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+ + + 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.
Tonight with our fourth and final Midweek Advent Vespers service, we conclude our Midweek Advent sermon series reflecting on the historic Collects for the Sundays in Advent (and the weeks following) as we presently have them in Lutheran Service Book. As you may recall, last week’s Collect is traditionally a bit different from the other three: lacking both an explicit petition to “stir up” and an explicit reference to the Lord’s “coming”. This week’s Collect again has those elements, along with an added petition to “help us”, specifically with God’s “grace and mercy” lifting up the sins that “weigh us down”. In short, we ask the Lord Jesus to stir-up His power to come and help. If you pull out your half-page service outline, printed on its front, you will find the Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Advent (and for the week following). Let us read it together right now.
Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come and help us by Your might,
that the sins which weigh us down may be quickly lifted by Your grace and mercy;
for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Now, I recognize that I may be more interested in the history and development of these Collects than anyone else here, but the relatively-recent development of this particular ancient Collect is notable and relevant for us tonight. Originally, the Advent IV Collect prayed that whatever things our sins hindered might be accelerated (Reed, 469; cf. The Lutheran Hymnal, 55). Then, a version of the Advent IV Collect prayed that the hindrance of our sins would be taken away and that we would be made ready for the celebration of the Lord’s birth (so Lutheran Book of Worship, 14, but not original to it, per Pfatteicher, 211). Another version referred to our being “sorely hindered by our sins” and prayed for grace and mercy to help and deliver us (so Lutheran Worship, 14). From there somehow we got to asking that “the sins which weigh us down” be “quickly lifted” by God’s grace and mercy.
However, the Bible does not appear to speak of sins weighing us down, or even of them humbling us. The Old Testament, for example, speaks of anxiety in people’s hearts weighing them down (Proverbs 12:25), and, at least somewhat similarly, the New Testament, for example, speaks of people’s hearts being weighed with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, so that the Day of the Lord comes upon them suddenly like a trap (Luke 21:34). To be sure, both anxiety over the cares of this life and drunkenness with its effects are examples of sins, that can and, at times, do weigh us down, like the little 3D-clip-art guy is weighed down by the rock in the picture we used on the front of the half-page service outline. That little figure reminds me of the mythological Titan Atlas, who challenged the Olympians and was condemned by Zeus to hold up the sky above the ground, and so is usually pictured with the planet earth on his back (Wikipedia). But, if that 3D‑clip‑art rendering were a better illustration of our sins, the little guy would be crushed, flat as a pancake, dead.
Dead in our trespasses and sins is how the Bible describes us apart from God (for example, Ephesians 2:1, 5). On account of our original and actual sin, we by nature are condemned by God both to death now in time and to the death of torment in hell for eternity. As we heard in tonight’s First Reading (Isaiah 40:1-8), all flesh is and all people are perishable grass that withers, and their beauty is like the flower of the field that fades, when the Lord, Who creates and destroys life (Keil-Delitzsch, 144), blows on them. Our only hope is to turn in sorrow from our sin and to trust God to forgive our sin. Tonight’s Opening Hymn expressed God’s enabling call to repent and believe and also warned us with these words:
O Zion’s daughter, rise / To meet your lowly King,
Nor let your faithless heart despise / The peace He comes to bring.
As judge, on clouds of light, / He soon will come again
And His true members all unite / With Him in heav’n to reign. (LSB 331:3-4)
Truly our lowly King came once to “lift” or take away the sins that crush us, flat as pancakes, dead. John the Baptizer testified that Jesus was the Lamb of God Who takes away (or “lifts up”) the sin of the world (John 1:29, 36; confer Revelation 5:6, 12). On the cross, the God-man Jesus Christ both lifted up and carried our sin, and He also carried off our sin, set aside our guilt. He bears our penalty for us, and He also satisfies God’s wrath for us, restoring us to a right relationship with Him (confer Matthew 8:17; Isaiah 53:4). Tonight’s Office Hymn confessed that He was “Born to set [His] people free” and “Born [His] people to deliver” (LSB 338:1, 2). When we repent of our sin and trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our sinful anxiety over the cares of this life; God forgives our sinful drunkenness with its effects; God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be. As we prayed in the Collect, the Lord lifts the sins that weigh us down by His grace and mercy, of which, in tonight’s Second Reading (Luke 1:57-80), we also heard John the Baptizer’s father Zachariah sing (especially Luke 1:72, 78).
Zachariah’s prophecy about John came as John was circumcised. Circumcision was the way God in the Old Testament incorporated people into His covenant of grace and mercy, as He does in the New Testament with Baptism. At the Baptismal Font, we are buried with Christ, and there we, who once were dead in our trespasses, are raised with Him through faith and made alive by the forgiveness of our sins (Colossians 2:11-14). The true comfort of tonight’s First Reading comes to us perishable people by way of God’s imperishable Word—whether that Word is read from the Lectern, preached from the Pulpit, applied with water at the Font, effected in individual Absolution, or served with bread that is Christ’s Body and wine that is His Blood from the Altar. These are the places where, in answer to our prayer in the Advent IV Collect, the Lord stirs-up His power, comes to us now, and helps us by His might, quickly lifting by His grace and mercy the sins that weigh us down, or crush us, flat as pancakes.
And, with our sins so lifted, we respond both by praising God and by telling others what He has done for us. Tonight’s Psalm (145) is a great example of that two-fold response. We sang of our extolling God, blessing and praising Him and His Name. And, we sang of our commending His works and declaring His acts to another generation, which, in turn, also speaks of the might of His awesome deeds, pours forth the fame of His abundant goodness, and sings aloud of His righteousness. So, as we repeated in the Antiphon (v.21), our mouths speak the praise of the Lord, and all flesh blesses His holy Name forever and ever.
Patiently waiting for that time of eternal worship in the eternal presence of God can be difficult. I know people who want to die (or for the Lord to return in glory) sooner rather than later, in order to be delivered from the suffering and sorrows of this world. Such a desire can be a sign of sinful despair of God’s grace and mercy, or such a desire can be a sign of the expectant hope that is a theme of Advent. Echoing the souls of the martyrs in heaven (and some 61 other such cries in the Bible), tonight’s Closing Hymn, for example, appropriately asks, “how long, how long?”, “When will You come with comfort strong?”, and “When will our hearts behold Your dawn?” (LSB 355:4, 5). Reflecting on the “developed” Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Advent (and the week following) has helped us realize the crushing-weight of our sins and our Lord’s gracious lifting of them, both now in Word and Sacrament and on the last Day. Our Lord, Who stirs up His power to come and help, Himself says, “Surely, I am coming soon”, and, with the Advent Church of all times and places, we pray in short, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20)
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +