READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Isaiah 40:1-11
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
- St. Matthew 11:2-10
Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
Who speaks to us on this third Sunday of the new Church
Year, saying,
“And Jesus
answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see'”
Thus far from our Gospel reading today, included by God
because He wants us to hear and see. Not just the miracles and theology of
Jesus long ago, but the fact that John can actually hear and see God, in the
flesh; moving, breathing, living. This is the point of all of Scripture and
this leads us to see the world in a new light. The Light that God is near,
alive, and active in His own Body.
Now, I can utterly sympathize with John the Baptist in his
seeming unbelief, and you should too, as he asks Jesus to confirm His identity
once again. But look at it from his perspective; that he could actually be
living out the End Times as the Lord had prophesied, is mind blowing. Not only
that, but the sheer fantastic idea that he also finds himself living out his
own crazy-man ramblings at the Jordan river. That a Messiah is coming. That He
will be great. That He will baptize! And then shows up in the flesh.
John the Baptist: You’re sure? You’re sure. Right? Now. Now?
You sure? Really?
Maybe this is how Noah felt when he was told to build an
impossible boat to house an impossible amount of living creatures, in order
that they impossibly float on a Flood to end all floods. Noah said, you want me
to start now, or later? Now? right now. You sure? You’re sure.
Or Abraham, even worse. Hey Abraham. Yeah, I’m gonna need
you to leave all your stuff and go. Yeah, just take some things that can get
you by, animals and workers, but you gotta go. And it’s gonna be far. No more
allowance from daddy. No more jury duty for your buddies. No more family
connections.
What I want to know, and maybe you do too, is what could
have possibly moved them to do such drastic things? I mean, they had to have
been heroes to need nothing more than a voice to do all that weird stuff like
eating bugs and constructing zoological research vessels. Am I expected to do
such things? Are you?
The first answer is yes. As our Epistle said, we should
first be regarded as servants of Christ. He says “Ark”, we say “how high?”
There are no two ways around the Word of God. Either we hear and obey, or we
are an unbeliever. So now you better give those voices in your head a chance,
right? One of them may be God trying to get through to you…
NOT.
Here is how the world wants you to think God works, how God
speaks to people: as an uncontrollable, unpredictable ghost.
Why is God being a ghost important? Because then you are
easy to control. Because then we can say He said something and not have to
prove it. It would be a festivus miracle. God spoke to our preacher! We must
listen to him and give him all our money!
So God spoke to me today…
Repent. And you believe it. It just speaks to your heart. It
moves you so. God just going around, inspiring rando people, here and there,
with His enticing, phantom voice. Its all so romantic. Its all so
irresponsible. Of course God would act like that.
Wake up. This is real life, not the movies. And if the God
of the Bible is just a spirit who enjoys playing tricks now and then and acting
with no regard to person or doctrine, then He is not God, but a
hypocrite.
In our sin, we can’t believe that John the Baptist wouldn’t
have known his actions would land him in prison, much less on his way to the
executioner. John should have just ignored the voice. It would be alright. God
would have forgiven him. God is love. But God showed up, not just His Voice.
Truly St. Paul’s words are true of us, that “scarcely for
a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even
dare to die” (Rom 5:7). Much less, would we be moved to heroic deeds by a
still, small voice. Not happening. And dying? Not really die, but “dare to”,
right? Figuratively die.
In your weakness, St. Paul continues: “But God
demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.”
God remembers His love towards us in Christ alone and dies,
not for the righteous, not for the good, but for the unrighteous, for sinners
dead set against Him. He remembers what He said and what He promised. He caused
it to be written that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God
and the Son of man, come to make saints out of sinners.
In an act of divine mercy and love, God does not leave John
the Baptist with some disembodied prophesy to be decoded by his own powers.
First of all, with God’s words in his mouth, God gave John a father who would
have recounted, ad nauseum, his story of silence and rebirth, in order to tell
John what his life would be. In the second place, the Lord placed Himself in
front of John, while he was prophesying, to prove that the words coming out of John’s
mouth were true.
Noah may have missed Adam by mere decades, but Noah’s father
did not. His father would then have recounted to Noah, ad nauseum, all the
first things the Lord did with Adam and Eve, from the lips of Adam. Such that,
when the Word of the Lord appeared to Noah, it was not a ghost but a man. A
recognizable and well-known man. Either Jesus or His ordained priest, Seth,
Adam’s son.
Likewise, Abraham who was around to hear Shem, Noah’s son,
preach about God’s paradise, God’s judgement, and God’s Promise. And Jonah and
John the Baptist and all the prophets were able to unreasonably do what God
told them, because He showed up Himself to tell them about it. This is what, “and
the Word of the Lord appeared…” means.
“No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6).
With those words, Jesus can do whatever He wants. He could have been a voice
from everywhere or nowhere when speaking to any of the Patriarchs. But He
didn’t, He doesn’t, and instead promises the Way to the Father is through Him,
God and man, soul and spirit, Body and Blood.
As always, the promises of God are for comfort and peace,
not turmoil and puzzles. “Comfort!” cries Isaiah from our Old Testament
reading. Comfort found in three things: pardoned iniquity, the revelation of
God’s Glory, and the Word standing forever.
“For the Father draws indeed by the power of His Holy
Ghost,” says our Confessions, “however, according to His usual order [the order
decreed and instituted by Himself], by the hearing of His holy, divine Word”
(SD XI:76)
Dearly Beloved, it is the Holy Spirit that has birthed and
created His Holy Christian Church with the gifts of Jesus. And it is the Holy
Spirit that continues to reveal God to the Baptized, through His Word. And that
Word doesn’t read itself. Just as Jesus sent John the Baptist, He sent His
Apostles, and now sends His pastors to you, for the same reason.
That the Word of God be living and among you. That you may
have the Word of the Lord appear to you, not just in a silly man in funny
pajamas, but in His Word and Sacrament, given to men, to be taught and
administered. The Lord continues His work in the flesh through means.
There are no heroics in imagining God making a test for you
to find Him. It is make-believe to believe that you must wait around for a
vision or a sign. Besides, that way is agony and despair. True comfort, as
Isaiah said, comes through means. True heroics is being in the presence of the
Lamb.
The forgiveness of sins, purely proclaimed, that God is in
man-made-manifest, in Christ Jesus, among us, living, working still, and that
the Word stands. Not only did He stand again, rise again from the dead, but He
stands forever, never to die again. He is risen from the dead and from there,
distributes His gifts.
In particular, that the messenger has gone before to prepare
the Way. The Way of everlasting life. And since both John and Jesus are men and
have trod that path, we know and believe that there is the same path for us.
Yes the unseen path of faith, kept and preserved by the Holy Ghost, but grace
given that our physical path also align with it.
God sets the path to His Son before our face, calling us
with His Gospel and enlightening, sanctifying, and gathering us with His true
Body and Blood. By the Word that created heaven and earth; the Body and Blood
found in the manger and found on the cross of Christ, is now found on your
lips, for the Lord is at hand.
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