Sermons

+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +

Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

I am glad that, before I got here, this congregation already had the custom of holding midweek Advent services. I was raisedwith such services and find that they are so helpful for setting apartthe season of Advent, with its preparing for the comingsof our Lord, both His coming now in Word and Sacramentand His coming in the future in glory. And, as we with seasons such as Advent appropriately observe the Church’s yearlycycle, so it is also appropriate that we to some extent observe the Church’s dailycycle with the use of the order of Vespers, so-called from the Latin for its use in the evening. Services at as many as seven different times each dayis a practice that goes back to the Old Testament. (I am not suggesting we adopt that practice, at least not yet!) The order of Vespers, as we have it in our 1982 Lutheran Worship, has ancient roots and a long history, including the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal, from where I learned it, and the 2006 Lutheran Service Book, which added the Responsory for Advent we used tonight. I know that Lutheran Worshipand Lutheran Service Book’s particular setting of Mary’s song, the Magnificat(called by its first word in Latin) is new to some of you, and I appreciate your willingness to learn it. Found in the first chapter of St. Luke’s divinely-inspired Gospel account, the song has long been associated both with the order of Vespers and with the season of Advent. In fact, by the eighth century, special antiphons (verses to be repeated at the beginning and end) were in use with the Magnificatin Vespers on the seven days just before Christmas.

Those seven special antiphons are called “O Antiphons”, since they speak directly to Jesus Christ by various titles Scripture uses to refer to Him. Each has a structure similar to that of a collect (a brief highly-formatted prayer): in the case of the O Antiphons first there are the invocation by the specific name, then that invocation and its specific name is developed and amplified with an attribute, and finally there is an appeal to “Come” for some purpose related back to the invocation and its specific name. (We will see an example in a moment.) Some 500 years after the O Antiphons appeared, someone put them in verse form and added a refrain; most of us know the result by its English translation, part of which we sang as our Office Hymn. Since we have four Midweek Vespers services this Advent season, and since someone told me the hymn was one of the congregation’s favorites, I thought we would take four of the O Antiphons and corresponding hymn stanzas as our midweek themes. Tonight obviously our theme is “Wisdom from on high.” Let us pray tonight’s O Antiphon the way we will sing it in a bit, with the congregation taking the indented portion. (You will find it either on the outside front cover of your service folder or inside at the bottom of the first page.)

What is wisdom? Each one of us might define wisdom differently, and if we asked another twelve people we might get another twelve definitions. The Bible has a number of different words that indicate intelligence and understanding, and the most frequent one, usually translated as “wisdom”, can refer to such things as an attitude about life, to prudence (what we might call discretion) in secular affairs, and to experience in the ways of the Lord. Biblical wisdom, then and now, is different from other world views; the Bible reveals a personal God, Who is just and holy, and Who expects His creatures to exhibit His same holiness in their lives. Biblical wisdom, then, is being subject to God and acting according to God’s revelation, ultimately thereby mastering the problems of life and life itself, though never superseding faith.

Ah, there is the rub! Wisdom is never to supersede, or to supplant, faith as the ultimate authority. Some regard earthly wisdom and knowledge more highly than others, as those of us who have been around academic environments know first-hand, all too well. We might let human wisdom dominate our world view. We might reject what we are taught based on what we think of our teachers, the things they say or do, whether or not they live as they should—we certainly saw that in tonight’s Third Reading, where the Pharisees rejected both John and Jesus because of what the Pharisees thought of how they lived their lives. To be sure, in some religious environments there is an overemphasis on obedience to a standard, the kind of self-made religion giving an appearance of wisdom that St. Paul criticizes in tonight’s Second Reading. Even today, people who think they can in this world by their own efforts achieve the kind of holiness God demands are not wise but foolish—a kind of folly we can see first in their conduct, then in their lack of discretion, and finally in their arrogance—arrogance instead of the kind of Biblical wisdom that is humble and perceives one’s own sin, Biblical wisdom that, as the Psalm tonight indicated, knows it will return to dust and so numbers its days aright to have a heart of wisdom.

