Living the Christmas Life

 Jesu Juva

Colossians 3:12-17                                    

December 29, 2024

Christmas 1C              

 Dear saints of our Savior,

        If you were here on Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day, then you experienced something wonderful.  It’s safe to say that when you departed from here, having celebrated the birth of Jesus, there was thankfulness in your heart.  And along with that thankfulness there was peace.  And along with peace there was joy.  And along with joy there was love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

        But after you left church, things probably became less harmonious.  You went home and had to face some kitchen calamity, or family conflict, or pets behaving badly. You went from Christmas joy to Christmas chaos.  Your carefully crafted Christmas peace came crashing down faster than you could say “Gloria in Excelsis Deo!”

        Each year’s Christmas celebration is wonderful and meaningful; but it’s impossible to keep those Christmas plates spinning for long.  Even twelve days seems like a stretch.  Eventually, peace and good will go by the wayside.  Somebody’s got to take out the garbage and wash the dishes and go to Costco.

        In today’s epistle reading St. Paul lays out the pattern for living the Christian life—a holy life for holy people.  But for our purposes on this 5^th Day of Christmas, let’s consider these words in a Christmas context.  In so doing, we might just find a way to sustain Christmas—a way to keep Christmas going long after the lights and ornaments have been boxed up.

        Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Some of you were given clothing for Christmas.  The question is:  Will you keep it and wear it?  Well, first you’ll have to put it on—try it on for size.  Does it fit?  Is the color right for you?  Can you make use of this clothing you have been gifted?

        St. Paul reminds us that all who are baptized have been gifted a kind of clothing.  He tells us to “put on” the clothing of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience.  We have to “put on” these things because we lack them by nature.  These must be given to us.  We can only be compassionate by first letting the compassion of Christ fill us, and then spill over from us to the person beside us.  It’s the same with kindness.  Our kindness—if it’s real—is the overflow of the kindness we have received from God in Christ.  We can only be humble, meek, and patient—we can only “put on” these qualities—because Jesus has lived that way before us; and because He lives in us and does His gracious work through us.  These things aren’t automatic; we must intentionally put them on—just like that snazzy new sweater you’re sporting today.

        But a word of warning about this Christmas clothing we “put on” as our daily dress:  It’s one thing to be compassionate and kind to people in general.  It’s one thing to be humble, meek, and patient with store clerks or the Amazon delivery person.  Loving “everybody” is easy—from a distance.  But our Christmas wardrobe is really put to the test when it comes to those with whom we live and work.

        What becomes of our compassion and kindness and love when we must apply these attitudes to the guy who thinks he’s always right, but is always wrong?  To the person who makes every meeting an intolerable agony?  To the person who knows just how to “press our buttons,” and raise our blood pressure, and get under our skin? 

        God uses these people to remind us of how bereft and bankrupt we are when it comes to kindness and patience.  These Christ-like qualities do not grow in our garden; they are never qualities we possess as our own.  They must be constantly given to us by God—and then they must be “put on” by us as our daily dress.

        You also must forgive.  You “must,” Paul writes.  Forgiveness isn’t a mere accessory, like a belt or a scarf or a tie, that you can wear or choose not to wear.  Forgiveness is the crucial article of Christian clothing.  Forgiveness is not optional.  It is the defining feature of the faith we confess.  Christmas is about Jesus, who was born to save His people from their sins.  You can’t continue living the Christmas life without giving to others the same forgiveness that you yourself have received from the Christ child.  The manger and the cross are hewn from the same wood.  But you can do it!  You can forgive—really forgive—because Jesus has forgiven you.  He takes all your sin—all your bad—and in exchange clothes you with His very self. 

        Unlike kindness and forgiveness which are seen and heard, St. Paul also tells the Colossians about a dimension of the Christmas life that is unseen:  Peace.  Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.  Peace is a relational word.  To have peace with God is to have a relationship with Him based on the forgiveness of sins.  And please note: it’s not just “peace,” but “the peace of Christ.”  Like all the other good qualities our Christmas wardrobe lacks, Christ Himself supplies you with this peace through faith. 

