Advent 4

There are two sins we are tempted to regarding the holiness of God: To take his holiness too lightly, or to take it too seriously. They both stem from the same sinful heart’s desire: To be like God, knowing, deciding good and evil, rather than hearing the Word of the Lord and heeding his voice.

Hear again the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy: just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken...

If they heard again the voice of the Lord, it would kill them. That seems a bit extreme to us. When we look at the holy things in the Old Testament, we start to realize we maybe don’t take holy things seriously enough. The people told Moses they didn’t want to hear God’s voice, because it would kill them. “That’s right” says God. When Moses asks to see God’s face, God says “Man shall not look on my face and live”. When Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu went into the Holy Place with “Unauthorized fire” – we don’t know what that means exactly, whether they used fire started for common use, instead of the tabernacle’s holy fire, or whether they forgot to cleanse themselves, or what, we don’t know. But whatever it was, we are told that God judged them for it – fire came out from the altar and killed them both. When David began moving the Ark of the covenant into Jerusalem, the oxen stumbled and Uzzah reached his hand out to grab it. But God had said the ark was not to be touched, and Uzzah died. The Holy things are not trifles that we can just enter into them any which way. Lest we think the New Testament did away with all of that, in Acts, Annanias and Saphira tried lying to God about how much they donated to the church, and Peter called them out on it, and at once they died. Or in 1 Corinthians, where Saint Paul has this to say about the Lord’s Supper in Corinth: “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.” God was punishing the Corinthians with sickness and death for misuse of the Lord’s Supper. Yes. Jesus has opened the holy things to us – but he did it with his own blood. Holiness is not cheap, it is no small thing. It involves the majesty of the Almighty God. We must be careful about the holy things – even in the New Testament. As Saint Paul warns the Galatians, “Be ye not deceived, God is not mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”

We must be careful not to treat holy things as if they were common and unimportant, as if we can just come into the presence of God without any sort of consideration of God’s holiness and our sinfulness. John the Baptist isn’t just making cool metaphors when he says “I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.” He really means it. “I can’t even be the entry-level servant to the most high God.” God chose me to do it, but I am not worthy of the task. So I better not mess it up. This is why he so carefully carries out his prophetic task. More on this in a minute.

The second mistake is taking the holiness of God too seriously. This is what the leaders of the people do in our Gospel. They want to know what sort of priestly credential John has to preach. He has been announced by the angel, and placed there by God. But they want more. There are ceremonies and rituals to follow. There is a way to do things, agreed upon best practices that John is not following. The word and promise of God isn’t enough for them. We see this throughout the history of the church. In Jesus day it took the form of false modesty about using God’s name. God says not to misuse his name in the 2nd commandment. Some think this means never using it. But that’s not what the 2nd Commandment says. Not using the name of God to call upon him in every trouble, pray, praise, give thanks, tell about his wondrous deeds – that’s also a misuse. We are to do all of those things God commands, and He gives us his name to do it. So that is a proper use. It’s like saying, “I don’t want to misuse my best friend’s name, so I’ll never use it. I’ll just call him “Hey you!” He wouldn’t be your best friend for long.

In the early church it was understood that Baptism marked you as God’s holy priest. It was a new birth and a new life. But what if you committed some great sin after baptism? That would defile you, and desecrate your Baptism. So people delayed baptism longer and longer while they prepared for it, until finally, the best life for the Christian was thought to be getting Baptized on your death bed, so you didn’t have a chance to commit any more sins. Today we see those who want to delay baptism and avoid giving Jesus to the little children, and it’s the same false piety. We see similar false piety in those who want to make sure the sacrament is never misused, and so try to use it as seldom as possible. In Luther’s day this was done by withholding the chalice from the laity – after all, you didn’t want to spill the blood of the Lord. True, we should be careful, but Jesus says the words “Take, drink.” He knew what that meant – he knew eventually there would be an accident. That doesn’t mean we treat accident’s lightly. We are careful in our use of the Lord’s blood. We have training for our altar guild and elders to make sure it is handled rightly. But any use that is built on a piety that leads to not taking and drinking is a false piety. So also with the word often. People delayed “often” and turned it into infrequently or even never to make sure they were truly worthy and well prepared. But this ignores the word of Jesus, as well as our doctrine about worthiness – Luther says, “If you wait until you are worthy, you will never go. Instead, rely on Christ’s worthiness alone. Trust in his word.” As we teach our young children, “Whoever has faith in the words, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins” is truly worthy and well prepared.

There are a lot of different ways this false piety about God’s holiness works itself out as we are tempted by Satan to either ignore or place too high a value on our own piety regarding the holiness of the Lord. But they are really the same sin. Placing our thoughts and our ways above the Word and promise of God.

We must stick to the sure and certain word and promise of God about all of this, and not get lost in the weeds of our own ideas about what God would have us do.

With that as prelude, the Gospel reading quickly falls into place. John the Baptist is doing his thing – preaching and baptizing on the riverbank. God told him to do it, the people are flocking to him. Keep in mind, the Jordan is 15 miles from Jerusalem, and that’s all on foot for the crowds. Crowds that are large enough to cause the leaders to send a delegation to figure out what’s going on. The people were desperate for a word from the Lord. John is mobbed by the people. And John doesn’t have time for any nonsense. So when they come asking their deceitful questions, He boldly confesses who he isn’t. I am not the Christ. False Christs always promise some sort of earthly paradise or utopia – generally after a violent insurrection. John has nothing to do with that. John isn’t about an earthly kingdom, just as Jesus kingdom is not of this world. John is about the Word of God, calling sinners to repent of their sins – turn away from them, and return to the Lord, and receive the forgiveness of sins for the sake of Jesus, the lamb who is to come.

John also denies he is the prophet who is to come – and if you consider the final words of our Old Testament, it’s obvious it’s talking about Jesus. “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.” This is a clear prophecy about Jesus. He is the Messiah AND the prophet who is to come, who will speak the Word of the Lord to the people, the one without whom there is no salvation, because he himself IS the salvation of the Lord.

John refuses to call any attention to himself beyond this: I am pointing to the one who is to come. He even says he isn’t Elijah – whose return was promised – because he doesn’t want to get into an argument about what that means. Jesus will confirm later that John was Elijah – he preached with the same Spirit and power, and was treated just as well for it. But John isn’t about who he is. He is about getting the people ready for someone else. This is the fourth Sunday of Advent. The last one. We’ve already been preparing our hearts the last three weeks to receive our king who comes. And yet, we are still not preparing for Jesus to come in the manger. We are still preparing our hearts for his return in glory. We are in the season of repentance – we are called to turn away from sin, and turn in faith to Christ.

We will celebrate the solemnity of our Lord’s Nativity this week, and we will hear again the familiar accounts from the Bible to remind us of all that our Lord has given. But Advent is still the season to prepare our hearts for his return. The first coming is finished. We know who the Messiah is now. We know what he came and did. We know about the death and resurrection. All of this is finished, as is Jesus work of redemption. We recount it every year, not because of nostalgia or a desire to re-enact the redemption. We hear it each year, so we would not fall away or forget but would always have our hearts and minds directed to our Lord Jesus. This is why John is so important this season – because John directs and directs and points and points and calls out and tells us to prepare for Him. John is relentless, he is uncompromising. He speaks the words he is given to speak. He points where he is told to point. And he does nothing else with his whole life. John the Baptist has the biggest one-track mind in all of history. This is why last week Jesus said John was greater than all the prophets. Because he is the one who will get to look at Jesus face to face and say, “Here he is. Follow this guy.” The prophets pointed to him, but never so directly. Advent is the time to do what John says – follow our Lord Jesus. We hear the Word of John, and turn away from our sin and turn to Christ Jesus, who gave himself into death so that we would have life.

We are not worthy to untie Jesus sandals anymore than John is. But Jesus makes us worthy – worthy to receive him who comes to us in His body and blood. Worthy to sing praises to him, to come into his presence with thanksgiving, to call upon him in every trouble, to be co-heirs with him for His sake, because of His work. To be children of our heavenly Father, delivered from the sins which would condemn us and be reconciled to him.

O Come, Emanuel, God with us, and bring us safely into your heavenly kingdom, as you have promised for all those who love you. Grant it, not for our sake, but for Jesus sake.

Amen.