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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. (Amen.)
Today’s Gospel Reading, with its maybe-familiar narrative of the work of John the Baptizer, does not so much strictly consist of first John’s appearing, then his preaching of repentance, and finally his preaching of the Christ (for example, SQE §13, 14, 15), for surely John’s preaching of repentance also included his preaching of the Christ. Rather, we might say that the Divinely-inspired St. Matthew tells first of John the Baptizer’s arriving on the scene and so fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 40:3), then what happened with those who repentantly received John’s preaching, and finally what happened with those who impenitently rejected John’s preaching. The preachers who have come after John the Baptizer—including our Lord, and His apostles, and their successors down to pastors today—may not arrive on the scene as dramatically as John did, nor dress as John did and Elijah did before him (2 Kings 1:8), nor eat as John did, but they similarly preach repentance, including preaching the Christ, and their preaching similarly is either repentantly received or impenitently rejected.
As we heard in the Gospel Reading, people from Jerusalem, Judea, and all the region about the Jordan were going out to John the Baptizer, and, confessing their sins, they were baptized by him, and so they received the forgiveness of their sins, were rescued from death and the devil, and were given eternal salvation, as they believed the words and promises of God. The Pharisees and Sadducees, members of two different “parties” of the Jewish leaders of the day, also were coming to John’s baptism, but apparently they neither were confessing their sins nor were baptized by John (confer Luke 7:30). Instead, John continued to call them to repent and warned them that the axe was already laid to the root of the trees, so that every tree that does not bear good fruit in keeping with repentance—such as confessing sins—is cut down and thrown into the fire.
Despite higher prices and potential environmental impacts, people may be happily cutting down Christmas trees, at places such as Kilgore’s Danville Christmas Tree Farm, but, an old “Friends” episode aside (YouTube), generally the cutting down of a tree is not so happy if you are the tree! John the Baptizer’s use of the cutting and burning of whole trees as a figure of speech in warning people of judgment and calling them to repent both goes back to the Old Testament (for example, Malachi 4:1) and is continued in the New Testament (for example, Matthew 7:17-20). We should think of what kind of trees we are as indicated by the fruit that we bear: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions,envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these (Galatians 5:19-21). For, in our time, God similarly warns us of the judgment that we deserve, our Holy God’s righteous wrath on account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin—judgment that we will face either at our deaths or when Christ returns, whichever comes first—and God similarly lovingly and mercifully calls and so enables us to repent. We should be neither a “false penitent”, wrongly thinking that, since we have repented before, that that repentance is enough, nor should we be a “false saint”, wrongly thinking that we need no repentance (Smalcald Articles, III:iii:30-32). If we do not reject Him, the Lord Himself prepares His way and makes straight His paths in us. When we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to do better than to keep on sinning, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. God forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus the Christ.
The man Jesus is God the Lord, Who came as promised. Jesus is, as today’s Old Testament and Epistle Readings described Him, the Shoot from the stump of King David’s father Jesse, the Branch from his roots that bears fruit, Who stands as a signal for the people of Israel and of whom the nations of the Gentiles inquire (Isaiah 11:1-11; Romans 15:4-13). Upon Jesus the Spirit of the Lord rests, and, out of God’s love and mercy, that Spirit in part moved Him to offer Himself for us. Jesus took upon Himself the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins, and He bore them to the cross, where He died in our place, on our behalf. Sinless Jesus took on our sins and experienced God’s righteous wrath for us, so that we can be holy by way of Jesus’s righteousness, both the righteousness of His bearing fruit for us and the righteousness of His paying the price for our failing to bear fruit. Whether Jew or Gentile, by faith in Christ, we are true children of Abraham (Galatians 3:7-9). When we repent, then we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
The people of Jerusalem in the Gospel Reading might have had to travel some 20 miles to the Jordan River, something like going from Kilgore to Henderson. They traveled that far, likely even by foot, in order to hear John the Baptizer preach in the wilderness and be baptized by him—no matter how much baptisms today surpass baptisms then, the Holy Spirit certainly was active in baptisms then, and those baptisms arguably gave the same benefits then that baptisms give today. Not only for preaching and baptism, but our Lutheran Confessions similarly speak of our running more than one-hundred miles in order to confess our sins for the sake of individual Holy Absolution (Large Catechism VI: 23, 24, 27, 30, 34), and we might likewise travel to receive in the Sacrament of the Altar bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so thereby to receive also the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. These all are the ways that Jesus comes to us now and, in the words of today’s Collect, enables us to serve God with pure minds (confer McGuire, CPR 33:1, p.21).
As we receive God’s forgiveness through His Word in all of its forms, we are transformed and bear good fruit in keeping with repentance. We are rooted in Christ and so bear fruit! As we abide in Christ and He abides in us, we bear much fruit (John 15:4-5). The Holy Spirit at work in us produces the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). We at least begin to do the good works not of our own choosing but of keeping the Ten Commandments according to our God-given relationships with the people whom He places in our lives: parents, siblings, spouses, children. And, when we fail to keep those Ten Commandments perfectly, as we will fail, then with daily repentance we live in both the forgiveness of sins that we receive from God and the forgiveness of sins that we in turn extend to one another. We are to live our whole lives in such repentance (AE 31:25), for in such repentance faith itself lives (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, IV:142, 350, 353).
“Rooted trees bear fruit”—fruit such as our confessing both our sins and the faith, and fruit such as our beginning to keep the Commandments, which fruit gives evidence of both our faith and of the transformed nature of us as trees (for example, Matthew 12:33). We do not fear the Lord’s coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead, for then, as the Gospel Reading describes in a bit of a mixed metaphor, we who repentantly receive God’s forgiveness will be gathered as wheat into the barn. As St. Paul in the Epistle Reading prayed for the repentant in Rome, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope (Romans 15:23).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +