Second Sunday in
Advent (A)
December 4, 2022
Text: Matt. 3:1-12
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”
(Matt. 3:2; ESV). St. John the Baptist
is the voice crying out in the wilderness to this day, even from beyond the
grave, calling forth to you and to me, “Prepare the way of the Lord; make
his paths straight” (v. 3). St. John
is charged by God with the task of getting us ready to receive Jesus
Christ. “This is he of whom it is
written, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your
way before you’” (Matt. 11:10; cf. Mal. 3:1). John prepares the Lord’s way by his own
miraculous conception, by his living, his preaching, his baptizing, and his
dying. He prepares God’s people Israel
for the coming of their King at Christmas.
He prepares us to receive our incarnate God, not only at Christmas, but
always, continually, as He comes to us in His Gospel gifts. And St. John prepares us for that Day when
Jesus comes again in glory to judge both the living and the dead.
Repent,
John says. Knock down the hills. Fill in the valleys. Straighten out all that is crooked. He means you, in your life. Call a thing what it is. Name your sins. Confess them.
And turn from them. Jesus is
coming. He is coming to you. So, prepare the ground. Heed John’s preaching. Preaching is the only bulldozer that can
accomplish such cultivation in the soil of your heart, mind, and soul. It “levels mountains of pride”[1] and the garbage heaps of
your iniquities. It fills in what is
lacking in you, your sins of omission, your wide chasms of lovelessness. And it straightens you out, so that you walk
in the right direction, on the right road, forsaking your idols to follow Jesus
only.
It
does this, not by piling on the guilt so that you sufficiently feel bad, or at
least act the part. Crocodile tears are
not repentance. It does this, not as
some sort of pep talk to stir you up into really making your best effort this
time, striving to get it right, so that when Jesus comes, you can show Him how
much you’ve improved. No, it does this
by turning you. In fact, the
Greek word for repentance, μετάνοια, literally means to “change your
mind.” The preaching of repentance
exposes your sin so that, rather than being entranced by it, you are disgusted
by it. You don’t want to do it
anymore. You turn away from it. After all, you are baptized into Christ. You belong to God. You are possessed by the Holy Spirit. You don’t want to be what sin
has made you to be. You want to
be what Jesus has made you to be.
St. John bids you examine yourself, crucify your sinful flesh, and root
out all that is wicked and selfish in you, all that is not of Jesus
Christ. Change your mind. Set your mind on Christ, and on the things of
Christ, and no longer on the passions of the flesh.
For
the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. That
is to say, Jesus is at hand. He
is coming. He has arrived. Advent.
Where Jesus is, there is the Kingdom of Heaven. Now, this is a paradox, and we simply have to
live in this tension of what Luther called the “Already/Not Yet,” but there is
some sense in which the Kingdom is near… we’re on the cusp of it, it is
about to come… but we’re still waiting… waiting for Jesus to come again
visibly, and raise us from death, and make everything right. And yet, there is another sense in which the
Kingdom is here. It is here, because
Christ has already come, the Son of God, come into our flesh, born of the
Virgin Mary. The Kingdom arrived when He
was conceived in her womb. He was born. He grew.
And He went about doing Kingdom stuff: Casting out demons. Healing diseases and afflictions. Forgiving sins. Raising the dead. Preaching the Good News of the Kingdom to the
poor. And then, taking all our sin, all
our grief and pain, and our very death, upon Himself, He was crowned with
thorns, bejeweled with nails, enthroned upon a cross, Jesus of Nazareth, the
King of the Jews (John 19:19). He
suffered for us. He died for us. He is risen and lives for us. To bring us out of bondage to sin, death, and
the devil, and into His eternal Kingdom.
Where
Jesus is, there is the Kingdom of Heaven.
And where is Jesus now? In
Heaven, yes, seated in glory at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from
whence He rules all things for the good of His people. But where is that, this seat from which He
reigns? It isn’t a location in the same
sense that this is Moscow, and over there is Pullman, and down that way is
Lewiston, and Japan is across the sea.
Nor is it like, up there is Jupiter and Mars and Venus, the sun, moon,
and stars, and the vast expanse of the universe. No.
