Second Sunday in
Advent (C)
December 5, 2021
Text: Luke 3:1-20
St.
John the Baptist is the great Advent Preacher.
He is the promised Elijah, the voice crying out in the wilderness, “Prepare
the way of the Lord” (Luke 3:4; ESV).
The Lord is coming. He is adventing. So you’d better be ready. And to make sure you are, the Lord sends His
man, His herald, to precede Him. To
proclaim. To preach.
St.
John builds Him a Royal Highway through the wilderness, a thoroughfare right
through your heart. “Repent!” John
preaches. Fill in every valley, all that
is lacking in you. Knock down every
mountain, all that is too high, your arrogance, your pride. Straighten what is crooked, what is bent, what
does not conform to our Lord’s will for you, like when your parents say, “You’d
better straighten up!” Level whatever is
rough, whatever is impure, whatever is tarnished in your words, your thoughts,
your deeds, your will. Smooth it
out. Clean it up. Why?
Because THE monumental event in all of human history is coming to
pass. All flesh shall see the salvation
of God. Jesus Christ is coming to
you.
Repentance
is a turning from sin and death and unbelief, to God in Christ, to receive His
righteousness and life in faith.
Repentance is God’s gift to you.
It is His work in you, by His Spirit, in His Word and Holy Sacraments. He gives it in Holy Baptism, where He
drowns old Adam in you and raises you up a new creation in Christ. He gives it in the preaching of His Holy
Word, exposing your sins by His Law, crucifying your flesh, raising you to new
life by His Gospel as He applies the sin-atoning death and justifying
resurrection of Christ to you. He
gives it in the Holy Supper, as Christ enters into you with His true body
and blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins, now filling you
with His very resurrection life. This is
so important. Because it would be so
easy to see repentance as your work, as something you do within yourself
that contributes to your being forgiven.
Not at all. God works this
in you. God repents you.
St.
John comes preaching a Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. This corresponds, not only to Christian
Baptism, of which it is a foreshadowing, but to our continual return to Baptism
every time we confess our sins and are absolved. The people came out to John confessing
their sins, to have them cleansed away in the waters of the Jordan,
to be taken up by Jesus in His Baptism into us.
So we come before God to speak our sins aloud, to give them over to Him,
to be dealt with by Jesus’ blood and death on the cross, to have them spoken
away from us, and thus to be absolved, forgiven, cleansed, purified, justified,
declared righteous on account of Christ.
This is the great gift of repentance. Convicting us of sin by the preaching of His
Law, as John preached to the crowds in the wilderness, God drives us to
Himself, and to Himself alone, for the gift of forgiveness, righteousness, and
life.
This
corresponds to the two parts of repentance.
Melanchthon puts it this way in the Apology of the Augsburg
Confession (one of the documents in the Book of Concord): “we have
attributed these two parts to repentance: contrition and faith.”[1] Contrition is godly sorrow over sin
when God’s Law has convicted you. This
is the turning of the heart away from evil.
Faith, of course, is trust in God, trust in Jesus Christ, and in
His sin-atoning work, for the forgiveness of all your sins. This completes the turning from evil,
and to God in Christ, thus repentance.
But
then there is this (and this is the part Lutherans are always in danger of
forgetting). Though repentance is
essentially complete in the turning, now there results the fruit of repentance. The Apology continues, “If anyone
desires to add a third—fruit worthy of repentance, that is, a change of the
entire life and character for the better—we will not oppose it.”[2] Thus St. John preaches, “Bear fruits in
keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:8).
A good tree bears good fruit. A
bad tree bears bad fruit. You will know the
tree by its fruit. Therefore, God,
having fashioned you into a good tree out of a bad one… that is to say,
forgiveness and justification being complete for you in Christ… you now do what
God has created you to do. Love your
neighbor. Do good works. Be God’s hands and feet and mouth in the
world. Be who you are in Christ. Be who God has created you to be. Be who God has now redeemed you to be.
“Bear
fruits in keeping with repentance.” “What
then shall we do?” (v. 10). The
people wonder what on earth kinds of fruits John could be
demanding. He tells them to examine
themselves in terms of their station in life, and in relation to their neighbor. It sounds remarkably like the Small
Catechism, doesn’t it? “Consider
your place in life according to the Ten Commandments”? Tax collectors are not to cheat people by
taking more than they are authorized to do.
Soldiers are not to extort money from people by means of threat or false
accusation, and they are to be content with their wages. Now, apply this generally to your own
vocations. Examine yourself. And be brutally honest. What are you taking that isn’t yours to
take? In what ways are you harming your
neighbor, embittering his life by your words and actions, despising him in your
heart, holding a grudge against him, bearing him in malice? Where could you help that you don’t because
of selfishness or self-interest or holding others in low esteem? If you are honest with yourself, as such
self-examination demands, it will hurt, because it is the death of old
Adam. Repent. Turn from that. And to Christ. Take heart in Christ. And then?
Get busy. You’ve been freed
to do so. You’ve been freed to
reject sin and selfishness, and to live outside of yourself, in Christ, for
others. Where you have taken… now give,
and that generously. Where you have
harmed… help and heal. Speak words of
healing, encouragement, Gospel. Forgive
your neighbor where he has sinned against you.
Bear with him in patience where he is weak. Contribute, support, give aid. Put your hand to the plow. Your money in the hat. Your prayers in God’s ear. If you have two tunics, share with the one
who has none. Clothe the naked. If you have food, share with the one who
lacks. Feed the hungry. Do your job as for God Himself. Pay your taxes. Honor your parents. Raise your children in the fear and admonition
of the Lord. It is kind of silly that we
ask with the crowds, “What then shall we do?” We know what to do. Do the opposite of whatever old Adam
wants. Be Christians. Die to self and live in Christ, in faith
toward Him, and in fervent love toward one another.
See,
in repentance, a change happens.
Luther says it this way in the Smalcald Articles (another of our
confessions in the Book of Concord): “This is what true repentance
means. Here a person needs to hear
something like this, ‘You are all of no account, whether you are obvious
sinners or saints <in your own opinions>.
You have to become different from what you are now. You have to act differently than you are now
acting, whether you are as great, wise, powerful, and holy as you can be. Here no one is godly.”[3] Everyone must examine himself. Everyone must turn. It does no good to fall back into a false
sense of security that you are a son of Abraham, or a good old Missouri Synod
Lutheran. Nor should you go on sinning
that grace may abound. May it never
be. Nor should you despair that you can
never be forgiven and live a Christian life, for these are the gift of God in
Christ. The call to repentance is aimed
at the heart of every one of us. John is
preaching to you. Examine yourself. Repent.
Turn in faith toward Christ. Your
sins are forgiven. For behold, the Lamb
of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Now bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
And
this is how you prepare this Adventide. God
sends his man to preach, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” And that is what He is doing in you. Right here, right now, in the preaching of
His Word, God is constructing for Himself a highway. He is giving you the gift of repentance and
faith. He is turning you from sin to
Himself. He is working in you to will
and to do what He commands. Advent is
the season of preparation. Let us heed
the prophet’s wilderness preaching. For Jesus
is coming. He is coming for you. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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