        We are to let this peace “rule” in our hearts.  This peace of Christ rules like a referee or umpire.  Because this peace is ruling in our hearts, it means that neither conflict nor crisis can send us spiraling out of control and off the rails. Like Simeon, we know that one day we shall depart this life in peace—trusting that the Christ of Christmas was born for us, lived for us, died for us, and was raised again that we may live together with Him forever.

        The Christmas life lives on in you when the word of Christ dwells in you richly.  Perhaps part of what gives Christmas such a powerful effect over us is how richly the Word of God fills this season—prophecy and fulfillment, Law and Gospel, joy and deliverance.  Is there any section of Scripture known better by more people than the Nativity of our Lord?  Paul tells the Colossians to let this word of Christ dwell in them richly.  Keep Christmas going by the power of the Word. 

        And, by the way, that phrase “word of Christ” doesn’t mean just those words of Scripture spoken by Christ Himself.  No, the “word of Christ” is the Word in which Christ Himself comes to us.  The words of Scripture bear Christ and carry Christ Himself into our hearts.  That’s why this “word of Christ” should dwell in us richly and daily.  Not just at Christmas.  Not just at Easter.

        Because Jesus Christ is present in His Holy Word, we give our hearing of the word our full and reverent attention.  We stand.  We sit.  We bow.  We kneel.  We make the sign of the cross.  And we sing—psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with thankfulness.  Where the word of Christ dwells in us richly, there will be singing.  The carols of Christmas are the most wonderful example of this.  But God’s Word strengthens us for singing in every season of the year.  When we Christians sing together we are singing with Mary.  We sing with Simeon and Zechariah.  We sing with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven:  Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace goodwill toward men.

        As surely as the sun rose this morning—and you woke up and put on your clothing—Christmas continues.  The same Jesus who was mangered for us—the same Jesus whom Simeon held in His arms—this Jesus comes to us in His Word and in His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins.  This is the Christmas life.  Our Lord’s good gifts live on in you.  As you put on this wonderful wardrobe, you look great!  In fact, you look a lot like Jesus.  This means you can face the New Year ahead full of faith and peace and joy. But whatever you do, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

It Came to Pass

 Jesu Juva

St. Luke 2:1-20                                          

December 24, 2024

Christmas Eve

 Dear saints of our Savior,

        It’s more mellifluous.  It’s got gravitas.  It’s the King James translation of the Bible.  To hear this translation on Christmas Eve is like listening to the language of angels. Sure, we could say that the shepherds got scared; but to say that they were “sore afraid” conveys a deeper sense of frightfulness.  And to say that Mary was pregnant sounds so pedestrian.  Isn’t “great with child” a more stately way to express the marvel of Mary’s condition?

        But it’s the first words of the Christmas Gospel that I’d like to focus on for just a few minutes:  And it came to pass.  “It came to pass” certainly sounds auspicious. But what it really means can be expressed in two words:  “It happened.”  “It happened” is so matter-of-fact that most modern translations omit it, regarding it as redundant.  Why bother saying “it happened” when the next several paragraphs will report in great detail exactly what it was that happened?

        But when you stop and consider all the “bad news of great sadness” which fills so many of our days, perhaps we would do well tonight to re-state this redundant, repetitive truth:  It happened—it came to pass. . . .Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

        The story of what “came to pass” is well known and rather simple.  For starters, the government wanted more taxes.  Nothing new there.  Nothing is as certain as death and taxes.  But before taxes could be assessed, people and property had to be counted up in a census.  Thus Caesar Augustus, the most powerful man in the world, was instrumental in bringing about the Savior’s birth in Bethlehem—the ancestral hometown of a poor carpenter named Joseph.

        And while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.  Once again the King James Version makes it sound so wonderfully magnificent.  But essentially what happened was that a poor teenage girl had a baby.  That’s what happened, more or less.  It came to pass.  It happens all the time, really.  Even today in Milwaukee a poor, teenage girl will probably have a baby. 

        Just by looking, you would never know that Mary’s baby was the Son of God, let alone a Savior which is Christ the Lord.  In order to know that kind of thing you have to be told.  And if God has a message like that to tell, then surely He should tell those who are well-versed in the things of God—theologians or pastors or other church bureaucrats.  But our God aims the good news of great joy at a distinctly different crowd:  At shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 

        Not a logical choice, those shepherds.  Not only did they lack the proper seminary training, but most of them had a rather lackluster record as far as church attendance was concerned.  We have rather pious and romantic notions about these shepherds; but the truth is that they were probably into things like drinking and swearing and gambling.  (Which is information we generally don’t share with the first-grade boys when we dress them up at Christmas and say, “Here, be a shepherd.”)  Yet it was to such as these that the Angel of the Lord revealed the wonderful truth about the baby born to the teenage girl in Bethlehem:  He is the Savior, Christ the Lord.

        Perhaps the most important words to make their way into the shepherds’ ears were these:  “Unto you.”  Unto you is born a Savior.  Jesus is the Savior of Shepherds.  And if He is a Savior of Shepherds, then He’s your Savior too.  If God sends His Son for lowly shepherds, then absolutely no one is omitted from His Christmas list.  It happened.  It came to pass.  It came to pass—unto you.

        All of that gets ruined for us when we buy into the notion that this good news is really only for others—that God’s heart of love can’t quite reach the likes of me—with my bad choices . . . and the bridges I’ve burned. . . and the bed I’ve made. Sometimes people mistake that attitude for humility; but it’s not humility.  It’s unbelief—the refusal of God’s love. 

        The other way we refuse God’s love is to believe that we’ve earned it—that we’ve scored pretty high in the religion department.  We will not stand in solidarity with shepherds because, frankly, we’re better than them.  Some people mistake this attitude for pride; but it’s not pride.  It is unbelief—a refusal of God’s love in Christ—an exchanging of God’s gift of righteousness for something of our own making.  And that never ends well.

        The Christmas gospel plainly states that the birth of Jesus came to pass—it happened.  It happened as God Himself scaled the walls of our hell-bound humanity to dwell among us as one of us.  It happened.  And yet we spend most of our days living as if it didn’t happen.  We consign and confine Christmas to one fraction of one day.  We “get our Christmas on;” and then we pack up every trace of peace and good will, and live our days in a maze of anxiety, comforting ourselves with idols of our own making.

        This is now the 29^th consecutive Christmas Eve for me to stand in front of a full church and declare what came to pass all those years ago in Bethlehem.  Is there anything more repetitive and redundant than this?  The readings, the carols, the traditions don’t deviate much from year to year.  But all this is because we poor sinners need to hear:  It happened.  It really happened!  It came to pass. 

        God has located His love among us.  God’s forgiving love has sought us and found us.  No one gets left behind, not even lowly shepherds. They said to one another: Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known to us.  And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.  The good news proclaimed by angels was believed by shepherds.  God said it; they believed it.  What angels sang, the shepherds took to heart.  They trusted that this birth was for them, the birth of a Savior who is Christ the Lord.  For them and also for you.  That is how much God loves you.  And now you have been told, just like the shepherds were told.  It happened.

        The shepherds made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child; but they also eventually went back to their sheep.  They returned to the calling God had given them.  In fact, all the figures of the Christmas account eventually went back to work.  Joseph went back to his carpentry and Mary to caring for her child and home.

        Each of us will soon head back out into a world of death and taxes.  We too will return to the callings God has given us—whether tending sheep or studying or writing sermons.  Speaking of sermons, a lot of them I write this time of year could be summarized with phrases such as, “Be like Joseph.”  Or “Be like Mary.”  Or “Be like the shepherds.”  But the Christmas Gospel really calls you to be simply the person God has called you to be—shepherd or scholar, pastor or parent.  You have a Savior who has saved you from sin and death—who stretched out His arms of love on a Roman tool of torture to embrace the whole world, including you.  So whatever you do, “Do it all in the name of Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (Col. 3:17).

        And whoever you are and whatever you do—unto you is born a Savior.  What God had promised for centuries—what patriarchs and prophets had longed to see—it happened.  In the fullness of time, it came to pass.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  For us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man.

        One day you will see the glory of the Lord shining round about you.  But you will not be “sore afraid,” for you have already been told of what Jesus has in store for you—the sure and certain hope of eternal life, together with those you love who have already departed this life in faith.

        On this Christmas Eve remember: it happened.  It came to pass.  And because it came to pass, the diverse days of your life can all be lived out in the same way you live out this holy night:  in faith toward God and in fervent love for one another.  Merry Christmas.