Heaven is not contained within this universe. But Heaven overlaps with earth and with this
universe wherever the Spirit of God has gathered His people around the gifts of
Jesus Christ. Where Christ Himself is
present! Bodily! In the flesh!
As He promises to be! “For
where two or three are gathered,” congregated, “in my name, there am I
among them” (Matt. 18:20). “And
behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (28:20). The Kingdom arrives with the King, Jesus
Christ, in the Baptism He has given in the Name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit; in the teaching of the all-things-whatsoever-He-has-commanded,
which is to say, the preaching of His Word; and, of course, in His Holy Supper:
“Take, eat; this is my body” (26:26); “Drink of it, all of you, for
this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the
forgiveness of sins” (vv. 27-28). Heaven
comes down to us in the flesh of Jesus.
Angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. They come down with Jesus as He comes
to us. They are with us. We are with them. One holy Christian Church of all times and
places, gathered around the Lamb who was slain, but who stands,
victorious, on the throne of His Father.
When you come to Church; when you hold preaching and God’s Word sacred,
and gladly hear and learn it; when you eat and drink the crucified and risen
body and blood of Jesus; Heaven walks right up to you and envelopes you in
its embrace, and it takes you into itself. You can’t see it, now, with your fallen eyes,
but… you are in Heaven! Right
now. Because Jesus is here. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
That
is why you repent. Not so that
Heaven will come. Heaven is coming,
and Heaven is here. But because
Heaven is coming, and because Heaven is here, and you are in it, and
soon, your eyes will be opened to it.
Because of Jesus, who has opened Heaven to you by His vicarious life,
death, and resurrection for you. That
is why you repent. You turn. You change your mind.
And
that is why you bear fruit in keeping with repentance, as St. John bids you to
do (Matt. 3:8). In repentance, we
forsake the works of the flesh (these are the things we change our mind from),
and I find St. Paul’s by-no-means exhaustive list in Galatians 5 helpful here
for the purpose of self-examination: “Now the works of the flesh are evident,”
he says: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery,
enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions,
envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Gal. 5:19-21). It is worthwhile, as part of your Advent
preparation, to go back and look through this list in Galatians 5, and think
about the ways you have participated in these things in your thoughts, words, and
deeds. That is what we mean by
self-examination. And St. Paul echoes
St. John’s warning that Lord will cut down and burn every fruitless tree (Matt.
3:10), clear His threshing floor on the Day of Judgment, and burn the chaff, the
fruitless impenitents, with unquenchable fire (v. 12), when he says, “I warn
you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things,” these works of
the flesh, “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21). Examine yourself and identify where you have
done such things, and confess them, and be absolved, so that these works cannot
follow you to the Day of Judgment.
And
then, do the opposite. Bear the fruit of
the Spirit (these are the things we change our minds to). Again, St. Paul is helpful, Galatians 5, a
passage we should all memorize and pray that God would grant us in our life: “the
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (vv. 22-23). The fruit of the Spirit is the fruit of
repentance for which John calls, the fruit of faith. Think about what these things mean
concretely, in your life of faith toward God, and fervent love toward one
another, in your life as a child of our Father and a citizen of the Kingdom of
Heaven, as you live out your vocations now in this life. For “those who belong to Christ Jesus have
crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in
step with the Spirit” (vv. 24-25).
“Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
And then, “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” That is the blueprint, the roadmap for our
whole life in Christ. For Christ has
come for our redemption. The Kingdom has
arrived in the flesh of the Son of God.
And as those who wait for the Kingdom’s full and final appearing when
Jesus comes again, and as those who receive Him now as Heaven overlaps with
earth in His Word and Sacraments… as those baptized into Christ with the Holy
Spirit, and whom the Holy Spirit has gathered into His barn, the Church… we repent
of all that is not of Christ. We believe
the Good News that He has rescued us from all of that. And we steadfastly seek to live in that
reality, lives filled with spiritual fruit in keeping with repentance.
That
is how we prepare the way of the Lord.
Hearken to the voice of St. John.
The Lord is coming. And, in fact,
the Lord has come. He comes to you right
now. In the Name of the Father, and of
the Son X, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
[1] John T. Pless, “From Advent to
Christmas” in Pastor Craft (Irvine, CA: New Reformation, 2020) p. 117.
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