Repent, God [Advent 3; St. Matthew 11:2-10]

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Jesus speaks to you, even this day, saying:

“This is he of whom it is written, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face,

who will prepare your way before you.’”

The way John the Baptist has prepared the Way has been with this message: “Repent. The kingdom of the heavens is at hand!” What he does with this message is prescribe the entire life of the Christian as one of repentance. Which means, if you ever find yourself at a loss as to what you should be doing for God, simply stop and repent.

Used 34 times in the New Testament, the word for repent literally means change your thinking. In your life of sin, you think sins, most especially your own, are ok. As long as you stay away from the big ones, God will look down at you and wink.

In the New Testament, repentance becomes an act of man and is always used in reference to what you should do with your sins: change your think. However, in the Old Testament, repentance was being enacted by someone else.

Listen: Samuel writes after Saul rejected the Word of the Lord and was removed from the throne of Israel, saying, “And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or repent, for he is not a man, that he should repent.”

Many generations later, Jeremiah speaks similarly saying: “For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black; because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.”

The picture we begin to see is that God appears to live in direct contradiction to John the Baptist’s words in not being a man who repents. Of course, you say. God is all powerful and all knowing. He has nothing of which He would need repentance. And the unbelievers would ask what about cancer? What about starvation? What about Trump’s election?

The sinner feels God has much to repent over and the Old Testament even talks about that. Again from Jeremiah we hear, “...and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will repent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.” But we can’t forget the flip-side and also hear, “…if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will repent of the good that I had intended to do to it”.

Also remember the most famous of God’s repentance in the story of Jonah. St. Jonah goes to Nineveh and rebukes the entire kingdom for their sin. It is not Jonah, but the unbelieving king of that country that responds, “Who knows? God may turn and repent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish."

St. Jonah gets angry at God for repenting, yet these new believers heard the Word and believed, trusting that God is a God of mercy. Jonah knew God would not punish the evildoers and instead show mercy, because, for Jonah, repentance is man’s work, not God’s. Regardless of what St. Jonah thinks, repentance is God’s work.

So when we get to Jesus commanding that we prepare the way, the Lord has already showed us the way by walking it Himself: the way of repentance. For God does repent in Jesus. Jesus comes down, claims to be God, and everyone takes Him so seriously that they put Him to death for all the crimes God did not repent of, according to us.

And the cross shows this to us. The cross is where, “The Lord repents concerning this: 'It shall not be,' said the Lord” as St. Amos records. God goes down this way of repentance first, to show us just how its done and how far we are away from it.

So now that the way of preparation has been accomplished in Christ, we hear St. Isaiah, whose candle we lit today, tell us: “Remember these things and groan; repent you that have gone astray” and also hear King Solomon give us proverbs of encouragement: “The simple man believes every word, but the prudent man comes into repentance”.

We repent, because the Lord first repents. We continue to repent only because the Lord has commanded it. We do not grow weary of repentance or fall into despair, because we have the hope of forgiveness. We draw near with a baptized heart and confess our sins unto God our Father, beseeching Him in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ to grant us forgiveness, because in Christ forgiveness follows repentance every single time.

God has nothing to repent of. He has no need of it, because He offers salvation and comfort in the cross of His own Son. He can bring disaster or avert it. It makes no difference to the Christian, because Christ is on the cross for him and is all the rescue needed. Our repentance is done in faith and faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus, God also refuses to repent, unleashing His wrath on His Son, yet this just opens the way for fruitful repentance. For John’s message, and the entire OT message, was repent or else. In Christ, because He was made flesh and suffered and died, the message is now, “Repent! For the kingdom of the heavens is near, to forgive.”

Only in Jesus is our repentance worthwhile. Thus, our entire life is one of repentance, not because we hate ourselves, but because it is the only place where Jesus gives forgiveness instead of punishment, when we bring Him bad things. At this Good News, faith drops everything, gets on its knees, and gets every sin out of its system that it can.

The Good News that Christ was made man now makes us believe that we no longer have to groan in our sin, though we should hate our sins and be horrified by them. Now, St. Isaiah’s words of comfort and peace can only be found in repentance, not just to our minds, but because of Christmas, comfort and peace are brought to our bodies as well.

Not because we simply act out repentance, but because our warfare with sin, death, and the devil has been ended for us. Our iniquity has been pardoned. The Glory of the Lord is revealed on the cross and the promise of forgiveness stands forever. All of our repentance; all of our preparation would be for naught, for in it we only have a reminder of our sins, year after year.

But, where there is forgiveness of sins, there is no longer any need for offerings for sin. Now in the blood of Jesus we have confidence to enter this holy place, “…by the new and living way that He opened for us through the veil, that is, through his flesh,and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts [baptized] clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

And that is the point: it is the Lord Who is faithful. He will do it. He forgives. “…rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God,for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he repents over disaster.”