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Too Small to Fail

Jesu Juva

Micah 5:2-5a                                                    

December 22, 2024

Advent 4C                                               

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        Have you been to Manhattan before?  No, not the Manhattan with Times Square and Central Park and Broadway.  I’m talking about Manhattan, Kansas—the Manhattan famous for the Kansas State Wildcats and Tuttle Creek Reservoir and . . . Interstate 70.  Manhattan, Kansas isn’t part of the Big Apple; it’s the “Little Apple” of the Midwest—the small town cousin of the slightly better known borough back east.       

        Small towns are great.  And the celebration of Christmas always includes what may just be the most famous small town in human history.  Bethlehem wasn’t always famous.  It had some notoriety because King David had been born there.  And long before that, Jacob’s wife, Rachel, had been buried at Bethlehem. 

        Bethlehem was little at the time of Jesus’ birth.  Perhaps 600 people lived there. To make things even more complicated, however, was the fact that there was more than one Bethlehem.  A bigger Bethlehem—a better-known Bethlehem—was located up north in Galilee.  (Bethlehem had the same problem as Manhattan, Kansas.)  Every proud citizen of Bethlehem would always need to specify that he or she was from Bethlehem Ephrathah, or Bethlehem in Judah. 

        But as small and insignificant as it was, Bethlehem had one big thing going for it—a promise from God that the Messiah would be born there.  Seven hundred years before the calendar flipped from BC to AD, the Prophet Micah proclaimed this prophecy:  But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of fold, from ancient days. . . He shall be great . . . And he shall be their peace.  There you have it.  Bethlehem was just a little town with a big, big promise.

        The prophet called Bethlehem “little—too little.”  But that Hebrew word “little” referred to more than just population.  “Little” also meant “insignificant.”  This word was also used to describe the youngest, last-born sibling in a family.  And in a culture where being first-born was a really big deal, being the last-born of the litter meant that you were kind of insignificant—least important in the whole family (just ask King David).  Bethlehem was too little, too small, too insignificant to matter.  All Bethlehem had going for it was a dusty, rusty, nearly-forgotten promise from God.

        But Bethlehem—backwater, backwoods Bethlehem—was the very spot where our Savior made His grand entry.  “Small” and “insignificant” is our Savior’s modus operandi.  He’s the Savior that’s too tiny to fail.  “Little” is what Jesus does best. He does big things in small ways. The question is:  Can you handle a Savior so small?

        In today’s Holy Gospel all the action revolves around Jesus—even though Jesus is just an invisible, imperceptible speck of humanity in the womb of His virgin mother.  Christmas is about the God who flies under the radar—who specializes in obscurity and humility—who first makes a splash not in Rome, not in Jerusalem, but camouflaged by cattle and surrounded by smelly shepherds.  O sure, He’s God of God.  He’s Light of Light.  He fills the whole universe with His regal, royal magnificence.  He’s a Deity; but He’s a diapered Deity!  He’s the Messiah; but He’s a mangered Messiah.  He’s the Christ; but He’s the Columbo of Christs.

        You remember Columbo, don’t you?  Police detective played by Peter Falk?  Unlike most cops, Colombo’s involved in no car chases, no shoot outs.  He’s certainly no Sherlock.  He’s not even dusting for fingerprints or waiting on lab results.  Lieutenant Columbo just shows up chomping on a cigar, wearing a rumpled trench coat.  He’s no threat.  He’s just so ordinary—a nobody.  He just casually chats up the killer.  He’s not intimidating, just annoying.  He projects an aura of weakness—a forgetful, forgettable, unremarkable quality—which causes all the bad guys to let their guard down—to seriously underestimate Columbo—who always overcomes evil with good.

        Can you handle a Savior like that?  Jesus simply shows up as an infant nursing at His mother’s breast.  The whole world lets its guard down at that scene.  Jesus doesn’t interrogate you.  He doesn’t care about your alibis.  He’s not collecting evidence on you. He doesn’t lock you up; but gives you complete and total freedom.  Your finances, your job, your marriage, even your church attendance.  Jesus doesn’t micro-manage any of that—doesn’t dictate or orchestrate your daily to-do list.  He just fills your life with blessings and forgiveness, and a plan and a promise, saying, “only believe.  Trust Me.”

