Lutheran Church of the Redeemer

In the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 As we have journeyed through our advent themes each Sunday we’ve come to the rose candle, the candle of joy.  Joy can be difficult to meditate on as it is something better experienced than discussed.  Joy is all the more difficult to think of after the events that just happened in Newtown Connecticut on Friday while we’re still reeling from the mall shooting in Portland Oregon.  As the wisdom of Ecclesiastes says there is “a time to mourn and a time to dance…”  Mourning is appropriate now.  Likewise the preacher of Ecclesiastes wrote there is “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.”  At first silence seems appropriate in the face of such inconceivable violence and this against many children.  Indeed, we should avoid platitudes and clichés with those who mourn and with one another, but rather give a hand to hold; a shoulder to cry on.  As a preacher I was tempted to keep silent and preach as though nothing had happened.  What can one say to make sense of this tragedy?  What can one say to comfort the mourners?  On the other hand silence in the face of such violence is not appropriate.

The trouble is that there is nothing we can say or do to make joy out of the joyless realities in this world.  The outrage that is heard in our nation, the sensationalism of the Media and all the usual talk about psychoanalysis, national security, and gun laws can distract us from the heart of the issue.  Those are all still attempts to avoid the real problem everyone in our human family needs to admit.  Sin is real.  Evil exists.  The human race is broken and humanity is not basically good.  No, I have never pulled a trigger on someone, but I’ve had my share of victims whom I have cut down with my sin.  Surely we live in the shadow of death and sin has found its dwelling on earth.

Advent traditionally was a season of penitence like that of Lent, but influenced by American cultural forces Advent has become more a season of pre-Christmas merry making.  It is dark days like Friday that make the pangs of our Advent longing for Christ’s return that much more apparent.  As we heard on Wednesday night from St. Peter, “According to His promise we are waiting for a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”  There is no way to sugarcoat what happened on Friday to make you comfortable with it and it would be a sin if we should.  The day of our comfort is a future one.  So, today God calls us to feel all the sorrow and trouble of this world as we long for the future day of Christ.  The day when sin and all evil will be undone and righteousness, blessedness, and joy will reign forever.

For it’s exactly because of the bitter realities of the world that God did something about it.  The prophet Zephaniah knew the bitter realities well.  Our text from chapter three this morning is chock-full of good news and reasons to have joy.  If you were to go back and read the two chapters before it you’d wonder if the same man had written them.  Preceding our reading he speaks dreadfully and clearly about the sins of God’s people.  He teaches that the day of God’s visitation on earth is going to be an explosion of judgment.  Yet, the wondrous and mysterious thing is that he ends his entire revelation with good promises.  Though judgment will come there will be rejoicing.

Listen to what God had to say to Israel in their sorrow than and to us now:  “Rejoice and exult all your heart O daughter of Jerusalem…Yahweh has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies.  The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall never fear evil again…Yahweh your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

God promises his people that though judgment will come it will be taken away.  Yahweh God would come to dwell in our midst and He came to us as one of us.  He became an Israel of one, the single representative of the people, but not just Israel, the entire human family.  The second Adam, who had no sin, received the explosion of God’s judgment for you and all humanity upon the cross.  And here is the mysterious thing about what Jesus suffered for you.  He counted it as joy.  “Yahweh your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness…he will exult over you with loud singing.”

On another Friday as dark and joyless as this last one a mighty warrior, strong to save, hung upon a tree.  Yet, here is how Jesus himself spoke of that day just moments before he was crucified:  “When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.”

Jesus looked upon the cross the same as a mother in labor.  He knew that He was making it possible for us to be rightfully called children of God again.  The author of Hebrews spoke of it this way, “[look] to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right had of the throne of God.”  Christ’s joy is not that He has the right hand of power.  He’s joyful because by dying He would give birth to many children.  What a mystery that at this very moment our God and Savior has joy over us, sinful though we are, undeserving as we might be, He sings and rejoices over us because He has saved us.  He exults as children are born anew by the washing of the water and Word in Baptism.  He rejoices when you come to His altar so He can feed you with His life giving body and blood.  Like a mother holding her newborn baby He doesn’t care one whit the pain it took to bring you to Him.

Again when Jesus was speaking about a mother’s pain He had this to say to His disciples and He says it now to us in our mourning:  “So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”  Only Christ can give joy to the joyless.  Only He has the Words that bring comfort.  Only He can turn our mourning to dancing.  In light of recent events we are all the more aware of how much the world needs to hear the Advent promises of Christ.  Let’s take a moment to pray for them:

 Prayer:  Gracious Lord Jesus, friend of the little children, lighten the darkness of our hearts. Remember in mercy all who have been devastated by the shooting this week in Connecticut. To Your care we commend the injured and the mourning, the traumatized and the terrified. Embrace and comfort each hurting family, O You Lord Jesus who have known in Your own flesh what violence and hatred can do.  When the world had it’s way with You, You cried out “It is finished!” and yet you triumphed in love by Your resurrection. Give those who have sorrow now Your peace and a share in Your hope and joy. Come Lord Jesus, come quickly.  Have mercy upon the families who suffer.  Have mercy upon us all.  Amen.

     Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.  You might recall each candle of Advent has a theme.  Last week Advent I, the week of hope, has passed and we are now at Advent II the week of love.  Our text for meditation this Sunday is the Epistle lesson from Philippians.  As the apostle Paul opens his letter he prays fervently for the love of the Philippians to abound:

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment so that you 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.”

    A missionary pastor who the Lord had blessed with planting many churches was once asked what qualities he looked for in finding pastors within the congregations.  He said “Along with the Scriptures guidance for overseers we test them in four things, Bible, theology, and church history.” He paused for a moment so someone interrupted and said “And what is the fourth quality?”  The missionary answered, “Common sense!”

    Love is often thought to be a sentiment or feeling, but in this letter Paul prays for a healthy dose of common sense.  Yes, he desires for their love to abound and grow and he teaches that “knowledge and all discernment” are necessary that it might grow.  This way they might “approve what is excellent.”  In order for love to grow the love of the Church is thought-out love, deliberate love, and it seeks a higher approval than sentimentality or warm fuzzy feelings.  It seeks to approve what is excellent which means the Church recognizes that it has a higher standard than other’s love.  The standard of course is the concrete love of the Church’s Lord, the crucified Savior.

    Nowadays there is a lot of criticism of the Church’s love.  Some is valid and some is not.  The popular assertion is that the motive of Christian love is not genuine.  Critics say Christians try to be good out of fear of the threat of God’s punishment or for base motives of future rewards.  They assert that we do good things either because we’re terrified of hell or because we’re jealous for heavenly goodies.  The conclusion of this criticism often goes like this:  “You see Christians you are either fear-mongers or entirely selfish.  We on the other hand don’t need threats or rewards to love.  We love and do good things because they’re the right thing to do, not because we’re scared or because we expect anything in return.”  So, they claim the moral high ground over the Christians.

    The trouble of this line is that they completely mischaracterize Christian love and its motivation so they can make their case that they’re more loving.  Sure Christians do fall into those two categories of fear or reward from time to time, but when they have they should repent immediately.  If you are compelled whether out of fear or reward to love your neighbor the root problem is the same, legalism.  You try to make yourself good by what you do forsaking what Christ has done for you by His death and resurrection.

    From the onset of his letter St. Paul exemplifies the joy of Christian who understands love, but in order to understand love one has to have been loved first.  He opens his letter as I did this sermon, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Everything he is about to say in this letter is made on the basis of what God has done.  God the Father has given us grace through the Son Jesus.  If you remember from your catechism grace simply put, is God’s undeserved favor.  You can always remember the acronym “God’s – Riches – At – Christ’s – Expense.”  God has done something one cannot earn whether by paying for it by receiving punishment or earning it by his loving works.  It wouldn’t be grace if it was earned either way.

The life we could not live. The punishment we could not bear.

     God’s favor was won for us at Christ’s expense.  He covered the bill on the cross when He received the punishment of sin on the cross.  He covered the expense when He earned the rewards of heaven for us by loving the world like no other man could.  Because of this Paul reminds the Philippians immediately they have peace from God.  They needn’t fear His punishment.  They needn’t appease Him to get rewarded.  Christian love is rooted in God’s grace.  Stated simply as Luther put it sinners are not loved because they are attractive.  They are attractive because they are loved.  That is the amazing grace of God—in Christ we are loved before we are ever made lovable.

    What motivates Christian love is a far cry from what our detractors say.  We seek to love others not to avoid punishment or death.  In fact loving our neighbor might be unpopular and bring punishments from the world.  Loving our neighbor might mean dying for them.  The Christian does this because he know he doesn’t need to fear death for in Christ death is already destroyed.  You see, we love because we have partaken of the love of God; have tasted and seen that the Lord is superlative goodness and mercy.  He is gracious like no other.  When we confess in the Nicene Creed that we “look to the life of the world to come”, we are saying we are looking forward to the day when we will live in perfect love in unity with our triune God and in perfect fellowship with one another.  We have a foretaste of that in the love of Christ.  We are given and sealed with the promise of that love in Christ’s forgiveness in Baptism, Holy Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper.  We live in light of that love and seek to love in the hope of the world to come when Christ returns and makes all things new.

    Unlike the critics of the Church who claim they love purely for the reason that it’s the right thing to do and no other—Christians begin by recognizing that they haven’t loved purely.  In fact they’ve seen how they’re unable to even follow the golden rule to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Christians recognize the whole problem in the world is that we don’t love God or others as much as we love ourselves.  We’ve all loved for the base motive of looking good in the eyes of others; to win some benefit from someone else.  We have all done the right thing not because it was right, but because we didn’t want to get caught doing wrong.  Having encountered the advent of the love of Christ though and seeing how good it is, we see the weakness and sin in our love.  Critics of Christians point out these things out and the Christians can answer, “You’re right and I repent!”  But the critics will never admit they’re guilty of the same sin.  They’re pride and self-righteousness in thinking they love purely and better than others is its own reward, though it’s a false reward.