Already changed [Advent 2; St. Luke 21:25-36]

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Jesus speaks to you today, in His Gospel, saying,

“So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.”

“Come gather around people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
And if your breath to you is worth saving
Then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changing”

Thus far the “prophet” Bob Dylan predicts the future we live in and gives voice to the accusation leveled at the true Church today: if you don’t change, you will die out. In fact, a cursory google search will yield many articles pushing the idea of 10 things that the church must do different or it will become irrelevant in the future.

They will then predict the 10 things the church will do differently in the future, the one that has survived, at least. These usually include insults to traditional churches saying things like if you love your model more than your mission you will lose or, that selfless discipleship or online service is key to survival, because that’s never been tried before.

But the main criticism is always that the old road is rapidly aging and if you can’t lend a hand get out of the new one. What is not surprising is that they will never argue doctrine or belief, but instead at how you present your church. Never is the criticism against what the Word of God says about this or that, but only how much you promote self.

Now this church growth crowd pronounces the demise of traditional Christianity each and every year, and only their buzzwords, facial hair, and the style of their eyeglasses ever seem to change in these clumsy articles. Because these predictions always work out, don’t they? Remember in the 70’s and 80’s when we thought by now that we’d have flying cars and a full salary for only working 20 hours per week?

Now there is something to this. Times do change. Jesus talks about that today. You see the signs, the change of time in the sun and the stars and the moon. You notice the coming and going of seasons in looking at the flowering and producing trees. The world marches through time and Jesus has created signs to mark these out. Obvious signs.

As in, these signs that mark the end of all things will be easily seen and understood by Christians. We will know people will increasingly hate the Word and the Church. We know the Church will continue to shrink and we know true faith will be hunted.

These signs are not global Armageddon or Trump gaining Presidential status. The signs of the times are empty pews and a disdain for the Gospel given simply in Word and Sacrament. Jesus says, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” 
Did you only think that “little” in the Bible always referred to children? The Church on earth is little and belittled. Her Word is unheeded and her sacraments are despised and spat upon. No one wants a god that needs words in ink and bread and wine in order to give forgiveness to His people.

Jesus tells us to pray for strength to withstand this, because we don’t have the strength. Jesus shows us what true strength is, standing up to family, friends, and even all of His own creation in order to stand on the cross alone, atoning for the sins of the world.

Jesus is the small (one man out of trillions) doing the Good works of God. Jesus is the little one accomplishing the little works of God, even from His manger. That is rescuing us from sin, death, and the devil. And these acts and His Word do not change. There is nothing different about what Jesus did on the cross, from year to year.

There is no different Christmas or Easter story. There is no different book of the Bible to be studied anew. There is no different way to salvation and there is no different way to commune with the Lord of all things. In this way, the Church will never change and thank God for that. Imagine a changing church. How would you ever find something that changes in a way you don’t know, from year to year. Impossible!

Yet “…it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” Jesus did not perish, but rose to new life, never to die again. The Church He created will not perish, but lives forever in Christ, being His Body and He Her head. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” And the Father does so, on His terms and in His way, that is through His Word and Sacraments.

At any rate, here are 10 ways that we can predict how God will actually be dealing with all of us ten, twenty, a hundred, or even a thousand years from now:

         (1) people will be brought to the faith by water Baptism in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, both as infants and as adult converts

         (2) Men - called and ordained pastors - will preach the gospel, administer the body and blood of Christ, and absolve sinners

         (3) The creeds of the church will be confessed by the faithful as they have since the earliest centuries

         (4) Hymns confessing Christ and divine grace will continue to be sung by the faithful

         (5) Young people will be catechized in the faith through catechisms that they will learn by heart

         (6) The church's liturgy will continue as it has since the earliest centuries - focused at altar, font, and pulpit; spoken and chanted, with reverence and holy joy, transcending age, ethnicity, and subcultures and uniting the church across time and place

         (7) In their personal piety, Christians will make the sign of the holy cross, pray the Lord's Prayer, and chant the psalms, collects, and the daily offices of the church

         (8) The canonical biblical books will be studied in their original languages and taught in the common tongues, as well as the historic confessions of the church

         (9) Pastors will visit the sick, the shut-in, the dying, the poor, the outcast, and others who are forgotten and left behind by our shallow entertainment and youth culture (which is embraced and obsessed over by the church growth experts). They will bring them the Good News of Jesus Christ and will anoint them and prepare them to die in the faith of Jesus Christ

        (10) Christians will continue to endure persecution, as the cross is, and will remain, a mark of the church until the Lord returns in glory.

(Fr. Larry Beane, Facebook, December 5 at 4:09pm)

True News [Advent 1; St. Matthew 21:1-9]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

Jesus speaks to you today, in His Gospel, saying:

“Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me.”

