St. Paul Lutheran Church, Minden, Nebraska
Sunday sermon – Second Sunday in Advent - Dec. 6, ’09
“What! What! Great Change!”
Text: Luke 3:4-6
Something has got to give! Something has got to be done! Been there, said that? Been through that? Something has got to give! Something has got to be done!
A few years ago after some November snowstorms here in Minden left streets snow-packed & ice-bound, the talk of this town during December was not “Look at all the pretty Christmas decorations, but watch out all for the potholes & rough pavement. Boy, I heard people say, some streets are really bad.
For a while it was a sore subject; potholes & rough patches of pavement. How long were residents going to put up with it? Something had to give! Something had to be done. And finally it was! Long as it took, curbs & gutters were replaced, streets were repaired, truck after truck of fresh concrete was poured, new asphalt was laid! What an improvement, what a great change for the better.
Something had to be done! Something WAS done! It gave us all a new song to sing. “How blest the land, the city blest, where streets are new, both east and west. O thankful hearts and happy homes, no longer bumps that rattle our bones!”
We could say that about life too! Not just the end potholes & rough pavement when winter is hard on city streets, but what about when the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh is hard on us, or there’s great unrest. What about when the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh can make marriages & family life a real mess, every day putting our faith in God to a real test. As changes go, the need for change, out with the old, in with the new, has always been a challenge for God’s people on earth.
Every Advent we hear this, hear the voice of one John the Baptist crying in the wilderness!
Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley & pothole shall be filled. Every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough & bumpy places shall become level, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
What? What is John talking about? What John is talking about, what John is proclaiming is preparation for, the need for - change! Something has got to give; something deep down in the hearts of God’s people has got to change, out with the old, in with the new. How blest the land, the city blest, where Christ the ruler is confessed. A new & better kingdom is coming.
Luke writes, John went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
What the word “repentance” means, what it has always meant is -- change! And in the context of Advent, the change that is called for is remembering, acknowledging who we are as God’s people and how we do not live as God would have us live, how the Kingdom of God has not yet fully arrived in us. But it’s coming & it keeps coming.
The prophet Isaiah was the first to describe God’s Kingdom coming as “Filling valleys, leveling mountains, straightening out what is crooked, making smooth what is rough.” Isaiah 40:3 calls the changes needed - “building a straight & level highway for our God.”
In other words, in a world of change & decay, in a world of darkness & indifference where everyone is inclined to go their own way, do their own thing, what John the Baptist still comes proclaiming is turning, returning, restoring & making right what’s wrong & out of whack with us and God – that we might be prepared for God’s coming in Christ – for God’s new kingdom to come & God’s good & gracious will be done in us; in our hearts.
It’s no small change that John the Baptist’s calls for either. True repentance involves an inner, on-going, turning away from selfish thinking, getting a new heart, acknowledging what a struggle it is to give up old ways, be free of unfruitful, wasteful habits.
Author and mega-church pastor, Mac Lucado, tells the story of a man who had no interest in neatness, no use for hangers & drawers, no desire for picking things up or putting things away. The man could not comprehend the logic of neatness. Why make a bed if you’re going to sleep in it again? Why put the lid on the toothpaste if you’re going to take it off again. Why pick up magazines & news papers if they aren’t in anyone’s way. The man admitted his messiness had gotten to be a compulsive thing with him. He could not imagine him- self changing.
Then he got married. His wife was patient. She said she didn’t mind his messiness, if he didn’t mind sleeping on the couch. Since he did mind, he prepared to change. He enrolled in a 12-step program for sloppy people. He let a physical therapist help him rediscover muscles used for hanging up clothes and putting towels back on towel bars and in bathroom cabinets. He learned to run a wash machine & dryer. His nose was reintroduced to the smell of Pine Sol & Fabreeze. By the time his in-laws arrived for their first visit, he was a changed man.
But then came his moment of truth. His wife went out of town for a week. At first the once-repentant husband went back to his old ways. He figured he could be messy, sloppy, lazy for six days and clean up on the seventh. But something happened he had not imagined happening. He could no longer relax with dirty dishes in the sink or towels flung around the bathroom or clothes on the floor or sheets piled up on the bed.
What happened? A great change happened! The man had been exposed to a new level of living, cleanness, straightness, unselfishness he had not known before. .
That’s what confession and true repentance do for us. What heart-felt repentance & preparation for Jesus coming brings about in us is not only leaving old sins, dark sins, selfish & inconsiderate ways behind but also brings about a new standard of living we had not known before & not though possible. What a new song, true repentance leads us to sing:
How blest the land, the city blest! Where Christ the ruler is confessed!
O peaceful hearts and happy homes To whom this King in triumph comes!
The cloudless sun of joy is He Who comes to set His people free.
To God the Spirit raise your happy shouts of praise. (LSB, no. 341, v.3)
The Good News is that true repentance, true spiritual road repair, new heart, clean heart, renovating a guilty heart, building a straight, level highway for our God which is impossible for us to do on our own is not impossible for God who comes to us in Jesus Christ.
Self-oriented, hard-living, stress-filled habits, losing our way; rough & rocky road that the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh keeping working on to separate us from God, when something has got to be done, Christ did it. He died for us. When something has got to give, Christ gave it. His life for us! When something has got to change, in Jesus Christ, it has! Christ rose from the dead for us.
What’s all this say to us? It says that with a little humility and 100% grace & mercy from God, change is possible. With a little humility and a 100% working of the Holy Spirit, rough & rocky & sometimes unrealistic people we are by nature; people that we are who get tired of being the way we are, tired of the roughness, tired of the smallness, tired of the weakness, the defensiveness; tired of potholes of guilt & shame for things past; when we in faith repent & cast ourselves on the mercy of God, seeking God’s forgiveness in Christ, we get a new life; we get renovated, repaired, redeemed, restored, able to build and able to center our lives around God’s will and not our own. This is what Jesus does for us!
What? What is John the Baptist’s message? His message is not prepare for neatness; not prepare for niceness. His message is prepare for newness. Prepare the way of the Lord. Prepare to welcome the Lord, prepare to be made over into a new highway, a new creation, a work in progress, a royal palace fit for a king. With John’s proclaiming the coming of God’s new Kingdom in Christ there are no threats, no arm-twisting, no pushing, no manipulating, no bargaining.
What there is with John the Baptist’s baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins is first, one big, gracious & grace-filled invitation - welcoming us and encouraging us to enter into and be part of a great change -- living, loving, helping, serving, longing again & again for Christ the King to come to us and to be born in us.
And second, what there is with John the Baptist’s baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins is daily realizing & rejoicing in the fact that through the grace of God, with Christ our Savior & Lord coming to us in Word & Sacrament, in peace & joy, in the power of His life-trans-forming spirit, what needs to be done in us will get done, and changes that we did not think possible will come to pass.
Every valley of despair & disappointment shall be filled.
Every mountain and hill of pride & defensiveness shall be made low
And the crooked places in us shall become straight.
And the rough places shall become level . . . and most of all
others who see Christ coming, Christ living in us, Christ working in us shall see the salvation of God . . and be drawn to Him too!
