Rorate Coeli 2021

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent

December 19, 2021

Philippians 4:4-7

“He is a perfect little boy,” the doctor said to the new parents. But it was a lie. The flaws were hidden where the physician could not see. But you want it to be true. You have plans, hopes, dreams for the child. Just as you’ve had plans, hopes, dreams for yourself.

All these plans and dreams are rooted in self-love. The etymology of ambition is “the love of honor.” We want our children, just as we’ve wanted ourselves, to be on a trajectory toward success. The perfect child will become the perfect student, the perfect athlete, the perfect musician, the perfect carrier of our legacy.

At the hospital, nursing home, mortuary, a very different trajectory is plotted. Physicians work to arrest the rate of decline, but they can only delay the inevitable. The ambitious dreams of youth always come crashing down and into the earth.

This is what makes John the Baptist such an utterly unique figure. He voluntarily reverses his own upward trajectory of success. “I am not the Christ.” Elsewhere he says of Jesus, “He must increase, I must decrease.”

In other words, his own trajectory doesn’t matter. All our striving, all our contention, all our ambition is folly at best. The dream of building our own kingdom, personally, or for family, church, nation – it’s all vanity, self-love. Repent.

For as St. Paul says, “The Lord is at hand.” The Epistle for this Fourth Sunday of Advent, especially the larger context, shows the true trajectory of the Christian’s life according to God’s Word.

We’re in Philippians 4, but if we back up into chapter 3, we hear Paul talking about what a great student he had been, and how his career was on the rise - until he realized it’s all dung. “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Everything, he says, is rubbish, save one thing: having a righteousness outside himself: the righteousness “that comes through faith in Christ—that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection” (3:8-10).

So he doesn’t care if his worldly trajectory makes a rapid decline; one thing matters: “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (3:10-11). Death and resurrection is the trajectory. Do you see how it’s inverted? Our life experiences growth and success, then declination and mortality; but Christ becomes man to take us through death into resurrection.

Now in the meantime, we’re surrounded by enemies. St. Paul says in Philippians 3:18f, “Many … walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” All around you, the culture of this world encourages you to worship self, and set your mind on earthly things.

But St. Paul says we’re citizens of a different kingdom, “And from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself. Therefore, my brothers … stand firm … in the Lord” (3:20—4:1).

And then Paul names names. Two women in the church at Philippi weren’t getting along. I know it’s hard to imagine, but sometimes people in the church quarrel. What does he tell them? “I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord” (4:2). And he tells the rest of the congregation to help them, reminding them that their names are written in the Book of Life.

The discussion of quarreling in the congregation is what comes just before the magnificent words of last Sunday and today: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” 

The American holiday is a rejoicing devoid of substance. Listen to how many Christmas songs use words like cheer abstractly. There’s no cause for the cheer, and so it cannot last. The cause of joy for the Christian, though is the Lord who is at hand, who is coming to bring His bride the Church through the grave to the transformation of all things.

The next words, then, are directed to those two quarreling ladies and to us all: “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.” It’s difficult to translate this passage into English; reasonableness is sometimes rendered as moderation (KJV) or gentleness (NKJ); none of these capture the whole idea. The Roman politician and historian Tacitus called it one of two qualities that a leader must have. He must be sensible (phronimos), and epieikēs which the ESV puts as reasonableness. It’s the quality of being honest, balanced, courteous, and generous, but particularly, you deal with other people mercifully.

So you’ve got these two people in the church arguing, and Paul is saying, “Be honest with each other, and in your honesty, be courteous, be generous, be merciful.” And that, he tells the congregation, is how all Christians are to be to all people. “The Lord is at hand.” When He appears, will He find us arguing? Or will He find us moderate and gentle towards each other?

There’s no joy in winning the argument. There’s no joy in getting your way. That trajectory leads only to judgment, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The Lord is at hand. Repent. Rejoice in His appearing. He sets your life on a different trajectory. His trajectory is the story of the world: The way of humility, through death, into resurrection and the transformation of all things. +INJ+

Gaudete 2021

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent

St. Matthew 11:2-11

December 12, 2021

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When Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, it launched so-called second wave feminism. Friedan asks a critical question in the famed opening:

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — Is this all?

“Is this all?” Others said long before me that the man who works in a factory all day might have the same question, along with the man stuck behind a computer screen processing spreadsheets. “Is this all?” is not a feminist question, it’s a human question. I think our metropolitan area is particularly susceptible to it. People come here seeking to change the world; they will fight for freedom and justice, along the way climbing ladders and collecting buckets of cash. 

It’s a religious question, too. You come to the church hoping to get your life changed, but you find squabbles over documents and budgets, pugnacious personalities, and meetings lasting so long you start to believe in Purgatory. “Is this all?”

Enter stage right John the Baptist. Things had gone surprisingly well. People thronged to hear him preach; the river was full of converts seeking baptism. 

But it turns out the Sixth Commandment was as unpopular then with Galilean kings as it is today with New York governors. But hey, you’re no different. Everybody likes calls to repentance until they come your way.

John’s in prison for saying “You shall not commit adultery” to Herod Antipas, who has taken up with his sister-in-law who’s also his niece.

Gone are the crowds. Gone the success. A few loyal disciples cry out to John in his dungeon, “Is this all?” 

Have you been there? Have you asked about your self, your life, your identity as a disciple of Jesus, “Is this all? Are we not to expect anything else?”

This is a trial, just as when you struggle with illness, or temptation, or challenges your children face. These all cause doubts to rise up in us. “Where is this all going?”

In the dungeon, doubtless miserable, John the Baptist does the only thing there ever is to do: he turns to Jesus. He sends his disciples to Jesus with the question, “What are we waiting for? Who are we waiting for? I thought it was You.”

Jesus answers by showing them the nature of His work: The blind see, the lame walk, the dead are raised, and then the capstone, “The poor have the gospel preached to them.” That seems less exciting, doesn’t it? Give me tangible results, not religious words, amirite?

But that little word—gospel, good news—is the heart of all the rest. This was John’s mission from the beginning. You remember his father, Zacharias, sang at John’s birth, “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest; for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, to give knowledge of salvation to His people by the remission of their sins” [Lk 1.76f].

Sin brought corruption into the world. Don’t be surprised that everything has gone to hell. That’s original sin, man. Genesis 3: work is hard, then you die. Or to put it in a more refined way, “The wages of sin is death.” We’re all in the dungeon, we all fell in the pit.

But whatever bad news you’re facing, John the Baptist is telling us the same thing he told his disciples: “Go take it up with Jesus. He’s your answer. In Jesus you have knowledge of salvation by the remission of sins.”

I don’t know what you’ve been up to the last three months, but I bet there’s been some sinning going on. True confession: sometimes a Lutheran pastor gets bored talking about the forgiveness of sins. It’s the devil’s temptation to the preacher. “Is this all?” The simple answer is, “Yes, it’s everything!” Because with sins forgiven, all the rest follows: Forgiveness with your brothers and sisters, reconciliation, and the patient anticipation that Jesus will do what He promised: raise the dead and renew the world.

Is this all? Yeah, that’s all! And it’s enough. So rejoice in the Lord always.  +INJ+