SERMON FOR DECEMBER 7, 2008
CHRIST IS COMING: BE PREPARED
SERMON THEME: Pave the Way
SERMON TEXT: Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
It is written in Isaiah the prophet: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”—“a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”
And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Dear Friends:
What is the appropriate soundtrack for Advent? What is the background sound that should accompany us, as we get ready for Christmas, and go about the business of living in these days leading up to Christmas? How about an uninterrupted string of Christmas songs? A lot of people like to do that at Christmas, music out everywhere they go. A couple of radio stations in town do that, and when Christmas gets real close they do it in an uninterrupted way. So you go from Handel’s Messiah, to White Christmas, to Silent Night, to every rock and pop and hip hop star on the planet, singing about Frosty, and Rudolph, and Santa Claus coming to town. Or would the appropriate background soundtrack be an incessant humming to represent the incessant hum of activity that finds so many people feeling like they are trapped, like a hamster inside the little exercise wheel, can’t find his way out? You’re in the car and you’re driving from place to place, looking for a parking space, your feet are moving from aisle to aisle, computer keys are crunching out cyber shopping commands, you’re swiping the debit and credit cards.
Or, do you seek and find the sounds of silence, in order to prepare you, yourself, for the onslaught of overload that is, this month of December. None of those sounds are in today’s gospel. It is a noisy gospel. The sounds that we find in this reading today are those of jackhammers and bulldozers and gravel trucks. The sound is that of a foreman shouting instructions over the deafening roar of road paving equipment. A new road, a new highway is taking shape, in Mark Chapter l. It’s time to pave the way!
Mark is the gospel writer who skips Christmas. It’s as if he can’t wait to get to the good stuff, so he skips Christmas. He starts out pretty simply. He says, The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And then what we expect is to go to Bethlehem, the manger, angels, shepherds, or at least give us a discussion of how the divine is wrapped up in human flesh. We get that in Matthew and Luke and John, but Mark jumps ahead 30 years, right to this guy who’s in charge of all the planning and preparing and paving, John the Baptist. Grasshopper eating, dressed for the apocalypse, wide-eyed, fire-preaching, desert dwelling, John the Baptist. This is the guy we’re looking for on the street corner, wearing a sandwich board, shouting, ‘The end is near! Repent!’ John was the miracle child of Zachariah and Elizabeth. John himself was the fulfillment of prophecy. Malachi spoke of him, and Isaiah quoted here by Mark, “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”—“a voice of one calling in the desert, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”
John prepared the way for the Savior, “by making straight paths.” Isaiah says it, “by making a highway for God.” And here’s how he did that! Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low. The rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. (Isaiah 40:4) Sounds like what’s done every time a new road gets built, a new highway, and around here that’s a year round 24/7 experience. The low places get filled in, the high places get cut down, to make the road as level as possible. And then planners and engineers do what they can to minimize crooked and twisting stretches of road, to make the journey as smooth as possible.
But John doesn’t actually build roads, highways, for an expending population. If John were alive today, he would not be a consultant to ADOT. He deals with the human heart. John paved the way for the coming of the Savior by preaching a message of repentance. He didn’t tell the people how good they were. He didn’t tell them how great the weather was. He didn’t talk about non-essential things. He came right out with the message of repentance. He preached God’s law to bulldoze and to cut down the sinful pride that lurks in human hearts. And then he proclaimed the gospel, the good news of forgiveness in Jesus, to lift up the down trodden, the despairing, and the repentant. That’s what Isaiah meant when he spoke hundreds of years earlier of filling in the valleys and cutting low the mountains and hills.
Mark quotes Isaiah – as do Matthew and Luke – to show God’s plan of salvation as a reality. What God has said he would do, he has now done it! And so John comes and once the way has been made smooth, once that highway is to the human heart, the heart has been convicted of sin and brought to repentance, then all mankind will see God’s salvation, and in just weeks the Savior would be there. And that continues to happen today, as salvation comes one person at a time.
Now these, prophesies and pictures are nice, and you know these well. Most of you! How many Advents and Christmases have you lived through? You know this message. Sometimes it’s hard to take something written 2,000 years ago and apply it to today. Sometimes we may look at this and say, --- I don’t know. Does this really apply to me? What does it mean to have a highway, God’s highway through my heart? What does it mean to repent? Do we still have to do that today? Repent? Well, for answers, we’re not going to Oprah, or Dr. Phil, or the Ladies on the View. We’re not going to our neighbors or the preachers on Channel 21. We’re going to the source, and what God says, and ---Lord what is repentance? What does that mean?
