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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.
Everyone has a birthday, whether or not we like to celebrate it, and one child is likely to complain if another child’s birthday has a better celebration or if at his own celebration another child gets more attention. Surprisingly enough, there are only two birthdays celebrated in the whole church year: that of John the Baptizer, which is today, and that of Jesus, which is some six months from now. St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account in some ways treats both boys equally—similarly narrating: their nativities’ (or “births’”) annunciations to their parents, the births themselves, and their subsequent circumcisions—although the Gospel account in other ways treats Jesus’s birth better, reporting more songs sung in connection with Jesus’s birth and reporting a song sung in connection with John’s birth that, although it is also about John, in many ways is more about Jesus, if not ultimately about us. For, at John the Baptizer’s birth, John the Baptizer’s father Zechariah’s song, steeped in the Old Testament as it is, prophesied about the Lord’s work, through both John and Jesus, ultimately for us! This morning as we consider today’s Gospel Reading, especially Zechariah’s song—known as the Benedictus from its first word in Latin—we realize that all people are “Redeemed to worship and serve”.
On their twenty-first birthdays, I told both my nephew and my older niece that 21 might be the last age that they really want to be. Many children can hardly wait to be 16 so that they can drive a car, and young men—or at least their parents—may anxiously await their twenty‑fifth birthdays, when the car insurance rate for those young men usually drops. But, after that twenty‑fifth birthday, with the possible exception of one’s sixty-fifth birthday (or the birthday of whatever age one might be expecting to retire from work), one may cease looking forward to birthdays, as life can seem to just go down hill. We may not want to celebrate our birthdays because they can remind us of the gradual and unavoidable decline of our bodies, the result of sin in the world. Our first parents committed the first sin, and from them we inherit the corruption that we call “original sin”, and that corruption leads us to commit all sorts of actual sins of our own: countless things we should think, say, and do but do not, and countless things that we should not think, say, and do but nevertheless do. For any one such sin we deserve not only the physical death that we may see looming on the horizon but also the death of eternal torment in hell.
But, through men such as John the Baptizer, the Lord calls and enables us to repent, so that we may be “Redeemed to worship and serve”. Like faithful prophets before John, the Lord knew John before He formed him in his mother Elizabeth’s womb and consecrated John before he was born; the Lord appointed John to be a prophet to the nations and put His words in John’s mouth (Jeremiah 1:5, 9b). So, Zechariah could prophesy to his eight-day-old, newly circumcised and named, son John, that he would be called the prophet of the Most High, for he would go before the Lord to prepare His ways, by giving knowledge of salvation to His people, in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender‑mercy of our God, whereby [Jesus] the Sunrise shall visit us from on high, to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. When, so led by the Lord working through John and Jesus, we repent, then God forgives our sins—all our sins, whatever our sins might be.
Despite such a grand vision and great expectations of John’s work in relationship to the Lord in the person of Jesus Christ, both John and Jesus seemed instead to fail miserably (Schmitt, CPR 28:3, 25-26). John later was imprisoned for preaching repentance and forgiveness (Luke 3:18‑20), seemed to doubt whether or not Jesus really was the Christ (Luke 7:18-20), and had his head served up on a platter as a party favor (Luke 9:9; Matthew 14:8-12; Mark 6:24-28). Similarly Jesus later was betrayed by one of His closest followers, was arrested for speaking the truth about Who He was as the Son of God in human flesh, and died a humiliating death on the cross. But, all of that was the Lord’s work, through John and Jesus, for us! In the person of Jesus Christ, the Lord, as Zechariah sang, visited and redeemed His people, raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David, as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. There on the cross is the mercy promised to our fathers, the fulfillment of God’s holy covenant, the oath that He swore to our father Abraham. There on the cross is the comfort that God spoke of through Isaiah in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 40:1-5), the comfort that we receive by grace for the sake of Jesus Christ as we repent and believe and receive the forgiveness of sins in the ways that God gives that forgiveness to us.
In today’s Second Reading (Acts 13:13-26), St. Paul’s preaching to the people of Antioch in Pisidia, as part of God’s salvation history, includes John’s both proclaiming a Baptism of repentance and his pointing to the Greater One Who came after him. No longer circumcision on the eighth day, but now Holy Baptism on the eighth day, brings us into the Kingdom of God (Colossians 2:11-12), delivering us from the hands of our enemies—enemies such as sin, death, and the power of the devil. And, when we who are baptized know and feel on our hearts particular sins that trouble us, we privately confess them to our pastors for the sake of individual Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself. So freed (“delivered” or “drawn to God”), we serve the Lord without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.
Now, there is an interesting thing about that “service”. You may remember how the Lord repeatedly had Moses and Aaron tell Pharaoh to let go (or “send away”) Israel so that the people might “serve” Him in the wilderness (for example, Exodus 4:22-23), serve Him such as by holding a feast to Him (for example, Exodus 5:1) or by offering a sacrifice to Him (for example, Exodus 8:25‑29). That same kind of service, such as that performed by the Old Testament Levites, seems to be in view in Zechariah’s song, only we all are involved in it. At this Altar and its Rail, the Lord first serves us with the forgiveness of sins in the forms of bread that is the Body of Christ and of wine that is the Blood of Christ, and we then in turn serve Him with our thanks and praise, and with the good works that He brings forth from us according to our various callings in life.
In the Gospel Reading we heard how God’s mercy related to Elizabeth’s calling (or vocation) of mother, and we heard how Zechariah’s song about us all being “Redeemed to worship and serve” led him to sing specifically of his son John’s vocation as the prophet of the Most High. And, we know from elsewhere in St. Luke’s Gospel account that John himself especially emphasized the fruits of repentance and faith according to the vocations of those whom he baptized (Luke 3:10‑14). So we who are baptized bring forth the fruits of repentance and faith according to our vocations. As the Lord opened Zechariah’s mouth and loosed his tongue, so the Lord opens our mouths, and we declare His praise (Psalm 51:15), even singing Zechariah’s song as it may be appointed in the orders of Matins and Morning Prayer. We can celebrate our birthdays, not as mile‑markers of the inevitable decline of our bodies to the point of death, but as landmarks on a long life full of God’s blessings. Yet, far more worth remembering than our birthdays, as far more frequent in the church year are the days of sainthood or martyrdom, will be the days of our deaths in this life, the days that we who are “Redeemed to worship and serve” begin to more‑fully experience our eternal life, when we will laud and adore the Lord, forever and forevermore (Lutheran Service Book 355:7).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +