John the Baptist: A Meditation on Luke 3, for the Second Sunday in Advent

 

…the word of God came unto John the son of

Zacharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the

country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance

for the remission of sins;

Many pastors have found throughout history that the least popular thing they must do as they serve God is to call people to repentance.  As the life and martyrdom of St. John the Baptist demonstrated, calling people to repentance can end up putting one’s head on a plate—which was what the wicked household of King Herod had done to him.  Preaching love and grace and peace and acceptance is usually either well received or generally ignored by society at large; but the preaching of repentance gets a lot of hostile attention very quickly.  As we enter into the Advent preparations for Christmas, it is worth meditating on why people get so angry when they are called to repent.

Of course, considering repentance in the abstract isn’t going to get the same visceral reaction as studying it in concrete particulars.  The general call to repentance might generate a general irritation among folks, or perhaps even a smugness that others may need to repent but not ourselves.  The pointed call to repentance actually addresses individuals, and names particular sins which must be put away lest the judgment of God fall upon them.  For example, telling people in general to avoid adultery may gain the irritation of a general public which wallows in debased sexual sins, or a holier than thou attitude by people who think they’ve never committed adultery despite their lustful hearts; but telling a specific person to repent of his fornication with his girlfriend, or a specific woman to repent of her adulterous affair with her neighbor’s husband, will get a potentially violent or evasive reaction.  This is true, because way down deep inside ourselves, we love our sin.  We love our pride, our lust, and our covetousness.  We love to think of ourselves as our own sovereign gods, and that no one has the right to judge us.  We even come up with bland but pious sounding platitudes to dismiss such calls to repentance, declaring everyone a sinner in general, so as to take the heat off of us personally.  If that doesn’t work, we’ll attack the preacher of repentance until he either shuts up, goes away, or we eradicate his witness from off the face of the earth.

In reality, my neighbor’s sin is not a license for my sin.  Attacking the messenger does not remove the call to repentance.  The truth of God is revealed against us all, and we will all bear the weight and the guilt of our own sins.  Our lack of love for God and our neighbor, our murderous ambition, sexual deviance, oppression of the weak and poor, destruction of nature and the natural order, and every other vice we’ve absolved ourselves from, cries out for our judgment.  Sin and evil, no matter how we may want to whitewash or popularize it, is damnable.  Not just sin in general, but my sin and your sin—my evil and your evil—call out to the Judge of the Universe for us to be consigned to death and hell for all eternity.  My sin is what damns me, not the Judge who passes righteous judgment upon me; just as the call to repentance shows me my sin and my need for a Savior, not the preacher who calls me to repent.  I cannot hide from my sin by denying the Judge, anymore than I can hide from the call to repentance by ignoring or abusing the preacher.  This Law of God is inescapable, and even if we were to silence every preacher, the universe itself and the witness of God written in our own body and soul declares it to us.  We are without excuse:  the works of our own hands, the words of our own mouths, and the thoughts of our own minds, declare our righteous condemnation.

Though absolutely necessary and foundational, the preaching of repentance alone is not the fullness of God’s Word to mankind.  As John the Baptist demonstrated, and as Christ Himself later sent His Apostles to preach, the Law of repentance must be paired with the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins.  While the preaching of the Law and the call to repentance from our own personal sins creates in us a holy terror, a sadness, or even an anger of rebellion against God, it does not give us what we need to be saved from our just judgment.  The Law is holy and good and pure, but we are found unholy, evil, and corrupt.  The call to repentance is hopelessness and despair for a sinner who cannot change his own nature, or root out of himself the twisted vices which impel him to never ending acts of evil.  While eternal and inescapable, the Law of repentance alone cannot save us, because we alone are not able to meet its perfect demand.

But the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake alone, does what the Law cannot do—it washes the believer in the Blood of the Lamb of God, and absolves our sins.  The debt we could not pay with an eternity in hell, Jesus pays once and for all upon His Holy Cross, suffering in His own body and soul the condemnation we have earned.  There in the Cross of Christ our sins are paid for, and the Law is satisfied.  This is the forgiveness of sins which is brought to the repentant sinner, because only the sinner who believes in the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake can turn from their evil toward the grace and holiness of God.  The unbelieving sinner remains trapped in his sins and the judgment sure to come upon him, but the believing sinner turns from his sins toward the Cross of Christ, by living faith receiving the gift of grace which only Jesus could earn for him.

This new life of faith and repentance is not easy.  It is marked with humility and a broken heart for one’s own sins, together with a constant desire to be called out of the darkness we so naturally fall back into.  This godly sorrow for our sins, coupled with the faith which clings to Jesus alone for our forgiveness, life, and salvation, inspires us by the Holy Spirit to rise up in a new life marked by the goodness and purity of God.  We do not live into the Law for salvation, but rather because we are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, we bring forth the fruits of faith which befit a life honest repentance.  A life without repentance nor its fruits, is also a life without saving faith or saving grace.

May we remember the inseparable link between repentance and the forgiveness of sin, between the Law and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that we may also do the hard and dangerous work of bearing witness in a dark and dying world.  Preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins may result in our martyrdom, but it is the eternal truth which the world needs—which we all need—for eternal life.  May we also always give thanks for the preachers of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in every age, who came to us in the spirit of Christ like John the Baptist, through whom the Word of God has been made known unto the salvation of all who will repent and believe the Gospel.  Amen.

Let Not Mine Enemies Triumph Over Me: A Meditation on Psalm 25, for the first Sunday of Advent

 

Unto thee, O LORD, do I lift up my soul.

O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed,

let not mine enemies triumph over me.

Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed:

let them be ashamed which transgress without cause.

Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths.

Lead me in thy truth, and teach me:

for thou art the God of my salvation;

on thee do I wait all the day.

It is a dark world, and there’s no getting around it.  Though the whole universe was created good, and continues to bear witness to its good Creator, through the Fall into sin and wickedness a darkness has come which no one can escape.  Every human being experiences the pain and suffering of a darkened world, some more urgently and pointedly than others.  In various places and times our human race has experienced starvation and disease, war and pillage, theft and abuse, enslavement and oppression; all marks of a fallen world.  A world that was originally constructed without death, disease, war, or tumult according to the holiness of Him who fashioned it, has become a place where people of every tribe and tongue sit in darkness yearning for the light.

In this fallen and darkened state, our enemies are many and close at hand.  The material world seems at war with us, as forces of nature destroy our homes and communities.  The microscopic world seems bent on our destruction, as chemicals, viruses, and bacteria plague us with disease.  The animal world frightens and pursues us, with tooth and claw that wound and kill.  And perhaps worst of all, our own brothers and sisters plot in sinister delight how to take, to conquer, to subjugate, to malign, and to murder even their own flesh and blood.  Inspired by our own fallen nature which is itself inclined always to evil, and goaded on by the dark forces of the devil to descend ever further into the black abyss of perdition, we sit surrounded by brutal enemies bent wholly upon our destruction.  The devil, the sinful world, and our own sinful flesh encompass us on all sides, driving us inexorably toward our deserved destiny of death and hell.

The truth of our imperiled state was not lost upon King David, as he penned the 25^th Psalm.  He knew all too well the enemies within and without, as well as his hopelessness in the face of such great monstrosities.  His solution, however, was not to depend upon his own strength, or cunning, or holiness—rather, he fell down before the Lord his God, and begged for salvation.  David not only knew that he was surrounded by enemies he could not of his own power defeat, and that his destruction was deserved because of his own sin, but he also knew that salvation was alone by the grace of God, and that such salvific grace could come only to those whose faith clung to Him through His Word.

At various times and places, the people of God sat in darkness, praying for His salvation from every enemy of mankind.  They prayed for protection and deliverance from Egyptian slave masters, from plague and hunger and weather, from Philistines and Assyrians and Babylonians, from evil kings and queens in their own country, from false prophets and false teachers.  But ultimately, the people of God have prayed not just for salvation from the troubles and troublers of this transitory life, but from the sin, death, hell, and power of the devil which have tormented them ever since the Fall.  They knew that salvation was from God alone both in this world and the next, and they sat in the darkness waiting upon the Light of God to break into the world which would save them from every enemy.