In our brave new world of fake news, the fake news outlets are trying to ban the term “fake news” and they have the money and the lawyers to get it done. Now, this should frighten you because they’re using the money you give them by watching their programming. But are you going to believe your rural back-woods pastor over professionally trained journalists?

This brings us to the most alarming part of this whole modern controversy: who is telling the truth? And nowhere do we see this brought forward more vividly than in this recent run of sexual allegations, where we are all just one accusation away, false or true, from complete ruination.

For, on one side you have the accusations, which do not have to be true in order to ruin someone’s career and life. They just have to be a rumor. I think Jesus talks about gossip somewhere…

However, on the other side you have real victims who are now being discredited because of all the fake victims. It is to the point in our media that we do not know who is telling the truth. We don’t wait for facts. We don’t wait for due process. In post-modern America, you are guilty until proven innocent and even proven innocence will not get you your life back.

Today, the backwards, back-woods Church lit a candle, people would say almost as effective and “thoughts and prayers”. Yet, that candle is lit in the darkness of lies and deception. In lighting that candle, you as a church, have declared war on fake news, because you believe in the News of the Son of God.

Indeed, the Church has its own news outlet: the prophets and the Apostles. This small candle represents all of the Old Testament that has gone before us in history. Not myth, not legend, not fake news, even if everyone wants you to believe it is fake.

Today, this Advent candle is lit for St. Jeremiah, whose book I highly recommend. Jeremiah says that a king is needed in order that wisdom, justice, and righteousness be executed in the land, because as of right now, its not. And the “Christian” “scholars” will say, but Jeremiah is fake news and his book is a myth, not even written by him.

And they will give you proof. Believable proof. Proof that would, if possible, lead astray the elect. You think you can smell the devil and his lies from a mile away, but he is 10 times the pastor your pastor is and he is 10 times the scholar.

Jesus says, “Go into the village in front of you and you will find a donkey tied and her colt.” And immediately, the apostles can go and confirm this bit of news Jesus has told them and be amazed. Wow. A donkey. Just as He said!

Likewise, St. Jeremiah can be justified by saying Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely, by simply offering the end of the Babylonian exile as proof of his future sight. Wow. A return from exile. To a scorched earth country. Yay…

St. Jeremiah can not stand on his own and neither can the Apostles. There is, as of yet, nothing spectacular to believe in much less die for, in what Jeremiah or Jesus is saying or doing. That is yet to come.

For, Jesus is not just telling prophesies about donkeys or villages or kings or exiles. He is living them out. In the actual and accurate eyewitness account of St. Matthew, Jesus is not just riding a donkey on a lovely spring day. He is mounting His warhorse and marching upon the darkness of lies and deceit which say He is not the Son of God.

For this Palm Sunday and Advent 1 Sunday reading is Jesus beginning His suffering for the entire world. You believe this because Jesus had just finished telling His disciples, before the donkey, this: “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”

It is in this true news that St. Jeremiah’s “return from exile” is not just to the geographical state of Israel, but towards the incorporation of forgiven sinners into the body of Christ. It is in this true news that Jesus marches towards His own death, on a donkey, for your eternal life and allows His detractors their fake news, because He has something they don’t have: a Resurrection.

A resurrection that no one in the history of the cosmos has ever had or ever will have, until the Last Day. Some may have written about a similar resurrection, but the only eyewitness proof conclusively offered is that of St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John. All other resurrections have thousands or hundreds of years between the event and the book. Jesus’ resurrection account has only single digits.

St. Matthew is a historically, verifiable and true news source. It accurately reports the truth better than any ancient document, including Jeremiah. What brings them both together is the God-man Jesus Christ Who verifiably comes back from the dead.

Jeremiah is true because the Crucified Son of God says its true. St. Matthew is true, not because of historical accuracy, but because the Branch of Jesse has sprouted, hanged on a tree, and gives life to His Church even in this age. The truth is not that St. Jeremiah is right or even that St. Matthew is right. The truth is that Jesus is right and gives the Good News that you are now right; right with God in Him.

Which is why you put your money where your mouth is and support this, your church and not fake news. Because in this place, against all other places on earth, you invest in truth; the Truth, who is Christ our Lord. It is here that heavenly transactions occur, not just in treasure, but in salvation.

You cannot be saved in your closet. You cannot believe at your sporting events. You cannot have faith at the foot of a manger scene. You are only saved in Christ. You only believe at His Word. You only have faith, because He hands it out to you in Body and Blood.

And the Light of the World prepares you to receive Him in Baptism, in the Gospel, and in His Supper. He shows you His death and His resurrection so that when you finally get to the manger, you will not just see fake news or even feel-good news, but the Body and Blood of Christ, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

All of which has yet to be disproved by thousands of years of scholarship, media, and marketing. Take heart, dear Christian, for God’s own Child joins you to Him in mercy which proves how greatly God loves you. The hour has come for you to wake from sleep. Salvation is at hand.