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Sermon for Gaudete – Advent 3
Isaiah 40:1-8 + 1 Corinthians 4:1-5 + Matthew 11:2-10
The picture on your service folder today says it all. There is John the Baptist, behind bars for being a faithful forerunner of Christ, for preaching the truth about man’s sin and about Christ as Savior; with a scroll underneath, symbolizing the Old Testament Scriptures which prophesied both the preaching of John and the coming of the Christ. The prison bars and the look on John’s face in that picture seem not at all consistent with the word printed just below, the name for this Sunday in the Church Year: Gaudete! Rejoice!
In the midst of real suffering, there is joy for the Christian. In the face of the atrocities committed by the wicked, the massacre of the children in Connecticut, the slaughter of thousands more children since then in that carnage we call abortion, there still is room for Christian joy. Amid the dark and penitential candles of the Advent wreath, the pink candle still burns. Rejoice!
But how? Why? Human reason is stumped. There is no God, says the fool in his heart. A good God would never… Would never what? Send His own Son to be slaughtered by the wicked? No parent in Connecticut sent his or her child to school on Friday to be killed. But God sent His Son into the flesh to be put to death at the hands of sinners in order to save sinners from their sins. Rejoice!
Ah, but it’s dark and dreary in the dungeon. It’s dark and dreary in this world so filled with darkness where the righteous perish and the wicked prosper, where the real world, even for Christians, is filled with pain and hard work, where death seems to win again and again and again and again. How is a Christian to rejoice?
Ask Jesus. That’s the best place to start. Ask Him, as John the Baptist once asked Him, and then listen to His reply.
A little background first. John had done the hard thing. He had set aside the soft, comfortable clothes and the delicious, regular food and turned them in for camel’s skin and wild locusts. He turned his back on the cushy life he could have had as the son of a priest and went to live in the wilderness. And then, rather than gathering a following by telling people what their itching ears wanted to hear, he told them the hard truth, every time—You are all sinners, condemned by the Ten Commandments, deserving of God’s wrath. Repent! Change your hearts! Know your sins and grieve over them! And then be baptized for the forgiveness of sins which will be purchased for you by the blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
But King Herod—not the same one who slaughtered the little boys of Bethlehem after Jesus was born, but a relative who was just as wicked—King Herod refused to repent of his adultery. He threw John in prison. And there John sat, waiting for the inevitable, waiting for the executioner to come and take off his head.
And the Christ to whom John had pointed and said, His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire — that Jesus was not sweeping in on a white horse to rescue John. That Jesus was not doing anything, apparently, about the wickedness in Israel, not stopping Herod from slaughtering people, not kicking Caesar off his throne or preventing the abuse of the priests and the soldiers. He was healing people of diseases, but thousands were still sick, the poor were still poor, families still had problems, and everyone was still dying. Where is this salvation He was supposed to bring? Can He really be the Messiah? Is He really the one who was to come?
John sent his disciples to ask Jesus, Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another? I won’t say it’s OK to doubt. God’s Word should never be doubted. God is not doubtworthy but trustworthy. But if you struggle with fear and doubt, it does put you in good company. Rare is the saint in Holy Scripture who didn’t fall into this kind of doubt about God’s way, God’s plan of salvation. From Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, from Moses to David to Jeremiah to Peter and Thomas and all the Apostles. One minute they would be the most steadfast and firm believers, and in the next moment, when hardship strikes, you would think they never believed in God at all. So if you find yourself struggling with fear and doubt, ask Jesus if He is the one who was to come. It’s OK to ask, as long as you’re actually listening to His answer.
Jesus answered them, Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. John, you may be in the dungeon behind bars, and you may be in the dark and unable to see what God is doing in the world through Christ. But know that the light is still shining in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Even while you sit there in chains, the Gospel is not chained. In the midst of Herod’s wicked reign and the Roman oppression, in the midst of the false doctrine being spread in the Church of Israel by the priests themselves and by the Pharisees, in the midst of the false belief that has taken hold of so many in Israel, Jesus is still preaching and teaching. And where Jesus is, there the blind are recovering their sight and the lame are walking. Lepers are being cleansed. The ears of the deaf are being opened, the dead are raised and poor are having good news preached to them.
Now, Jesus was doing those healing miracles literally, but it was meant as a sign of the real, inner healing He was doing spiritually. What was the good news, after all, that was being preached to the poor? That they would now stop being poor? No. But that the poor in spirit, those who recognize their sins and their neediness before God would have their sins taken care of for them. That those who lack righteousness before God would have perfect righteousness provided for them, a righteousness that comes, not by doing, but by believing in Jesus the Christ. That Jesus would make them able to stand before God and would make them heirs of an eternal kingdom that is so much better than this dark and dreary world that it’s not even worth comparing with it, as the Apostle Paul says.
Right in the midst of this dark world, where it looks like Satan is unstoppable, the kingdom of God comes. But it doesn’t come with loud trumpet blasts or with banners or with victory parades. It doesn’t come visibly at all, yet. Christ the Lord comes with His Gospel, in great humility and under the disguise of defeat, and He forgives sinners and shows mercy to all who look to Him for mercy, and comforts His people, not with a pretend kind of peace or a fake kind of joy. But with the truth that God’s people, believers in Jesus, are loved by God, especially when it seems like they aren’t; with the truth that Christ Jesus is Lord, especially when it looks like He isn’t.
That is called the theology of the cross. It’s the truth that in the manger lies the King of kings, that on the cross hangs the Lord of lords. It’s the truth that the suffering Christian is a son of God and that the one who is persecuted for the name of Christ is the most blessed of all.
Blessed is the one who is not offended by me, Jesus urged John’s disciples to go back and report to him. Jesus is offensive to human reason and to our sinful flesh. His Gospel is offensive to human ears and His running of the universe is offensive to our human and fallen sense of right and wrong. And yet His Spirit calls out and crushes our reason and our flesh and our self-made morality and says rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice! Blessed is the one who is not offended by Jesus.
And while you can expect that many people will be offended by Jesus and will go off in search of some other kind of peace and joy and comfort in this world, while some people seek to create a different kind of Jesus with a different kind of gospel in a different kind of church—you can know for certain that some will not be offended by Him. Some will find joy in the cross of Christ who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Some thrive on this comfort, some live for it. Because it’s the comfort of the truth. Some people run away from this kind of comfort, but others run toward it. You have been drawn to it and have become attached to it, the truth of the Gospel, the offense of the cross, and you have been grafted by faith into the true joy of Christ. And you’ll see. Even as the comfort of the truth drives some away, it will draw other people to it, and it will be a pleasant comfort to those who are blessed.
Rejoice! The Baptist cries out from behind bars. Jesus is the one who was to come. Expect no other. Look for no other. In Him alone there is salvation. In Him alone there is peace and joy and comfort and forgiveness. And at the end of the road, at the end of the journey through this valley of the shadow of death, you will see: the kingdom of God was victorious all along. We already know how this story ends. It ends in salvation for those who are righteous by faith and in justice against those who cause God’s children to suffer in this world. It ends in the destruction of wickedness and in resurrection from the dead. It ends in glory and triumph and endless joy for all who long for His appearing. Come, Lord Jesus! And until then, rejoice, all you who hope in Him. For no one who believes in Him will ever be put to shame. Amen.
