READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Deuteronomy 18:15-19
Philippians 4:4-7
- St. John 1:19-28
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Who speaks to us on this last Sunday before His Nativity,
saying,
“I am the voice of
one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the
prophet Isaiah said.”
With these words, we come to the conclusion of what we have
been pondering these Sundays in Advent: what are our hymns we sing? The
conclusion we will reach today is the same conclusion our God and Lord reached
in His work, that our songs are human.
One of the reasons God includes John the Baptist in His Word
is because he gets to see God. “If you have seen me you have seen the
Father” (Jn 14:9), Jesus says. John, in his sinful flesh, with his sinful
eyes, his corrupt heart and everything else is made able to focus on God, on
earth, and find Him. That is one of the significant parts to the Faith, the
belief that God comes down from heaven to commune with us in Church and we can
find Him.
The first Sunday in Advent we heard that our songs’ only
purpose is to teach what we need to know of Jesus to be saved eternally. The
only reason they are around, really. The second Sunday sought to show that,
because of this sole purpose, they become our weapons against the darkness.
They exorcise our demons and sin daily, simply because they teach of Christ.
The third Sunday showed our hymns are heaven’s own songs and
have heaven’s own authority behind them, provided they uphold their primary
purpose. We sing heaven’s songs and thereby have heaven’s own blessings as they
sing to us of Christ.
Today, our songs are human. I don’t mean that the origin of
our songs is human and whatever we come up with is fitting and faithful, just
because it comes from inside us humans. What I mean is a mystery. That we can
find these eternal, heavenly songs on the lips and in the hearts of temporal,
earthly people and that they still do God’s own work.
This leads us to the Source of all and His greatest mystery
given to us: that there is one Jesus, but two natures to Him, God and man. And
that in that God-man, God and man are also made one. This is the beginning of
understanding the sacraments. That God chooses to accomplish His work among us
through earthly means.
Here we should stop and ponder, for the rest of our lives,
just what it means that God’s Words come out of our mouths and that He has
chosen, in His infinite wisdom, to utilize the finite in His greatest work of
all time: salvation.
The Holy Spirit does not work apart from Word and Sacrament,
the means of grace.
One of the distinct differences between confessional
Lutheranism on one hand, and protestantism, charismatics, and fundamentalists
on the other is the rejection of this truth. That the Spirit works through the
Means of Grace, alone. He chooses to do so. The Spirit does not work through
dreams, visions, inner feelings. The Spirit works through the Word of
God.
In order to not be sent to the hell of fire, Jesus says you
must hear “Moses and the prophets” in St. Luke 16:29. There is the
promise that “Faith comes by hearing [with human ears], and hearing by the
Word of God” in Romans 10:17. Be born again . . . by the Word of God, says
St. Peter (1 Peter 1:23).
And St. Paul, “from childhood you have known the Holy
Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which
is in Christ Jesus.” (2 Tim 3:15)
We must face facts. Salvation is not found high in the
heavens or some other far-off place, to be reached by good intentions or holy
pilgrimages. Holiness is not on the heights, as in the further from earth we
get the holier we are. True Righteousness is still not
self-righteousness.
God’s Work is now done on earth, through men. “I am a God
Who is near, not far off”, He says in Jeremiah 23:23. St. James is not
being facetious when he records, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to
you” (4:8).
How can you draw near to God if He first does not lower
Himself? Elisha proves that this is accomplished through our songs. In 2 Kings
3:15, he says, “’bring me a musician.’ Then it happened, when the musician
played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him” and he prophesied.
All of the Psalms are written for the musicians to play and
the singers to sing and the people to believe.
Why? Because men are controlled by music. The entire mood of
a room can change with one song. With one song, a tragic scene in a movie can
be changed into an uplifting scene. Perspectives, emotions, thoughts. All can
be brought under the swing of swings.
Dr. Luther says:
“Experience makes it clear that, after the Word of God,
music alone deserves to be celebrated as mistress and queen of the emotions of
the human heart. By these emotions, men are controlled and often swept away as
by their masters. I can’t think of any higher praise of music than this: for if
you want to revive the sad, startle the jovial, humble the conceited, pacify
the raving, mollify the hate-filled, what can you find that is more effective
than music? The Holy Spirit Himself honors it as a means that He uses in His
work. He testifies in the Holy Scriptures that His gifts came upon the prophets
through music, compelling them to all the virtues, and drives out satan.
This is why the fathers want nothing more closely linked to
God’s Word, than music. From this arise so many hymns and psalms in which the
music and singing act upon the heart of the hearer at the same time.” (Savior
of the nations come; What Luther says, 982:3103)
Repent.
We come to hold dear these sheepish viewpoints that most
things in our lives are neutral. They are neither good nor bad. Math and music
are examples. We believe that it only effects those who let it affect them. You
don’t have to listen to music you don’t want to, so there’s no danger.
Then, in sinful cognitive dissonance we forget our history
lessons. That the Bolsheviks in Russia targeted churches first and one of the
main laws imposed was “no singing”. Even our recent history shows this, when
one of the first executive ordinances that came down for Corvid was “no
singing”.
Singing spreads disease. Out of the heart springs all sorts
of evil, and we package it in beautiful harmony, put it under the tree, and
call it good, lying to ourselves. Singing can also spread the disease of joy
and truth and freedom. However, a new heart is needed if a new song is to be
sung.
In the birth of Jesus, He wants us to see His will to unite
His divinity with our humanity. Not that humanity is ours and we made it
ourselves, but that it is a gift from Jesus. And He made us for a purpose. One,
so that He could show His love to us and two so that through us, He could bring
about that love, in His Holy Incarnation.
So it is, that when we get to John the Baptist’s story in
our Gospel reading, we find the Jews looking for a man. And they even ask John,
straight up, if he is the Messiah, expecting the man to answer in the positive.
So they could kill him, of course, but still, looking for a human.
When God gives us singing, it is to sing with Him, as we
are. We are His creation, His creatures. We are created for His purposes and
His religion. And that religion is a religion of love, joy, and peace. The
world does not have a corner on the market of good songs, though we may think
so. It may be we just need to adjust our thinking on what our singing is, to
enjoy what the Church has given us.
The world’s song is always off-key. It is in constant
dissonance with the Lord’s Song. For one, because it is self-righteous, and for
two, because it does not bow to the Word made flesh and His salvation found in
fleshly Word and Sacrament. It never crosses the sinners’ mind that heavenly
songs are to teach of God’s earthly Church.
And so, the Church’s hymns, that She passes down through the
ages, teach this. They teach of Christ and what we are to sing in order to be
saved. Those notes of forgiveness then remove from us all evil thoughts,
causing satan to flee from the joy of those Saved. The angels join in the
earthly choir, because God was made man, born to you in the City of David.
When heaven joins earth in singing God’s New Song,
redemption is won. Not because we sing our story, but because we sing His
story. And His is the story of death and resurrection.
Again from Dr. Luther:
“A new miracle deserves a new song, thanksgiving, and
preaching. The new miracle is that God, through His Son, has parted the real,
Red, Dread Sea and has redeemed us from the real pharaoh, satan. This is
singing a new song, that is, the holy Gospel, and thanking God for it. God help
us to do so. Amen. (A Mighty Fortress; What Luther says, 982:3100)
The new miracle is the resurrection of the body, the earthly
body. The Body that suffers through sin, death, and the power of the devil. The
body that fails. The body that gets sick and ages. The body that God made
Himself, and has, Himself.
Because salvation begins with sinners, with the enemies of
God. And God creates this mercy with our human fore-fathers, that we, in our
own bodies, may be authorized to sing His Word and by it, inherit eternal life,
in Christ.
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