        To the world our Savior’s smallness can be mistaken for weakness.  Sometimes we make the same mistake.  Our Savior’s utter humility tempts us to think that we can stray from His ways without consequences, while carefully covering our crimes.  Jesus is just so hidden that we think we can take the freedom He gives, and use that freedom as a license for idolatry or adultery or greed or selfishness.  Our little Savior invites us to live large in His amazing grace; but we spend all our energies majoring in the minutiae of anxiety and pettiness, rage and revenge.

        One thing is for certain:  We need a Savior.  But a super-sized, superman Savior simply won’t do.  We need a Savior who comes to us—as one of us.  God with us, we say, on this Sunday before Christmas.  We need a Savior too small to fail. 

        How low can He go?  To what depths will He sink and shrink to save us and to reveal the wonders of His love?  We need a servant-sized Savior who can bend down low to wash the stinky feet of sinners, who soaks up our sin in a sinner’s baptism.  Who makes Himself nothing.  Who humbles Himself.  Who becomes obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.  That cross looks to all the world like weakness.  But we know otherwise.  We see the cross; and we behold the wonder of His redeeming love.

        The message of the cross is love.  And, yes, it is greatness—greatness packaged in weakness and meekness.  The prophet Micah was able to see past the rural poverty of Bethlehem Ephratha to the greatness of the Ruler who would be born there.  “He shall be great,” said Micah.  And, he adds concerning the Babe of Bethlehem:  He shall be their peace.  You and I know that peace.  It passes understanding, but we know its source is the cross.  Our redemption from sin and death was finished there.  And our Lord’s resurrection which followed on the Third Day means eternal peace for us.  It is the peace of knowing that we too are destined for the greatness of resurrection life.

        Can you handle a God who operates in such obscurity?  He proclaims His victory through the voices of unremarkable preachers.  He makes you wise through words printed on the pages of your Bible.  He gives you a new birth in the splash of baptism—and supplies full forgiveness in the Holy Supper of His body and blood (where the serving size is small; but the blessings are too big to measure). 

        Beginning with His birth, our Savior’s ways seem unimpressive, unimposing and unpretentious.  But that’s just His way.  He knows your sin, but still—still!—He comes to love you and save you.  On this Fourth Sunday of Advent we learn that God’s way is never the easy way or the predictable way or the popular way.  His way is the Bethlehem way.

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

Prepare the Way

Jesu Juva

St. Luke 3:1-14                                            

December 8, 2024

Advent 2C                                                   

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        It’s always kind of predictable around here on the second Sunday of Advent:  Two candles aglow on the Advent wreath.  John the Baptist appears in the wilderness to preach a baptism of repentance.  And we get to sing with gusto On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry.

        This Sunday may be predictable; but St. Luke tosses out some surprises for us in today’s account of John’s ministry. For instance, John is well known as this mangy-looking man down by the river, decked out in leather and camel’s hair, chowing down on honey-coated grasshoppers.  But surprise!  In Luke’s version of John the Baptist, not a word is said about his diet or his wardrobe.

        What Luke gives us instead is a big dose of history—names, places, and dates:   In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene—during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the Word of God came to John son of Zechariah.  St. Luke couldn’t get any more specific than that.  We would simply say that John began his public ministry in the year 28AD, but that universal calendar hadn’t yet been invented when Luke was writing.

        Luke gives us history.  He’s making it abundantly clear that this is not some fable or legend, shrouded in a foggy mystery a long, long time ago in a land far, far away.  No.  This happened.  It happened exactly 1,996 years ago.  It’s as real as Caesar Augustus and Napoleon and George Washington.  It happened in the fullness of time, when history was ripe for the promises of God to be fulfilled.

        History is important to us Christians because God’s fingerprints are all over history.  Our God shapes and directs history.  The Jesus we worship as Lord and Savior was born and died and rose and ascended in history.  He Himself is the hinge of all human history—the Alpha and the Omega.  Our God works in, with and under history.