That Light for which the people of God waited in ancient times, broke forth in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  1000 years before Jesus, King David could write and sing to God for salvation for himself and all who put their trust in Him, praying that the faithful saints who clung to God for His grace might not be gloated over by their enemies.  And the faith of King David, together with all those who came before him and all those who came after, was made victoriously present in the Messiah.  In Jesus, every enemy of mankind was defeated, and the curse of death and hell was dispersed.  The malice of wicked people, the lure of sin within our own bodies, the persecution of murderers and tyrants, and even the terrible power of the fallen angels were conquered through the Cross of Jesus.  There in Jesus’ sacrifice for human sin was the curse lifted from mankind, and there in His resurrection was the confirmation that even though we die, we will live forever in Him.

This is the great Light which the people of the Old Testament looked forward to, and the people of the New Covenant look back upon, knowing that King David’s prayer for salvation was fulfilled for him and for us in Jesus.  And though we find ourselves in an ever darkening world, ravaged by wickedness both human and demonic, we stand victoriously in the midst of so great a morbid throng.  For we know by faith that we are saved by God’s grace in the person and work of Jesus Christ—a Holy Gospel of salvation which comes and abides with us by His Holy and Eternal Word.  Here in Jesus we stand in the Light which the darkness can neither comprehend nor overcome, knowing that even though we die, sin, death, hell and the devil shall never triumph over us.  We are a people freed from the curse of the Law, called unto holiness and life eternal, marked with the signs of repentance and the forgiveness of sins.  We are a people who need fear no evil, for Christ our King reigns victorious over all our enemies, and it is His good pleasure to give to us His Kingdom.

Be not afraid of the perennial enemies of our race, dear Christian, for your Savior lives and reigns unto all eternity.  And though weeping and suffering may mark our time in this world, we look forward to that great Dawn when our Lord shall return to claim His own, and all evil shall be forever put away.  For with your eyes you shall see the Lord of your Salvation, and your enemies will be seen no more.  All glory and honor be His, now and forever.  Amen.

Wandering Stars: A Meditation on Jude, for the Last Sunday of the Church Year

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto

you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write

unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend

for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were

before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men,

turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and

denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ…

Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran

greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished

in the gainsaying of Core. These are spots in your

feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding

themselves without fear: clouds they are without water,

carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without

fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; Raging

waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering

stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

In the ancient world, navigation was a bit more fundamental than our GPS and voice navigation systems of today.  Assuming the weather would cooperate, the sun provided a pretty good navigational reference during the day, and the stars provided an even more precise navigational reference in the evening.  If at sea in the darkness, the stars can be charted for your location on the globe, and you can use them to make your journey safely to your destination.  Of course, not everything that shines in the evening sky is reliable—while stars are relatively fixed points of reference, the planets and various other things up there will wander on you, making them poor choices for navigation.  If your captain or navigator attempted to traverse a long journey across the sea and used the wrong navigational points in the sky, you’d likely end up lost, shipwrecked, or drowned.

This image is taken up, in part, by St. Jude in his short epistle.  He calls the false teachers in the Church “wandering stars,” which signifies how dangerous it is to use them as a reference point for traversing this life.  Like all people, we find our way into this world not by our own choice or design, but by the creative act of God working through our parents.  Once here, we begin a long journey fraught with peril, navigating the world into which we are born, trying to avoid disaster and reach eternal life.  God, knowing our situation as fallen creatures, gives to us His Word to call, gather, keep, guide, and protect us through the journey back to Himself.  Those who preach to us God’s Word faithfully in its fullness—the full implications and aspirations of the Holy Law, together with the full sweetness and life of the Holy Gospel—give to us God’s navigational reference points for how to pass through this temporal world without losing the things eternal.  Without those witnesses to God’s Word, we would be lost and listing on the high seas of this life, drifting unguided to our eventual destruction.  If we are sitting here today by grace through faith in Christ alone for our salvation, then we have God to thank for those He sent to us to bear His Word, and keep us tethered to Him.

Unfortunately, there are also those who creep in unawares, and teach people things other than the Word of God.  They give to people false hopes and false promises, turning the grace of God into immorality and pride.  They teach people to put their trust in the words and schemes and works of men, knowing that all the words of men are doomed by sin and corruption.  They create strange stories and self justifying mantras, pleasantly confirming people in their native unbelief and wicked lifestyles.  These false teachers are dangerous, not only because the eternal darkness of hell is their coming abode, but because they are leading their hearers to the same deadly destination.  They themselves are headed for shipwreck, even as they lead others to their own watery graves.

