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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.)
You do not have to live in Kilgore in order to realize that our city has road problems. For months now, the private contractor building the new Kilgore College pedestrian bridge has been rerouting Business 259 traffic. For a time Loop 259 traffic also was detoured for resurfacing. Highway 135 (or Industrial Boulevard) and the traffic circle are all torn up. And, those examples do not even touch on streets and roads, such as Main Street, for which the City is responsible—streets and roads that, with sunken potholes and protruding pipes, are in desperate need of patching and repaving. Customarily, roads are given special attention when someone important is coming to visit (we maybe saw an example of that last month, when San Francisco prepared for China’s President Xi to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group). And, if you think making or keeping roads passable is difficult today, imagine how difficult making or keeping roads passable was in Biblical times! (www.sermons.com.) Of course, when God, through Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 40:1-11), spoke about lifting-up every valley and making-low every mountain, He was not speaking about preparing a literal road for the Lord but a figurative way for Him. So, in fulfilling such prophecy, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, John the Baptizer appeared not as a civil engineer, with a fleet of Caterpillar tractors to make the uneven ground level and the rough places a plain, but John the Baptizer appeared as a prophet like his predecessor Elijah, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and baptizing in the wilderness, and all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. That spiritual work that the Divinely-inspired St. Mark uniquely describes is what we might call “Prophetic preparing”.
Gone from the Garden of Eden are humankind’s created righteousness, including our right relationship with God—our true fear, love, and trust in God—and so also gone is our ability to do the things that God commands that are pleasing to Him. Instead, in our wilderness, conceived and born un‑righteous, we are turned away from God and commit all kinds of actual sins—sinful thoughts, words, and deeds. Because of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, and, of ourselves, we ultimately can do nothing about that death and torment. You thought keeping roads passable in Biblical times was difficult? Not even a fleet of Caterpillar tractors could prepare the Lord’s way in us! As God said through Isaiah in the Old Testament Reading, all flesh is like grass that fades, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field that withers when the Lord blows on it. But, as the Divinely-inspired St. Peter wrote in today’s Epistle Reading (2 Peter 3:8-14), the Lord is not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. Already now, before the Day of the Lord comes and exposes all the works that are done on the earth, the Lord, by the preaching of His law and Gospel, calls and so enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to at least want to stop sinning. Through the messengers whom He sends—messengers such as John the Baptizer, Jesus, the apostles, and their successors, pastors today—God the Father Himself prepares us for His Son’s coming by the power of the Holy Spirit. When we so repent, then God forgives us. Out of His great love and mercy, God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. God forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. That work is “Prophetic preparing”!
Especially the people in the Holy Land today might welcome the good news that their warfare was ended, though that message that God delivered through Isaiah to the Israel of his day, and the message that God delivered through John the Baptizer to the Israel of his day, clearly was a message of an end not primarily to literal warfare but of an end primarily to their and our spiritual alienation from God. That the Lord pardons iniquity comforts all people whose God is the Lord, including you and me! So, John that Baptizer pointed to Jesus, the Mightier (or “Stronger”) One, Who was coming after him. As the Divinely‑inspired St. Mark makes clear at the beginning of his Gospel account, Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Throughout St. Mark’s Gospel account, Jesus’s identity as God in human flesh is developed in Divine activity and repeated, but His identity is perhaps most‑dramatically revealed after Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins, when the Roman centurion, who stood facing Jesus, saw the way He breathed His last, said “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39). Resurrected from the dead, Jesus is the Stronger Man Who, as it were, enters the strong man’s house, binds him, and then plunders his goods (Mark 3:27; confer Luke 11:21‑22), each one of us. Jesus’s death on the cross meant the end of Satan and his kingdom. Jesus’s dying for us meant our redemption from sin, death, and the power of the devil. God gives us that redemption through His Word and Sacraments.
As the autumn colors vividly illustrate, the grass withers, and the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever. What His mouth spoke through His servants happened then, and what His mouth speaks through His servants happens now. God’s Word with water in Holy Baptism works the forgiveness of sins (and make no mistake: the Holy Spirit was active in water baptisms done through John the Baptizer before Jesus’s death and resurrection, as the Holy Spirit is active in water baptisms done through pastors since Jesus’s death and resurrection). God’s Word with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution forgives sins on earth and in heaven (Matthew 16:19; 18:18). And, God’s Word with bread that is the Body of Christ and with wine that is the Blood of Christ in the Holy Supper are given and poured out for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:26-28). We are baptized once, but we need, and so we receive, Absolution and the Supper over and over again. The people of John the Baptizer’s day may have traveled some 20 miles on foot for his preaching and baptism (imagine walking to Henderson). How far are we willing to go? In his Large Catechism, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther says that, if we are a Christian, we should be glad to run more than one-hundred miles for the sake of Absolution (LC VI:31, confer I:166; VI:23, 24, 27, and 34). No doubt likewise also for the Supper. For, in all these ways, God works “Prophetic preparing”!
In all these ways, through His under-shepherds, the Lord our Good Shepherd, as we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading, tends His flock like a shepherd, gathers the lambs in His arms, carries them in His bosom, and gently leads those that are with young. His “Prophetic preparing” makes us ready—ready to celebrate Jesus’s birth into the flesh this Christmas, ready to receive Him as He comes to us now in His Word and Sacraments, and ready to welcome Him when He comes with glory to judge the living and the dead. So, we can rejoice in Him already now, as we will rejoice in Him for all eternity.
Literal road construction may seem like it will never end; after the current projects that I mentioned at the outset, will come years’ worth of others: the widening of Highway 42 up towards Longview, the widening of Highway 31 towards Tyler, and the widening of Interstate 20 through Gregg County, not to mention the redoing of the Interstate’s interchanges. Yet, on the Last Day, both that literal road construction and the spiritual “Prophetic preparing” will end when the Lord comes. Until then, as we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 85; antiphon: v.9), righteousness goes before the Lord and makes his footsteps a way.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +