No… He didn’t even have a building!

Was it because all the popular and successful people hung out with John and everybody wanted to be associated with the in crowd? …No, in fact it appears that those who went out to him were the poor, common folk…

What, then, was the appeal of John’s message?

Could it be that John hit a nerve with the people of his day? Could it be that there might have been a general awareness that things were bad, things were not as they should be, and that there had to be something better – that surely God wanted more for his people, and that surely it was high time that he spoke to his people?

Remember – there had been no prophetic word since Malachi – some 400 years previous – that’s like from when Pocahontas married John Rolfe in 1614 until now – And NO WORD from the Lord!   It must have been a desperate time!

Could there have been a general sense of longing and hope that God would eventually do something?

Could there have been a general despair that any current political or religious leader or movement could rescue the people out of their misery?

Was it not likely that the people had seen a long parade of charismatic and corrupt priests and politicians who used their offices and influence to enrich themselves, while further oppressing those they promised to help? – And that they knew in the depths of their being that there was no hope of deliverance in the world system they lived under?  

Finally,   could it have been that John actually was a Prophet of the Most High God, who was delivering a genuine message of hope and deliverance from that same God,  to a people in need, who knew they were needy and were just waiting for the right person with the right message to come along?…

Yes, all these things seem likely.

So when John appears preaching his prickly message of repentance in a prickly costume in a prickly place, it’s reasonable that the people go out to hear his message, and respond en masse by repenting and getting baptized for the forgiveness of their sins!

And there wasn’t even any mass media coverage to gin up interest in this movement! It was all totally organic – totally empowered by God’s Spirit and totally revolutionary to the world system of the day.

But let’s press into this a little more and examine a more detailed description of what the People of Israel may have been looking for:

In his book Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, Brant Pitre explains that although most of us think that the Jewish people of John’s day were waiting for a political deliverer, ‘… many of the Jews were waiting for much more than just a military Messiah. …many of them were waiting for the restoration of Israel in a new exodus.” (Pg. 23).

The Old Testament, says Pitre, foretold such an exodus and that this exodus …”can be summarized by four key events:  1)the  coming of a new Moses” 2) the making of a new covenant; 3) the building of a new Temple; and 4) the journey to a new promised land.” (Pg. 24). Let’s let that sink in just a moment (If you’ve seen the trailer for the new Exodus movie, you might be able to imagine what they were expecting!)

Regarding the first event,  we read in Deuteronomy 18:15-18 that Moses prophesied to the Israelites: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren …And the LORD said to me [Moses]… I will raise up for them a prophet like you [Moses] from among their brethren; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak all that I command Him.”

In other words, God promised through Moses that He would raise up another Moses to speak to God’s people.

“In later Jewish tradition”, says Pitre,  “these words were interpreted as a prophecy of the Messiah, the anointed one, who would be a new Moses. Like the [first]Moses before him,[ the second Moses,] the Messiah, would one day be sent to Israel, in a time of great need, in order to deliver them from Bondage.” Pitre pg. 27.

The new exodus would also lead God’s people into a time of a new experience of God, one that would recap the experience of the elders who went up with Moses to Mount Sinai and ‘ate and drank in the presence of God himself. “ Ex. 24.11). It would literally be Heaven on Earth!

If the repentance that John was calling for was to prepare the people for the coming of the New Moses, who would lead the people into a time when they would sit down with God himself and eat and drink…that would be something to repent about!   That would be worth putting up with a scruffy old prophet for!

Of course, on this side of the cross, we know that Jesus was – and is – the long awaited Messiah. 

  

We know that in Him, God made a new Covenant with his people. In Christ, God built a New Temple – Jesus is the Cornerstone of this temple not made with human hands – in which, we as the Body of Christ participate, as Peter says, ( I Peter 2:5) being built up as living stones, into the Temple of God, the Dwelling of the Holy Spirit to be a Holy Priesthood unto God. And finally, we know that the new land is ultimately the new heaven and the new earth mentioned in our reading today. It’s a re-created place where sin and death have been dealt with once for all, and where God dwells with his people and we feast with him face to face - the New Promised Land.  And we participate in this new Land now when we sit down to the table of the Lord at Communion, the Supper of the Lord, the Foretaste of the Feast to Come.

All this is bound up in the unformed longing of the people of Israel. And we get to experience the ‘Beginning’ of the gospel of Jesus Christ, just as Mark says, for although the Kingdom of God has been inaugurated and is here now, it’s only the foretaste of things to come. But because the foretaste is made of the same stuff as the full feast, we know in part what the full meal deal will be like – a time when all things come into harmony in and around Christ, the head and the Bridegroom of the Church, his Body on earth.

Well, this is a glorious Vision – one worth shouting about. But it’s also one that raises a question, one posed to us by Peter today. He tells us that judgment is coming… and in light of the coming judgment and dissolution of all things raises this question (slide)  …”what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God….? (2Pet. 3:11,12)

Fortunately, it’s not just a rhetorical question. Peter answers his own question: We are to be Patient People, (Patience Grow slide) who wait expectantly for the return of the Lord, people who apply themselves to God’s word – and don’t become too flustered by the hard things in Scripture – and People who …”grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2Pet. 3: 18).

To be patient means in part that we are patient with ourselves and each other. We should probably put up a marquee at the bottom of the hill: “St. Timothy Lutheran Church – Saints, Sinners and Hypocrites Welcome!”

Because you see, it’s just like Pastor Luther said, we are both saints and sinners at the same time. There isn’t any other choice, because the Kingdom of God is here, but it’s not fully here. What we shall be has not yet appeared – and so we know with certainty that Things Are Not As They Should Be!

Yes, we sin – unavoidably so. But yes, we should repent, and that Quickly, knowing that the end of all things is upon us.

What kind of people should we be?  People who tackle the ‘hard sayings’ of Scripture, such as: 

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:29-32. ESV

When the world looks at the Church, it should see a little bit of Heaven on earth. Is that what we’re showing the world? 

No, most assuredly not.

The Church, the Body of Christ is so un-unified it’s not even funny.

But while we descry our lack of unity and basic kindness to one another, we can also say that this is completely understandable because Nothing is as it should be.

And strangely, the recognition that Nothing is as it should be reflects an awareness of Heaven – the place where everything IS as it should be! While this doesn’t relieve us of culpability, it does, in an odd way, normalize the present failures of the church.

Winston Churchill’s famous comment about Americans can, with equal accuracy be applied to the Church: “You can always count on the Church to do the right thing – after it has tried everything else!”

And we do – we often choose the wrong thing before the right thing – it’s part of the human condition in this time between Christ’s first and second Advents.

Which of course brings us back to the relevance of John’s exhortation:

Make straight in the desert, a highway for our God! Return to the Lord! Repent of your sins and prepare the way for the King of the Kingdom of Heaven! That’s what this current season is all about – preparing for something ….GOOD.   

The Birth of Jesus into our world was indeed a good thing It’s the BEST thing that could ever happen – that God was in Christ reconciling us to Himself by becoming one of us and by taking upon himself our sin, atoning for it on the cross and then rising again with the promise of ultimate healing in his wings!

It’s Salvation – and Salvation is what God does best – redeeming bad situations.

And because this is so, I feel confident that we as a congregation can expect the same thing in the coming days and months. It seems somehow appropriate that we should find ourselves in the Season of preparation while we prepare to receive an interim pastor – and then at some future point, a permanent pastor.

Just as we expect the celebration of Christ’s birth to be a good thing, so too, I think we have every reasonable expectation that what God has for us up ahead will be Good. It will be in His plan for us. It will be Healing for us. And it will challenge us to grow into the next place God has for us as a congregation.

Brothers and Sisters, Lift up your heads! Prepare the Way. Your King draws near – but humble, lowly and loving, arriving incognito, and bringing Hope and Comfort to us and the Nations.

In the words of Julian of Norwich: “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well!” AMEN.