But false teachers would have no pulpit to preach in, if not for our native desire to hear them.  Our fallen nature loves to hear excuses for why we should believe in ourselves rather than God, and which confirm us in the sins we enjoy.  That twisted human nature we inherited from our first parents is always oriented to pride, with a concupiscence that yearns for false teaching… and for lives lived in accordance with it.  False teachers would be much fewer in number and far shorter of influence, if we did not tolerate them to teach in the Church of God.  But from the parishioner to the pastor who yield to their darker nature and grant such wandering stars a platform to spread their deadly errors, arises the blight of deadly heresies running rampant throughout the Church and the world—bringing people of every stripe and kind to perdition.

If our hope alone rested in these human teachers, our hope would be futile.  There is no preacher who has not himself erred, and no people whose itching ears have not gotten the better of them at some time or another.  Our confidence is not in the teacher, but in the Word he brings and teaches.  That Word of Christ which we hold in the Holy Scriptures, raises up teachers to bear witness, and through those broken and fallen witnesses Christ calls broken and fallen people to faith and repentance.  There in the Word we hear our Savior preaching to us the full calamity of our sins, and the full satisfaction for that calamity He has suffered for us on His Cross.  There in the living Word, the Spirit works to bring all to repent of wickedness, and cling to the promise of Jesus’ forgiveness unto everlasting life.

To the false teacher, who has embraced Higher Criticism or any other model of theological interpretation that allows you the license to lay aside the Scriptures and lead a life of unrepentance and unbelief, the Word of God speaks your doom—repent!

To the false student, who prefers the teachings of Enthusiasts and Pietists that allow them to pretend direct revelations from God apart from the Holy Scriptures, to set aside the Law of God so that you may replace it with one of your own creation, the Word of God speaks your destruction—repent!

And to all those who will hear Him, to every sinner of every kind under heaven both teacher and student, who falls down in contrition before the holiness of His Law and is drawn up by the grace of His Gospel as they are given to us in Holy Scripture, the Word of God speaks to you of comfort, peace, joy, and salvation.  For it is His Word which grants repentance and faith unto forgiveness and life, and is for His people the Bright and Morning Star which never leads astray.

Now unto him that is able to keep you from

falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of

his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God

our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power,

both now and ever. Amen.

Do you see these great buildings? A Meditation on Mark 13, for the 25th Sunday after Pentecost

 

And as he went out of the temple, one of his

disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones

and what buildings are here!  And Jesus answering

said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall

not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

There is a great and enduring temptation to see the edifices of man as eternal, or at least the things in which we should trust in our own time and place.  To see the great cathedrals of Europe, or the great monuments of our Republic, with their splendors cast in stone, wood, metal, and glass, is to see some of the great artistic achievements of mankind.  I remember walking through the ancient cathedral of St. Mark in Venice, and at the same time, noticing the much older city all around it, and the majesty of the place was breathtaking.  Roman canals, roads, and bridges were still in use many centuries after their construction, with their engineering and artistic prowess still visible.  Such buildings and monuments give a sense of constancy which endures beyond a single generation, and provides grounding in a contemporary culture driven by short lived passions and fads.

But in the end, such great monuments are still only of human construction.  From the great pyramids of Egypt still standing 3000 years after their building, to the cathedral of Notre Dame, to the Lincoln Memorial, each is a wonder built by human hands.  It is easy to forget that while modern human hands (and those hands of humanly controlled manufacturing robots) craft many things that are useful today and tomorrow are cast into the rubbish heap, those same hands are capable of crafting places and monuments which endure even across millennia.  And yet like the men and women who build them, such works of human hands are bound by time… eventually destined to fall and decay, some in shorter and some in longer horizons.

As His disciples were walking through Jerusalem, they took a moment to express their awe of the city to Jesus.  Lest His disciples place their hope and trust in such beautiful but passing things, Jesus began an apocalyptic discourse which must have been shocking to His hearers.  The city of Jerusalem was the City of David, which he conquered nearly 1000 years before, and featured prominently in the prophecy of the Old Testament.  While it had been harassed by many nations in its history, eventually destroyed by the Babylonians in the 6^th century BC and rebuilt again later that same century, and even at Jesus’ time was a Roman vassal state without true independence, Jesus’ disciples wanted to find something enduring they could hold onto in those sacred and ancient stones.  And yet, as the bedazzling of their eyes by the works of human hands was pierced by the Word of God, they could see that it isn’t man, his cities, his temples, nor his monuments which endure, but God alone.

Indeed, Jesus describes the fall of Jerusalem, which in an immediate sense happened around 70 AD, as Jewish rebels were destroyed by Roman armies, and the people were scattered so that they might not ever build it again.  But what was immediate in that prophecy paled in comparison to the Last Day Jesus warned His disciples of, in which all the works of man—and even all creation—would be brought before God Almighty and judged forever.  In that Last Day there would be nothing left of the monuments of men, nothing left of their cleverness or artistry, as the very elements of the universe dissolved in the purging fire of God’s eternal justice.  For on that Last Day, all the hearts of all mankind would be revealed before the all seeing eyes of their Creator, and all the works of men would be revealed for the corrupt and prideful things they are.  On that Last Day, all the pretensions of man and all the images he has crafted to give himself a sense of permanence and endurance would be stripped away, and they will stand before the only Holy and Eternal God to give account for their lives—every thought, word, and deed, of things done and left undone.

Jesus warns His disciples not to be dismayed or distracted by the calamities they might mistake for that Last Day.  Earthquakes and floods; wars and rumors of wars; nations rising against nations; parents and children betraying each other to death; the persecution of the saints of God by the corrupt governments and religious institutions of the earth; false christs and false prophets proliferating across the globe, deceiving many, and trying to draw away even the Elect; all these things would be only the beginning of the end, and all these things we have seen across the centuries even unto our own times.  Should the Lord tarry, they are things which will be seen by our children and our grandchildren, as they mark the great persecution of Christ and His Church in every age.  The wickedness of a fallen world will ever be persecuting the Word of Christ, and those called into His eternal fellowship by it.

But it is Christ and His Word which endures forever, and not the works of men.  Jesus takes our eyes from the gaudy and prideful crafts of human hands, as transiently beautiful as they may be, and fixes them rather upon Him.  For it is Jesus, the Word of God Made Flesh, who would give Himself as the ransom of salvation for all who would trust in Him; Jesus, who would pass through the Last Day of God’s great and terrible judgment on our behalf, bringing back to us peace and forgiveness and reconciliation with God; Jesus who would endure death and the grave, returning to give us His victorious resurrection and eternal life; Jesus who would establish His Church by His Word of this Holy Gospel, calling all mankind to faith and repentance; Jesus who would remain with His Church by His Word through every persecution, famine, war, and tumult, preserving His people by grace through faith in Him; Jesus who would meet every believer at the portal of their own death, and welcome them into His eternal and blessed embrace; Jesus who would, at the end of all things, come upon the clouds of glory on that Last Day to gather His Elect from every corner under heaven, that they be not consumed by the fires of judgment He has already born for them in His own body.

And so to you, dear Christian, comes the Word of Jesus, to give you comfort, strength, and courage in these days.  Do not be dismayed by the teetering edifices of man, be they political or ecclesiastical, for no work of man endures forever—rather they come and they go, rising and falling like the ocean’s tides.  But the Word of Christ to you is certain and sure, and will endure even when the last distant star flutters its last dying light.  It is a Word of forgiveness and hope, of salvation and love written irrevocably in the Holy Blood of Jesus.  It is a Word which by His Holy Spirit gives you the faith to believe in Him, though everything in heaven and earth give way.  It is a Word that proceeds forth from the finished work of Jesus to call even unto you, that you might turn from the ways of death in which there is only destruction, and live in Him forever by His wondrous grace.   By this Word of Christ’s Gospel, you are called to sing with the Psalmist (16), and with the whole People of God in every age before and yet to come:

I have set the LORD always before me:

because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth:

my flesh also shall rest in hope.

For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell;

neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is

fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

Amen.