Jesu Juva

“No Weak Soup Christians!”

Text: Luke 3:1-20; Malachi 3:1-7b; Philippians 1:2-11

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Last week we prayed Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come. Fulfill your promise and come again in Your glorious power. Because the threatening peril of our sins is too much for us. Because we need a mighty deliverance by a mighty deliverer. Because we need to be saved from the wickedness in our hearts that is eating away at us, and the evil in our world that threatening to overwhelm us. Come, Lord Jesus! was our first advent prayer.

This week our prayer was a little different. If we want Jesus to fulfill His promise and come again in His glorious power - which we do, if we meant what we prayed - then we better be ready and prepared for Him when He does. So this week, we prayed: Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready the way of Your only-begotten Son, that by His coming we may be enabled to serve You with pure minds.

Stir up our hearts. That’s a slightly different image than what John preached, as we heard today. John preached readiness by making paths straight, filling valleys, and leveling mountains and hills. But those things aren’t as big a deal today as they were back then. Today we have bulldozers to make paths straight, bridges to span valleys, tunnels to get through mountains, and airplanes to fly over them.

So we get a different image in our prayer today: Stir up our hearts, O Lord. And the image there is, at least for me, and one I would like to propose to you today, a pot of soup. A pot of soup where all the stuff of the soup has settled to the bottom of the pot. All the vegetables and meat have settled, and there is only broth on top. That pot needs to be stirred up for you to get soup of any substance or value. Otherwise it’s weak soup at best.

John, as we heard, proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The problem is, our hearts can be like that pot of soup - all our sins can settle to the bottom of our hearts. So if they’re not stirred up, our repentance will be like just ladling off the broth - weak repentance at best. Very little substance or value. While the sins we like, the sins we’ve become accustomed to, the sins that have grown deep roots in our hearts and lives, the sins that if brought to the top and exposed would both scare you and shame you, stay at home on the bottom. What are they for you?

In the liturgy of Private Absolution, there are some phrases to help us think about this; to stir up our hearts. Such as my favorite, and the one that always strikes me down hard: I have lived as if God did not matter and as if I mattered most. I can usually stop right there! That sums it all up for me! But there are others, too. Like, My Lord’s name I have not honored as I should. Or, I have not let His love has its way with me and so my love for others has failed. And more. This liturgy is in the hymnal. You can read and use those yourself. (Or even better, come to Private Absolution and confess those words!)

So John has come to stir the pot, to stir up your hearts, to dredge up those sins - but not to shame you and scare you, but to forgive you. To get rid of them. Jesus already knows they’re there, so it’s not like you’re hiding them from your all-knowing and all-seeing God anyhow. So to repent of them is for your benefit. It is to prepare you for the coming of your Saviour.

John did that and many people, as we heard, listened, and repented. But some did not. Like King Herod, who stole his brother Philip’s wife for himself, and when John stirred that up, Herod didn’t like it. So he locked John up in prison. And maybe we do that, too, in a sense. Lock John up, lock Jesus up, to keep them out of part of our lives. So the ladle doesn’t go too deep into our hearts.

But if John didn’t stir up our hearts, or if I didn’t stir up your hearts today, we would be no different and no better than those who preach no repentance or weak repentance. Vipers is what John called them, and those who listened to them their brood - those they have given birth to. They weren’t being told to flee from the wrath to come, to repentance and forgiveness - they were being told that being a child of Abraham was enough. If you were, you were in. Which maybe today is like being baptized as a child but then never going back to church, never hearing the Word, never praying or receiving the Sacrament. Presumption we could maybe call it. Or false confidence. And it’s deadly, and why vipers is such a good description of those who preach that.

John, rather, proclaimed: Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. So repentance comes first. And not weak broth kind of repentance, but the stirred-up heart, ladle down deep, kind of repentance. Then the forgiveness of those sins promised by God and won for us by Jesus. And then that forgiveness producing new life in you. Or, again, in the words spoken in Private Absolution, letting God’s love have its way with you, so your love for others does not fail.

And what that looks like is different for each of us, depending on your place in life and the vocations God has given you. Common people, tax collectors, and soldiers were among those John instructed in the reading today, telling them each uniquely what a new life looks like for them. But what they all have in common is faith toward God, that He will provide for us, and love toward others, that therefore we can provide for them. So who has God given you to provide for? To love and forgive and care for? Have you? Ladle out those chunks of sin from your heart! And live as if God and your neighbor matter most, and as if you matter least.

To say that was a very different message than what the people were used to hearing is quite the understatement! So much so that, as we heard, the people began to wonder whether John might be the Christ. No! John said. I’m only the one preparing the way. I’m only getting you ready for Him. I’m only Malachi’s messenger. He’s the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. He’s the one who will gather His faithful into His kingdom. He’s the one who will refine and cleanse. He’s the one who will put an end to the evil and evil ones in this world. And the people heard this . . . that it was not up to them, but that their God was coming to do this for them . . . and they wanted to be ready for Him when He did.

As do we. That at the end of this Advent season, we be ready not only to celebrate the birth of the one who has come to do this for us, but ready to welcome Him when He comes again in glory. And not only that we be ready, but all people. Our friends, family, and neighbors, too. That we yearn for them and pray for them and serve them as Paul did the Philippian Christians. That, as Paul said, their love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that [they, too,] may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Which circles us back to our prayer, wherein we asked that we be able to serve the Lord with pure minds - and to which, I would add, pure hearts. Repentant hearts cleansed and purified by forgiveness, which then serve the Lord by serving our neighbor.

And that all starts by the Lord serving us. The Lord creating us, the Lord re-creating us. The Lord giving us life, the Lord giving us new life. The Lord speaking and we hearing. Just being a child of Abraham doesn’t do it. For as John said, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. That’s easy! But true children of God aren’t so easy. They can only be raised up from the stone-coldness of death by Jesus’ resurrection. And for Jesus’ own resurrection He first had to die. And not just any death, but a cursed death. Cursed by hanging on a tree, on a cross, with not just all our sins, but the sins of the whole world. By Jesus atoning for those sins and paying their wages in full. For only then would death and the grave be overcome.

So Jesus did. The baby born in Bethlehem grew up to be baptized by John, baptized into our sin and death, to go to the cross to be chopped down and consumed by the fire of God’s wrath against our sin. John told the people to give up their tunics, feed the hungry, not collect more than they were authorized to do, and not to extort money - but what is all that, and what is all that we can do, compared to all that Jesus did for us? To His agonizing death, being forsaken by His Father, and rejected by those He came to save. All so we could live. He died so we could live. He rose so we could live. Not the same old life, but a new life. A life of faith and love.

And He comes to us now so we can live. He baptizes us so we can live lives washed clean of our filth by His blood. He absolves us so we can live live set free from guilt and shame. His Gospel is preached to us so we can live lives of faith and hope. And His Body and Blood are given to us so we can live lives not hungering and thirsting for righteousness, not of thin soup, but chocked full with His meaty and substantial gifts. So that we shall be among that number of all flesh [who] shall see the salvation of God, and rejoice.

So that we might receive all that, and not a little but a lot . . . Advent. So that we might receive all that, On Jordan’s Bank, the Baptist’s Cry Announces that the Lord is nigh (LSB #344). and calls us to repentance, stirring up our hearts. And so we pray, yes Lord! Yes, Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready the way of Your only-begotten Son. Stir up our hearts to repentance, to faith, and to love.Stir up our hearts that we may live.

In the Name of the Father, and of the (+) Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Now the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.