        That’s why history is important.  That’s why we have to take on the historical revisionists who want to re-write what really happened in the past.  If we can write God out of creation—if we can write Christ out of Christmas—then there’s no limit to the mischief we can do.  And I’m not just talking about tenured university professors and internet bloggers.  You and I are also experts at re-writing and revising our own history all the time.  We’re experts at massaging the facts about our past.  Our personal resumes have been profusely padded.  We’re quick to portray ourselves as innocent victims and everybody else as aggressively attacking with claws and fangs.  And as we survey our own history of sinning we can soft-pedal that history too:  There was no other option.  I had the best of intentions.  It was really just unavoidable, couldn’t be helped.

        But John has come preaching repentance.  He calls us not to change the facts of history (we can’t), but to have a change of heart and mind.  John tells us to turn.  John makes it clear that where the ghastly historical facts of your sins are concerned, you have a choice:  You can either let Jesus have your sins and bear them away, OR you can keep them for yourself, get chopped down by the ax of divine judgment, and be thrown into eternal hellfire.

        I suspect you’re here today because you prefer to let Jesus bear your sins away.  It’s a fact of history that He did that for you at the cross.  It’s a fact that Jesus died and shed His blood for the sins of the whole wide world—every man, woman and child who ever lived.  That’s a matter of historical fact.  It’s a matter of faith to believe that He did it all for you, for your sins, for your hellish history.  It’s a matter of faith that His death counts for you, and that His resurrection life is also yours to enjoy eternally.  Those are the facts of the faith we confess.  That’s a history worth remembering.

        But there’s still another surprise in Luke chapter three.  Luke alone also gives us specific details about what it means to repent—about what a life of repentance looks like in the lives of ordinary people. 

        John was a preacher who didn’t pull any punches.  He had nothing to lose.  He wasn’t on anyone’s payroll.  He didn’t have wife and kids to feed.  He didn’t have a mortgage to pay.  John was free and unhindered to tell the no-holds-barred truth.  He called the crowds that listened to him a “brood of vipers,” trying to slither their way into God’s favor simply because they were descendants of Abraham.  But John put a stop to all that slithering with one word:  Repent.

        Today Luke tells us that the people wanted specifics from John.  “What should we do?” they asked.  And John told them what to do:  If you have two tunics, give the extra one to someone who doesn’t have one.  If you’ve got extra food, give to the hungry.  When tax collectors asked what they were supposed to do, they probably expected John to say, “Stop collecting taxes for Rome.”  But instead John told them only to collect what they were required to, and no more.  When soldiers came, they probably expected John to tell them to put down their weapons and turn their swords into plowshares.  But John simply told them, “Don’t extort money, don’t accuse people falsely, be content with your wages.”

        John’s message is so simple—so basic.  Most of us learned these things from our parents or in kindergarten:  Share your stuff.  Be honest.  Don’t be a bully.  Do a good job and be content that you have one.  In short, do the jobs God has given you.  Carry out your vocations to the best of your ability. 

        It all sounds so simple; and yet how difficult it is.  John’s telling us that our vocations matter, whether you are a husband or wife, parent or child, citizen or soldier, neighbor or employee.  God has placed you in those roles.  Carry them out with diligence and delight.  But, oh, how hard it is.  Husbands and wives, love and honor your God-given spouse.  Children, obey your parents in everything.  Citizens, obey the laws and pay your taxes.  Christians, care for one another and build up the body of Christ.

        This is all so basic; yet even when it comes to the basics, we fail.  We sin.  We need to confess.  We need repentance.  It’s not enough simply to put in an appearance at church.  Anybody can sit in a pew.  It’s not enough simply to say, “Well, I’m a rock-ribbed, old school Lutheran.”  I tell you, God is able from these pews to raise up Lutherans.  We need to repent—to turn—to delight in His will and walk in His ways, forsaking all others.

        Only One man in all of human history lived out His callings and vocations with perfect faithfulness and obedience—only One who died and rose from the dead never to die again.  Only One man in all of human history had the audacity to claim to be the Son of God, and also had the proof to back it up.  There is only One who is the eternal Word made flesh, who baptizes you into His death, who gives you His body and blood to eat and drink, who takes away all of your sins and gives you eternal life as a gift without your so much as lifting a finger.  There is only One who redeems human history, and your own personal history, by His own bloody death.  This One is Jesus Christ.  He is coming.  Prepare the way. 

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.