Jesu Juva
St. Matthew 3:1-12
December 4, 2022
Advent 2A
Dear saints of our Savior~
As if the blue paraments weren’t enough—as if the big wreath suspended from the ceiling didn’t give it away—the appearance of John the Baptizer leaves no doubt that Advent has arrived. John was an Advent preacher. And unlike some preachers whose main points are perhaps less than clear, nobody missed the main point that John was making: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
When John appeared in the wilderness and started preaching about repentance and baptism, it was the first Word of God—the first Word from God—that Israel had heard in 400 years. Think about that. Since the days of Malachi, there had been only silence from the Lord. There had been nothing but famine where the Words of the Lord were concerned. The nation of Israel was a joke—the doormat of the Middle East. During those 400 years of silence from God, Israel had been kicked around like a football from the Persians to the Greeks to the Romans. As Isaiah had called it centuries earlier, Israel was nothing but a stump—a dry, rotting stump among the forest of the nations.
But then came a voice. Not from the temple or from Jerusalem, mind you, but from out in the wilderness, from out of nowhere, from down by the river. A
strange figure appeared along the Jordan River—the same spot where over a thousand years earlier God had parted the river waters and Israel had marched in to take possession of the Promised Land. In the spot where Elijah had been whisked off into heaven, John the son of Zechariah appeared. He came preaching and baptizing—declaring the Word of the Lord. It was the end of 400 years of silence.
John came to prepare the way for Jesus; and his message could be summarized in a single word: Repent! Change your mind! Change your thinking. Reverse your notions about who God is and who you are. Repent of your sins. Wash them away in baptism. Repent of any notion that you have the power to bargain with God or bribe Him by your works and sacrifices.
Huge crowds flocked to John. And when even the religious elite showed up, John insulted them, called them a brood of vipers, a bunch of slithering snakes. Church bureaucracies wouldn’t put up with John these days. John wouldn’t have lasted long on the clergy roster of the LCMS. The higher-ups would say: “Listen, John, we can’t deny that you’re worshiping big numbers here, but you need to talk about something other than repentance, John. The focus groups don’t like it; they find it depressing. People don’t like to be reminded that they’re sinners, John. And besides that you’re scaring the children. So let’s just dial it down a notch.” John would have told them where they could stick their focus groups.
You might as well leave your religious credentials at the door when it comes to John. He doesn’t care who you are, what you’ve accomplished or who your ancestors are. Turns out, Jews don’t have a free ticket to heaven simply because they’re children of Abraham. God can make sons of Abraham out of stones if He wants to. Same thing goes for you and me. Your spiritual credentials—your religious resume—doesn’t matter. You might be a lifelong, rock-ribbed, conservative Lutheran, recognized volunteer, a stellar steward, an expert in Bible trivia—why, you might even be an ordained Lutheran minister!—but John would simply say, “Repent. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
John makes us re-think everything—makes us repent. Think about the good things you could list on your religious resume—the best of the best of your good works. If you do them out of fear that God will punish you, or because you’re seeking a reward from God, is it really a good work? If you give your coat to a homeless person later today because you think God will be pleased with you and reward you, is that really an act of love for your neighbor? If you drag yourself to church on Sunday morning just to keep the pastor off your back and to keep up appearances, is that really a good work? Sounds more like bargaining, bribing, self-justifying, works righteousness. If the motive behind the good you do is (in any way) to manipulate the Almighty, then you need to become better acquainted with the theme for the second Sunday of Advent. We need to hear again John’s call to repent.
Of course, we can’t stop with John. If all we had was John, that would be rough. John was a bulldozer, leveling mountains of human pride with the Law of God. But John was just the forerunner, the way-preparer, the opening act for God’s greatest act in the history of the world. John was the Law personified. If you’re looking for comfort, mercy, and grace you won’t find much with John. John is there to look you square in the eye and call you a snake who deserves to be crushed—chaff that deserves to be burned with unquenchable fire.
But if John is Law, then Jesus is Gospel. John applies the axe to the root of the tree. But ultimately, that axe of judgment falls on Jesus. With John, every tree that doesn’t bear good fruit is thrown into the fire. But with Jesus, the bad tree of the cross becomes the good tree of our salvation—and the good fruit that Jesus bears becomes yours as a gift through faith.
With John, you get commands and threats and punishments. Do this, not that! That’s how the law works. It heaps up the demands on you and threatens you with an axe and unquenchable fire if you don’t shape up and get with the program. With Jesus, you get “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” With Jesus, it’s not about your doing, but about His doing. It’s not about your repentance but about His becoming sin for you—about exchanging your sin for His righteousness—about His dying and rising to save you from the wrath to be revealed when He comes again in glory.
And there is a coming wrath. Don’t be deceived. Don’t get complacent. The end is coming and it will be full of wrath and destruction and fire. God’s Law will have its way against sin and against sinners.
There is but one way to escape that coming wrath—the swinging axe and the unquenchable fire. Hide. Hide yourself in Jesus, our Savior. Be sheltered by His death through the power of your baptism. Receive the bread that is His body. Drink the wine that is His blood. Hear Him say, “This is for you, for the forgiveness of sins.” Follow John’s pointing finger to Jesus and cling to Him. Let go of your works. Shred the religious resume. Recognize that you are nothing and you have nothing to offer God. But Jesus is everything and He has everything to give to you. You must decrease; Jesus must increase. The axe of the Law was laid on Him. The fire of God’s wrath consumed Him. He was cut down and cursed, crucified on the tree of the cross, thrown into God’s fiery wrath, so that you might be saved eternally. As John would later say, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
This congregation is called to be like John. We today are a prophetic outpost in the wilderness of this world—a voice calling people to repentance and baptism, preparing the way for Jesus’ return. To the world, all this talk about sin and repentance probably seems about as strange as wearing camel’s hair and leather. The body and blood of Jesus in the Holy Supper might as well be locusts and wild honey to those who refuse to hear the Word of God. As Christians, we are as strange and foreign to this world today as John the Baptizer was in his day.
The message we proclaim, however, has not changed: Repent. Be baptized. Believe, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, where wolf and lamb live together in peace—where carnivore and herbivore lay down together in safety. That imagery from Isaiah depicts the Paradise that Jesus Christ has won for you—a resurrection life that will never end. Prepare the way for the Lord. Make His paths straight. The kingdom is near. Christ is coming.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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