Advent 1

Gospel: Matthew 21:1-9

A new year begins in the church. We ended last year by focusing on the last things – the return of our Lord to judge the living and the dead, the joyful reunion in heaven, and the glorious eternity with our Lord. Now, we talk about our Lord who comes – but we aren’t focused on the joyful reunion in heaven. Advent means “He comes”. We are looking ahead to the return of our Lord. But now, we are talking about how unready we are for his return. Advent is a time to prepare our hearts. It is a penitential season. Perhaps even more naturally penitential than Lent. Advent is the season of John the Baptist; he calls out “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” To repent is nothing more than to turn away from your sin, and return to the Lord. He stands waiting for you. He wants nothing more than to have you come back to him, no matter how long you have been away. The parable of the prodigal son is instructive here. The father waits patiently for the son to return, and when he returns he runs to greet him. Until then the son remains lost and in a foreign land.

Today we are instructed again about repentance from the 10 commandments. They are the basis of our Epistle reading. Seldom do we hear such direct instruction about how we are to conduct ourselves, how we are to evaluate that conduct. But a new year, a new season of repentance, and a direct explanation – no beating around the bush – of what God commands of us. Paul focuses here on the second table of the law – the love we owe to our neighbor. And yes, we owe these things to our neighbor. He was created by God, and placed into life by God so we could show him love. To be loveless to a neighbor is to reject the Lord who created us, who preserves us in this world, and who gave us our neighbor. We can not on the one hand love the Lord while hating our neighbor. Saint John says so explicitly in his first Epistle. We have no choice if we would be saved – we must love our neighbor. The church year sets up the entire theme of our yearly cycle of devotion and instruction by jumping right on the command “Love your neighbor as yourself”.

Then the Gospel shows us proper reverence and fear of God. Jesus is the only begotten Son of the eternal Father. And he is deserving of our praise and worship. We are to love the Lord God, worship him only, and serve him with our whole heart. In Jesus we have the Father sending his Son to reconcile us to himself, and bringing us the Word of salvation.

And yet the Gospel from Matthew is not Jesus among the adoring crowds, or Jesus teaching the apostles. It is Jesus on his way into the city to be the sacrifice for sin. We don’t waste any time with the new church year. Diving into the deep end. Skipping ahead to the final chapters: Love neighbor if you would be saved. Worship the Son and give him all glory for his work of salvation, because there is no hope in your own works. Jesus is doing the work of salvation here. He is on his journey to the cross. The way of God, the way of life, is the way of death. And those who avoid this death with God are on the path of a much greater death. This is a profound mystery, and we can not grasp it except by faith. Only by the power of the Holy Spirit can we hold on to the hem of Jesus’ garment, can we grab the salvation offered by Jesus death and resurrection.

In the Gospel we see a picture of the worship of the church. We have the second half of the Sanctus that we sing in the Divine Service. The Sanctus begins with the song of the angels in the presence of the Almighty Father, “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Sabbaoth – of hosts”. We then shift to the song of the crowds on Palm Sunday as Jesus comes to offer himself in your place as the sacrifice for sin. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the Highest!” Hosanna means “Lord Save!” This is the song that the people sing in the presence of Jesus when he comes to earn their salvation. Now the church sings it at the high point of the Divine Service – as we hear the word of our Lord promising his own presence among us under the common elements of bread and wine. No mere symbol, we have the glory of the eternal God in the cup, on the paten. Jesus is himself present in his flesh and blood for you to eat and drink for the forgiveness of your sins, and the salvation of your soul. And we join the crowd on that festive Sunday as they welcomed the Lord of creation into the Holy City of God, where he would enter the most holy place as the sacrificial lamb and have his blood poured out onto the ground and sprinkled on the altar for you so that your sins would be taken away.

All of this is prophesied by the prophets, recorded clearly in the Gospels, explained in the Epistles, and now preached and taught to the church generation after generation, that the Word of the Lord would go forth and bear abundant fruit.