As messengers of that kind of Biblical wisdom, both John and Jesus called their listeners to repent—a call we do well to hear in this season of Advent that focuses on our preparing for our Lord’s comings by repenting. In our Third Reading, Jesus says the condemned Old Testament cities of Tyre, Sidon, and even Sodom in some way were better off than the New Testament cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and even Capernaum, because those New Testament cities had seen mightier works and yet were not wise enough to repent. On another occasion, Jesus said the Queen of Sheba, who travelled a great distance to hear the wisdom of Solomon, would condemn those who did not repent at Jesus’s greater wisdom. Will we face such condemnation, or do we repent—do we turn in sorrow from our sins and trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake?

Though the phrasing of tonight’s O Antiphon referring to Jesus as “Wisdom from on high” might come more directly from some books written between the time of the Old Testament and that of the New, books that are notfound in most of our Bibles, the books that arefound in our Bibles certainly also teach that Jesus is “Wisdom from on high”. For example, some of the Old Testament “wisdom literature” (books like Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes) make it clear that wisdom existed from before the beginning and almost make wisdom its own person. Wisdom is an attribute of God, and, while Scripture in some places personifies wisdom, wisdom does not exist as a person apart from God. Rather, we look to Jesus, in Whom, St. Paul wrote in our Second Reading, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and so in Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. God the Father loved you and me, even as sinners, so much that He sent His only-begotten Son to save us from our sin. That Son, Jesus, took on our human flesh, though without sin, and, according to that human flesh, grew in wisdom, as we are told in St. Luke’s Gospel account twice, once before and once after His wisdom is shown as He, at the age of twelve, taught in the Temple courts. As God’s anointed One, Jesus demonstrates wisdom and discretion, but He is so much more than an example of wisdom for us to follow. He is our Savior! As St. Paul wrote in the Second Reading, the record of our debt of sin was nailed to the cross. What Jesus assumed, our human nature, He on the cross redeemed, and then rose from the dead, resurrecting His own human nature as ours one day will also be resurrected. Now He is the only way of salvation—salvation that is received by faith, or, as the First Reading put it, the fear of the Lord, both “fear” in the sense of terror and “fear” in the sense of reverence or awe. Thank God Jesus is a friend of sinners like us! In Jesus’s day many rejected Him because His divine wisdom could not be reconciled with what they thought they knew of Him, even as today some reject Him as true God because their human wisdom cannot reconcile the ways He comes to them to bring them the forgiveness of sins.

“From where, then,” Job asks in our First Reading, “does Wisdom come?” We might answer from Jesus, but then we ask, “Where, then, is Jesus to be found?” As Jesus’s words and deeds revealed Him in His day, so today Jesus is to be found in His words and deeds, though we might call them Word and Sacrament. In Holy Baptismthe Word coupled with simple water reveals salvation to us, even little children. Baptism is, as St. Paul described in our Second Reading, the circumcision done without hands. In Holy Absolutionthe Word spoken by a sinful man is as valid and certain, in heaven also, as if Christ our dear Lord, dealt with us Himself. In Holy Communion, though so often rejected by human wisdom, the Word coupled with simple bread and wine gives us Christ’s body and blood, for forgiveness, life, and salvation. In the book of Proverbs, Wisdom calls out for people to come eat bread and drink wine and, thereby, to live, and Jesus certainly echoes that invitation in our Third Reading as He calls all who labor and are heavy laden to come to Him for rest. Take His yoke upon you, be united with Him through His body and blood, and you will find rest for your souls. Through the Word in all its forms, the body of the Church is connected to its Head, Christ, and, as St. Paul said in our Second Reading, grows a growth given by God. Our closing hymn describes the Church as a lamp giving light to wandering pilgrims, and our deeds and words in our vocations invite those still in the darkness of sin to join us here to receive God’s gift of forgiveness. Faith does produce such works: wisdom is justified by her deeds, even if not perfectly in this lifetime, so that faith lives in repentance, not just in Advent, but in every season.

Such wisdom we learn only from Jesus, so we again pray tonight’s O Antiphon:

And all God’s people say: Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +