Joy seen from a distance

Sermon for Advent 3 – Gaudete

Malachi 3:1-6  +  1 Corinthians 4:1-5  +  Matthew 11:2-10

The Latin name for this Sunday in the Church year is Gaudete, Rejoice! That’s a nice word to hear, when things are going well. It’s a nice word to hear when things aren’t going well, but they’re about to change for the better. It can be a hard word to hear when things are going poorly and look to continue going poorly. For example, our Gospel today takes place with John the Baptist sitting in prison, waiting to die. Imagine walking up to John and crying out in a loud voice, “Rejoice!”, with a big smile on your face. It wouldn’t be appropriate; it’s certainly not the message Jesus sent back to John in today’s Gospel. And yet, behind the suffering and the loss that John was facing, behind the words of Jesus, there was most definitely a soft whisper, Rejoice!, because, while things weren’t going to appear better any time soon, the fact that they would eventually get better—with Christ’s second Advent—was absolutely certain, pointing to a sure and certain joy in the distance.

Sometimes joy seems just around the corner. Sometimes it seems very far away. What is it that will bring you true joy and happiness?

If we could just get rid of sickness and disease. If we could just get rid of old age. If we could just get rid of wickedness in the world. If we could just get rid of death. If we could just live together as human beings without bitterness and rage and anger. If we could just get rid of poverty, so that everyone has enough to eat and place to sleep…and maybe some extra comforts along the way. If we could just have stability in our lives, without things constantly changing. If we could just have the respect of the world instead of its hatred.

Ask anyone, what would bring you true joy and happiness? And you may hear something like that. What you will likely not hear from anyone is, to lose everything for the sake of Christ. And yet this is what the Apostle Paul writes: I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Joy in the loss of all things, joy in sharing in Christ’s sufferings, joy in being conformed to His death, because at the end of the loss and the suffering and the death is Christ, and His righteousness, which He shares with the one who has faith in Him, and the resurrection from the dead and everlasting life with Him.

That is a truly Christian perspective of joy and happiness, but it doesn’t come naturally to any of us. It didn’t even come naturally to the greatest of all prophets, John the Baptist.

John knew that he was the messenger, the angel, prophesied by Malachi in chapter 3, as you heard this morning. And he believed that Jesus was, the Christ, THE Messenger of the covenant who was to come, in whom the people of Israel would delight. But John also apparently believed that the description of the Christ in Malachi’s prophecy was speaking about external things that the Christ would do when He came. But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire And like launderers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi, And purge them as gold and silver, That they may offer to the LORD An offering in righteousness.

That’s not what John saw. He saw himself in prison, even though He had faithfully heralded Jesus as the Christ. He faithfully preached God’s Word of rebuke against King Herod and his adultery, and for all that, he was thrown in prison. He saw the priests, the “sons of Levi,” rejecting Jesus and being just as cruel and as wicked as ever. He saw people still getting sick, still dying. He saw just as many poor people on the streets of Israel as there had ever been, and no sign that Jesus was going to make any real difference in any of the things that trouble mankind. Joy? Happiness? The Christ didn’t seem to be bringing any of that with Him. Can the kingdom of the Christ really be so dismal?

So John, sitting in prison, sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus the question, Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another? It was an honest question, but a question teetering on unbelief. Yes, it left open the possibility that Jesus was still the Christ, but it also left open the chance that He wasn’t. That’s a very precarious place for faith to be, to think that Jesus might be the Christ, the Son of the living God, or maybe not. You can’t rest the future of your eternal soul on something that might be true, or on someone who might not be the Christ. That would be the death of faith, which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Or as Luther translates Hebrews 11:1, faith is a certain confidence in that which one hopes and not to doubt that which one does not see.

So Jesus gave John’s disciples what he needed to hear to pull him back from the brink. Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.

No, Jesus wasn’t getting rid of all the wrong in the world. He wasn’t overturning all the sickness and suffering and consequences of sin. But He was getting rid of bits and pieces of it in the lives of the sick who were brought to Him, as the Old Testament prophesied that the Christ would do. Blind men were receiving their sight. The lame were given their legs back. The lepers were being cleansed. The deaf were made to hear. And even a few of the dead were being raised back to life. Not all suffering, not the majority of Israel’s suffering or of the world’s suffering was being eradicated. But the fact that any were being miraculously healed was a sure sign that Jesus was the Christ. His plan for His kingdom may not be clear, may not be visible at all, but there can be no doubt that He is the King.

And then there were the poor. The poor were not being made “unpoor,” financially speaking. We don’t know a single poor person who was raised up out of poverty by Jesus. But what does Jesus say? “The poor have the gospel preached to them.” Just like Isaiah had prophesied about the Christ in chapter 61: The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor. What is the gospel? What are those good tidings? That God has provided a sacrifice for rich and poor alike, that God shows no favoritism to rich or poor. That all have sinned and are justified solely by faith in Christ Jesus. That whoever has Christ has something far better than earthly riches; he has a place in God’s kingdom now and the hope of an eternal, joy-filled future in God’s kingdom after this life.

Oh. But that makes it sound like this life could still be rough. Like this life could still be filled with pain and loss, even though Christ has come, even though Christ reigns at God’s right hand. Sure enough. Christian joy here on earth doesn’t involve getting rid of the bad stuff. It shines through the bad stuff, even if it’s buried deep beneath it.

And so Jesus calls out to John the Baptist, Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me. Some people are offended because of Jesus. They stumble over Jesus, because what they really want is a Savior from earthly loss, from earthly struggles, whereas He came to be our Savior from sin and from the devil. He came to give Himself into death, in order to rule over people who are willing to give themselves into death, to lose everything, even their own lives for the sake of gaining Him and eternal life with Him. If you aren’t willing to lose everything, even your earthly life, for the sake of having eternal life with Jesus, then you will eventually lose it all.  But blessed is he who is not offended because of Jesus, because Jesus says, Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. There is joy buried beneath the loss.

As John’s disciples departed, Jesus began to say to the multitudes concerning John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? But what did you go out to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Indeed, those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses. But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I say to you, and more than a prophet. For this is he of whom it is written: ‘Behold, I send My messenger before Your face, who will prepare Your way before You.

Jesus drives home the point to the crowds who were with Him, and to us. You didn’t go out to hear John in the wilderness, dressed as he was in camel’s hair clothing, because he was prosperous or a prosperity preacher, did you? You didn’t listen to him because he was cool, or relatable, or because he told you nice things. No, you went out to hear him, even though he was “strange,” even though he spoke harshly and seriously, because his words had the ring of a true prophet of God. And he was! In fact, he was the very prophet about whom the prophet Malachi had prophesied as the messenger who would prepare the way for THE Messenger, the Christ. Even so, you shouldn’t expect the Christ to offer you earthly prosperity or the removal of life’s burdens or nice-sounding things. He’s already told you that He didn’t come at His first Advent to offer those things. What you should expect from Him is the truth, and compassion and sympathy in dealing with the losses of this life, because He came to share in those losses in order to purchase you for God. He died so that you might live—not live a trouble-free or easy life on this earth, but live in God’s grace and favor in the midst of the troubles, and then live in God’s presence in the trouble-free life that Christ’s second Advent will usher in.

The losses of this life are designed, in part, to keep you looking up and longing for that Advent and for the joy that awaits when Christ finally comes. And the knowledge, the hope, the certainty of that final victory over sin and death when He comes, over all the trials and troubles and losses of this life, is what will enable you to find the joy, shining brightly in the distance. And the word Rejoice! is just as valid, whether it comes as a loud cry or as a whisper. Amen.