Today we enter this season of repentance, knowing what it cost Jesus to earn salvation – the Gospel reading is mere days before his death. We aren’t in Lent and Holy Week yet by any means, but we are not being subtle about where we are headed this year, what will be the focus of our gathering to hear and learn and receive the gifts of God in His Holy Church.

Jesus comes – we are not ready. Our hearts are cold, our faith is weak, our devotion is lax. For the next four weeks we sweep the cobwebs from the corners of our heart. We dust off the word of the Lord we have neglected too long. We clear the debris from the temple, and rebuild the holy places. And the hardest part of all – we tear down the idol altars of our heart.

And so we pray this day that Jesus would prepare us so that we are ready to receive him. If the preparation is ours, we will fail at it as surely as we fail at every other spiritual thing. On our own, we are dead in our trespasses, and we can not make ourselves come back to life. Jesus must send the Spirit of the living God into our hearts, revive us, make us alive, give us once again a living heart of flesh that we would no longer have a heart of stone, a cold heart that turns aside from his word, but a heart that is renewed and restored with the Spirit of the living God. That is why our Advent prayer today begins “Stir up YOUR power oh Lord and come…” Our salvation – not only the earning it but the giving of it to us – is the work of God, not our own effort or decision.

Today we prayed that the Lord would save us from the threatening perils of our sins. Our sins lead us constantly away from the Lord, constantly inward to our own thoughts and desires. We are threatened on all sides, and our own hearts have a death wish when it comes to our own spiritual well being. By nature we hate the things of God. And we run from the shepherd who would bring us safely into the green pastures where he oversees and feeds us. Instead we wander off, going from sin to sin, from vice to vice, and seeking death and destruction. We are threatened by our sins. The lie of Satan is that we are somehow better for them, that we are stronger, more in tune with who we authentically are, that God has kept the good things from us. But we are like little children rummaging in the cabinet where poisons are kept. We drink one after another, as we try the push the boundaries of each of the commandments, try to prove that, without them we would be better off. The final and most destructive lie – and it sounds so pious to our itching ears – is that our sins make us better Christians because now we learn what salvation is really about. Satan never quits with the lies, not even after we are crucified with our Lord and raised again to a new life through the washing of water and the word.

And so we hate, and we lust, and we envy, and we steal and we speak and think ill of our neighbor whom God has made for us to love, and instead we seek our own advantage. Paul calls it “The sin so easily entangles” for a reason. From peril to greater peril. There is no escape, no way out on our own. And we desperately want to find a solution on our own. The last thing we want to do is to leave our prodigal lifestyle and come back to our father with a plea only for mercy. Relying only on his gracious nature, not our own goodness.

And yet this is what we must do. It is what the season of Advent calls us to do, and it is the only way our hearts may be properly prepared. If we wish to cleanse our hearts, we need to put away our imaginary tools of cleansing that we invent in our hearts. We need to turn to the pure Word of God, to hear the harsh word of judgment, but then also to hear the Word of absolution. Our sins receive absolute burial in Jesus. There is no escape for them. He is the one who saves. He is the one who pardons our iniquities, who remembers our sins no more. He is the one who brings us from the perils of our sins into the presence of Almighty God so that we are once again children of our heavenly Father. This is the promise of Jesus, it is the final answer, and there is no other.

This season of Advent, let us with true hearts return to the Lord. Let us rend our hearts and not our garments. Let us come honestly and humbly before the Lord, seeking mercy while he may yet be found, knowing that, in the Lord, those who cry for mercy will receive mercy.

Let us not hold onto our sins, but turn away from them with true repentance. Let us not hold onto our unbelief, but instead trust the one who already went into death for us. Let us turn with honest hearts to the Lord our savior, and hold onto his salvation with true faith, that he may truly save us, as he has promised to do. Grant this Lord unto us all.

Amen.