Repentance is a power-packed word, but like so many other words, through time and misuse, it has taken a beating. I mean this word has been distilled down, into a dull sanitized, one size fits all meaning, that it’s really taken away the full force of the original meaning. It would be like taking a potato, stripping it of all its nutrients, deep-frying it, adding salt, and eating that! Who would do something like that to a nutritious, delicious potato? Well, it’s called a ‘French Fry!’ It’s done all the time! It’s a potato, but all the things that are good about potatoes, that are good for you, are pretty much gone by the French fried stage, and what’s left is more bad than good. And so what fast food has done for the potato, sadly the church has done to the concept of repentance---stripped it of all the good stuff.
Let’s see if we can recapture the essence of this and its life-changing power. You see today, when it comes to repentance, if not ignored all together, repentance is pretty much, --- Oh! Yeah! I’m sorry! Whatever! Sorry! Say it nicely! I’m sorry…! However the mouth says it so fast, that the heart has no idea what just happened. What did you say? Yeah! I’m not ready for that down here! The mouth says---I’m sorry---so fast the heart doesn’t know what happened, because quite honestly, we’re not sorry. Oh! We’re sorry that we got caught. We’re sorry that maybe people aren’t leaving us alone, because we’re mad that we got caught. And honestly we know if we say the right things, and if we do the right things, if we act all humble and contrite, they’ll leave us alone. And then maybe I can go and do whatever it was that was wrong, again. Sort of a spiritual recycling program! Got my sack of sins, and I fill it up, and I bring it to church, dump it here, and if there is communion, what---a double bonus today? And then I go out next week, now, and fill it up again, come back over and over again.
Repentance in the original language, the Greek, is two words together---change-mind. More than just a flippant few words---Sorry, sorry I hurt your feelings! Sorry your feelings are hurt! More than just a flippant few words, repentance is a fundamental change of heart, and mind. And there’s the idea of turning away. If I’m over here with my wrong doing, I actually turn away, with God’s help. Turn away from sin, turn back to God, amend my sinful life, and seek to follow God’s will and way, with his help.
And the only way to prepare the heart for the coming of the Savior, is to have John the Baptist’s message come out---Repent, identify your sins, and confess them honestly, and then change, straighten out your life. Don’t keep going back to that! Straighten out your life so that you’re ready for the coming of the Lord. Turn away from wrong, separate yourself from anything and everything that gets in the way of faith. Repent and believe that your sins are forgiven, and they are forgiven. Not because we’re sorry, not because we repent, but because of God’s mercy, shown to us in the crucified and risen Savior, his Son, Jesus our Lord. John’s message was all about Christ. He kept saying, “After me will come one more powerful than I.” I become less so he may become greater. He says here in our text, “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I’m not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
And Jesus came! Already he’d been living in human flesh, as a human being. God wrapped up in humanity, for 30 years, perfectly. We can’t do this for 30 minutes – live perfectly - or even 30 seconds. He lived perfectly, he died innocently, and he rose powerfully, to pay for our sins. And then he sends his Holy Spirit into our hearts to create faith, to grow that faith through the Word, through the sacraments. And we’re here today, evidence of those great gifts, of that great power.
Repentance is still important, because if we’re not properly prepared, we’re not ready for the Savior. We can go through all the outward machinations, all of the outward things we do to get ready for Christmas, and still not be ready. Because repentance is not---Oops! Sorry! A momentary gush! It’s a way of life! Day in and day out, week after week, month after month, year after year, it is an exciting, living, relationship with God, with Jesus Christ.
As you’re getting ready for Christmas, make sure you’re ready for the Savior. Don’t get everything else ready and not be ready for him. Because what’s on the shopping list, and in the bags that you pull out of the mall, that doesn’t matter. What’s under the tree doesn’t matter, it doesn’t get you ready for the Savior. What’s hanging from the tree, what’s baking in the oven, what your travel plans are, none of that matters in getting ready for the Savior. What matters is what is in God’s heart toward us, and we find mercy and grace. And what is in our hearts toward Him, faith through Spirit, prompted repentance, through his life-giving Word.
If you drive on I-17, north of the 101 and many of you do that. I do that every day, but thankfully for very short distances. I-17 north of the 101, north or south bound, between here and Anthem, New River, you don’t get too far too fast. It’s been that way for quite awhile. It’s going to be that way for quite some time, and if it rains, well, that’s another month that they get set back, because they’re paving the way for new lanes of traffic, to carry all the cars, that go back and forth. You know what will happen when they are done, don’t you? They’ll need more lanes for traffic. It surely won’t be enough!
But God’s expressway, of mercy, is never backed up! It is free-flowing! It is never ending! It is all embracing! Stay on this highway of repentance, and mercy, and you’ll be prepared for the Savior. Amen.
Pastor Stephen Luchterhand
Phoenix, Arizona