Who speaks to you, even this day, saying:
Our pink candle, the candle of joy, goes to Isaiah, the
fifth gospel writer, as he speaks to us “comfort”. Yet, as he does so, he also
feels the need to throw in warfare, iniquity, deserts, withering and fading. Isaiah
follows Malachi in giving us comfort, but adding some death and destruction to
it.
Not to be a downer as we get closer to Christmas, but we
have been fighting a war for over 17 years now with no end in sight. We have
seen the iniquity of ourselves in the actions of our elected officials and we
continue to see an expanding desert of withering and fading values in our
culture. What’s there to be joyful about?
Indeed, if we have received anything from our prophets thus
far this Advent, it is that we deal with a very backwards God, or it is us that
are backwards. This is not lost on John the Baptist, either, for I’m sure he
had Isaiah 40 already memorized, even chapters 35 and 61, which Jesus quotes
back to him through is disciples.
And if he had chapter 61 memorized, then he would have been
able to pick up on Jesus’ glaring omission of the second have of verse 1 which
reads, “The Spirit of the Lord God is
upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he
has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and
the opening of the prison to those who are bound;”
Here, John is in prison and Jesus is quoting Scriptures in
an incomplete way, on purpose. Jesus knows what He’s doing and what we and John
are going to hear.
John’s sinful, selfish ears hear “prison break”. Our similar
ears hear, “prison break”. Jesus seems to forget. Now, some would say Jesus
wasn’t really God so He couldn’t break John out anyway, unless by some legal
litigation within reason. In a similar light, we make excuses for Jesus and say
that it wasn’t John’s time or God had other plans, or God’s gifts are all in
the future, so nothing can be done now.
Repent. You are backwards. You hear of warfare and rumors of
warfare and you only think of tanks and bombs in your backyard. You hear of
withering and fading and think only of that happening to others, not you. You
see and hear “jail-time” and immediately thank God that you are not like those
men; like John the Baptist.
Listen. Jesus caps off His return message to John and his
disciples saying, “blessed is the man who
is not offended by me.” How can you be scandalized by Jesus? How could John
the Baptist; John the “behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world” Baptist be offended by Jesus?
In Jesus’ incarnation, He has explicitly and purposefully
gone to those who we deem unworthy. The Lord offends by going to repeat sinners
and forgiving them. He is offensive because He brings His healing Gospel to the
blind and not to those who see.
He gives His life-giving spirit to the dead, not to the
living. He spends all His heavenly energy on the lame, the deaf, and the poor
and spends not one calorie for the self-righteous. He breathes on the withering
and the fading and turns the other cheek to the prosperous.
God dying on the cross is as opposite and backwards as you
can get. The Gospel is backwards from what we think. We want swift justice for
those who sin against us, yet we find God handing out forgiveness willy-nilly.
We want power and blessing, but we find God handing out crosses. We want
mightiness, but all that is given is Word and Sacrament.
So hear again Isaiah’s Word of God to John the Baptist: “God’s
Church has received double for all her sins.” Double belief, double faith, and
double forgiveness. The Word of the Lord that stands forever is the
justification of the sinner by grace, through faith, for Christ’s sake. The
deeds of Christ that John saw were the forgiveness of sins, but that does not
break down prison walls.
Unless of course, you are imprisoned in sin and death.
Unless you are blinded and deafened by your own self-righteousness that doesn’t
go away. Unless you are impoverished by death and shackled to its inevitability.
If those things are true, then your prison walls have tumbled at the suffering
and death of Jesus Christ.
In this new light of the hope of the Resurrection, there are
no blind, lame, lepers, deaf, poor, or dead. In the faith of Christ, wars are
ended, iniquity is pardoned, and the grass and flowers are made of
incorruptible and imperishable material, that of the Holy Spirit.
This offends our reasoned certainties, because the Gospel
that saves is among all those “unworthies” from Matthew verse 5. this does not
offend faith, however, because Faith reveals that, in our sin, we are an
intimate partner in that group.
We don’t have to be lying in a hospice bed to know we are
done for. We don’t have to be in prison to know how bad our sins are. We don’t
have to be six feet under to know there’s no escape. We can hear the Word of
the Lord, believe that stuff, and then believe that He has come in the flesh to
rescue us from such a thing.
John must stay in prison. John must lose His head. Not for
the greater good, but to show that prison bars and the executioner’s axe can
not lift the Gospel from Him. Just as the paralyzed remain paralyzed, the poor
remain poor, and the dead remain dead, so must life move towards the Resurrection,
because the Gospel has been preached to poor, miserable sinners. Bars and locks
can not keep that Gospel out. Dirt and coffins do not stay the power of
salvation.
John’s joy, and our joy, does not lie in what the world or
the princes of this world can do for us or against us. The joy of the prophet’s
candles is that this world will come to an end along with everything in it. But
what will endure is the Word of God. The Word of God that promises comfort in
the midst of warfare. The Word of God that promises pardon in the midst of
sinning. That Word of God that promises life in the midst of death.
The Lord says in Isaiah, “Hear,you deaf, and look, you blind, that you may see! Who is blind but my servant, or deaf as my messenger whom I send? Who is blind as my dedicated one, or blind as the servant of the Lord?” The answer is of course, is “no one”, because no
one is as blind as Jesus Who dies for those who hate Him. No one is as deaf as
Jesus Who forgives those who despise Him.
The offense comes when God takes on all the warfare,
blindness, lameness, leprosy, deafness, death, and poverty of everyone upon
Himself. We want to be let out of prisons, but Jesus put Himself into prison.
We want to be super spiritual, but Jesus placed Himself beneath that.
The Gospel is the opposite. If we want to seek the Gospel,
it must be among sinners; sinners given the Word and Sacraments for the
forgiveness of sins. This is the joy of the prophets and this is the joy of all
the faithful, triumphant in the crucifixion of Christ.
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