Listen to the voice!

Sermon for Rorate Coeli – Advent 4

Philippians 4:4-7  +  John 1:19-28

I don’t know if any of you follow the reality TV show called “The Voice.” It was a girl from Farmington who won the singing competition this year, Chevel Shepherd. This year, hers was the voice that captured the hearts of the judges and the audience of over 10 million viewers. Good for her! Her voice has made her famous! It’ll change her life, no doubt. But, of course, it won’t change the lives of anyone who listens to her voice. Her voice may be beautiful. But it has no power to save.

Not so when it comes to John the Baptist. In our Gospel, he claims to be “the voice” to which all men must listen, if they would be prepared for the Lord’s coming. And so, on this Sunday before Christmas, our final preparation to celebrate the birth of Christ and to receive the coming of Christ at the end of the age is to meditate on the words of St. John the Baptist, the prophet—the voice—sent by God to prepare the people of Israel for the arrival of His Son. God sends John’s voice to us still today to prepare us, not just for the coming Christ, but for the Christ who stands even now in our midst.

Now, of course, John prepared no one for Jesus’ birth, except maybe his mother Elizabeth as he leaped for joy in her womb when the newly-pregnant Virgin Mary came to visit her. But fast-forward some thirty years, and there was John, doing the work God gave him to do, on the banks of the Jordan River, preparing people for the public revealing of Jesus as the Christ. By this time, the events in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth had been all but forgotten, and the baby who was born there had disappeared, gone into hiding. The disturbance in Jerusalem over the coming of the wise men and the supposed birth of the Christ had long since faded from the minds of the Jews, and that was by design. The time of the Messiah’s public revelation hadn’t yet begun.

But that was all about to change. Here comes this prophet named John. He’s wearing clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. His food is locusts and wild honey. He doesn’t fit in, and he doesn’t intend to. He has been given a direct call from God to preach repentance, to administer baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and to proclaim the arrival of the Christ.

Repentance is neatly described for us in our Lutheran confessions like this: 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…” John was to accuse all and convict them of being sinners. This is so they can know what they are before God and acknowledge that they are lost. So they can be prepared for the Lord to receive grace and to expect and accept from Him the forgiveness of sins.

This is the true preparation for the coming of Christ, to recognize that you are not good enough to win heaven or to avoid hell, no matter who you are or how good and decent a person you think you are. You need a Savior, and not a 50% or a 90% Savior, but a 100% Savior who will bear all your sins by Himself and who will provide 100% of the goodness and decency you need to stand before God.

That Savior is coming!, declared John. And then finally, one day, that Savior came. He walked right up to John at the banks of the Jordan and asked to be baptized. (We’ll save that account for another day.) Then He went off by Himself again for 40 days to be tempted in the wilderness. That’s when our Gospel account takes place, right at the end of those 40 days. During those 40 days, John’s message had shifted. He was still preaching repentance, still preaching baptism for the forgiveness of sins. But his message had changed from, “Christ is coming!,” to “Christ is here!”

That finally got the attention of the Jewish leaders. They sent a delegation to John, which you heard about in today’s Gospel, to ask him just who he was claiming to be. Apparently their first question to him was, “Are you the Christ?” The Apostle John tells us that John the Baptist denied that claim in no uncertain terms.

Are you Elijah? They meant by that, “Are you literally the prophet Elijah who has come back from the dead—or rather, back from heaven after being taken up in a whirlwind and a chariot of fire?” John denied being that Elijah, even though he was the figurative Elijah whom Malachi had prophesied would come to prepare the way for the Christ—the one who would come in the spirit and power of Elijah, as the angel Gabriel had foretold to John’s father Zacharias and as you heard Jesus declare last Sunday.

Are you the Prophet? They may have been referring to the Prophet Moses had prophesied would come back in Deuteronomy 18, referring to the Christ Himself. John denied being that Prophet, even though Jesus would later declare that John was, indeed, a prophet, and more than a prophet. You also heard that in last week’s Gospel.

Who are you, then?, they asked. I am ‘The voice.’ The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the LORD,” ’ as the prophet Isaiah said. In other words, John claims to be no one special in and of himself. He, like all true prophets of God, knows that and freely confesses it. “I am no one. I don’t matter. And yet you should listen to me, because God sent me. In fact, when you hear my voice, it is really the voice of God you are hearing. I am not just any voice, but the voice of the Lord crying out to you. He wants you to hear me when I call you to repentance, accusing all of you of sin and insisting that you must change, you must turn from your sins in contrition. You must turn humbly to the Lord for mercy. He also wants you to hear me announcing the grace of the coming Christ, so that you do let yourselves be baptized, so that you do trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And He wants you to recognize me, John, as the very one whom the prophet Isaiah said would come ahead of the Lord.”

So it is with all the prophets and apostles and pastors whom Christ has sent. We are no one special—and we know it better than anyone. You should not follow us or join or stay at or leave a church because of us. But you should listen to us, not because we’re anything special, but because God has sent us so that you may hear His voice through our voice as we point out your sin and point you to Christ.

That’s what John did. The delegation sent from the Pharisees wanted to write John off. Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet? But John just kept pointing his finger away from himself. He points to the One who makes his baptism valid. He points to the One from whose name baptism derives its power. He points no longer to the coming Christ, but to the Christ who has come. I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know. It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.

A better translation might be, “It is He who, coming after me, has gotten ahead of me.” Jesus was born six months after John and began His ministry after John. But once He appears on the scene, He goes ahead of John and takes over; His teaching, His ministry has overtaken that of John. From now on, John will decrease, and Jesus will increase. From now on, John will be sending his disciples away to follow Jesus.

That’s the role of the faithful voice, never drawing attention to itself, but always and only to Christ. But there is power in that voice: power to actually change your heart, power to bring you to trust in Christ Jesus. He stood in the midst of the Jewish people for a time, but most of them didn’t know Him. The same Jesus now stands in our midst in a different but equally powerful way. He stands here in His Church, in His Word, in His Sacrament. He won’t deal with you directly, as He did when He walked the earth at the time of John—not until He comes again in judgment. Instead, He has instituted this office of the holy ministry to deal with you through the voice of His called servants. This is where you find Him until He comes again. Not tucked away in your heart. Not under your Christmas tree. Not sitting at the table with your family. Here He gives Himself to you. Here He speaks to you with His voice. Here He is, the one whose sandals even the great prophet John was unworthy to untie. Hear His voice today. And come to the Christ-Mass and spend it with Him this Tuesday. Here you’ll find Him, lying in the manger of His Word, offering to you again His body and blood, born of the Virgin Mary, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This is where Jesus will be again on Christmas, to help and to save you, to hear and to accept your songs of praise and worship. Oh, come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord! Amen.