Peter is restored after having denied his Lord.

     Often people come to pastors struggling with love.  They’re trying to love someone who might be pretty unlovable at the moment.  Often they feel guilty about the struggle.  They think a Christian should just love everyone easily and perfectly.  My counsel is always this:  “I would only be concerned if you were telling me that you didn’t love them and you were okay with that.  Even your desire to love them is the working of the Holy Spirit in you.  He’s convicting you of your weakness and He’s working in you that His love might abound in you and grow.  Trust Christ’s forgiveness and avail yourself all the more of the fact that He’s loves unlovable sinners like you and me.”

    We are not left in the misery of our hypocrisy and sin.  In Christ we are loved before we are ever made lovable.  The loving blood of Christ has forgiven all your sins. So how is our love to abound more and more after that as Paul prays in our text this morning?

    The Christian sees God’s undeserved love, His grace, in Christ and says, “That love is perfect.  God is love!  I want to love like that though I know I fail.  I desire to love how Christ loves unlovable wrecks likes me.”  So we go from there and draw on His gracious love because we need daily forgiveness.  Now “may He who began a good work in you…bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”  Amen.

            During the next four weeks we are going to reflect on the four themes of each of the Advent candles that are lit:  Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace.  So this Sunday we begin with the first candle, the candle of hope, as we meditate on the Word of God recorded by the prophet Jeremiah.

            What makes you hopeful?  A lot of students are hopeful this time of year because they can see the light at the end of the tunnel of finals.  Some even have graduation to look forward to.  They’re hopeful about the future.  You can often see it in their eyes.  Often though when we begin to look ahead we become anxious and uneasy.  What makes you less hopeful or even hopeless?  There’s a lot of anxiety out there about the fiscal cliff.  There’s a lot of talk about the difficulty of college graduates finding work.

            Each of us no doubt gets stirred up and anxious by different developments in our lives.  Sudden changes in health can cause us to feel less hopeful.  Stresses about the finances, the children, and the overall well-being of our families are constantly on the mind of some.  When we think on these things and others like them hopefulness dims and our sense of security wavers.  Whatever your troubles Jeremiah would understand your condition.  He often struggled with the seemingly hopeless conditions of the time he lived.

            First of all Jeremiah was called to be a prophet in a time when God’s people refused to listen to sermons.  They resented God’s Word and His messengers.  At least twice there were attempts to kill Jeremiah.  He was also arrested and held prisoner soggy at the bottom of a well.  Jeremiah shared his feelings of frustration and hopelessness as he prayed to God:

O Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me. For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, “Violence and destruction!” For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and der­i­sion all day long. If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” there is in my heart as it were a fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in. (20:7–9)

At the very center of Jeremiah’s life—his calling and work given to him by God—there was tension, rejection, and frustration.  Jeremiah often struggled with losing hope because he saw no fruit for his labor only pain and trouble.

            If his inner struggle wasn’t enough the outside world was worse.  The people were going on like nothing was wrong, but Jeremiah knew the situation was hopeless.  God’s people had been divided for some time now between Israel in the North and Judah in the South.  Israel had already fallen to the Assyrians and now Judah was backed into a cliff of its own.  Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was about to conquer Jerusalem and enslave its population.  The temple, the glory of Jerusalem, would be destroyed.  Jeremiah was called to tell the people that this would happen.  He had an even more difficult job than that though.  He was called to tell the people that this was all happening because they had brought it upon themselves.  They’d rejected the God who loved them so much.  Filled with false hope that everything was going to be alright they would soon be completely hopeless.

            What a terrible situation!  However anxious we might and hopeless we might feel, these forces do not surpass the internal and external challenges that faced Jeremiah.

            Into this hopeless situation God gives a remarkable Word for Jeremiah to preach to the people.  Not only would it later give them comfort, but it comforted him during this hopeless time.  “In those days I will raise up a righteous Branch to spring up from David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.  In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely.  And this is the name by which it will be called, “The Lord is our righteousness.”

            Amidst the chaos and uncertainty God gives this healing and refreshing promise to Jeremiah and all the people to hear.  It’s more than just a Word though.  This Word will change reality.  It brings hope to a hopeless situation.  Jerusalem would experience terrible bloodshed, anguish and enslavement for their sins.  Yet, God says that’s not the final Word.  Once again she will dwell in security and enjoy prosperity.  There will be a time when the people can be hopeful again.  When the people were finally captive in Babylon they would hope in this promise of the prophets; that God would restore His people forever.  As Isaiah had promised, though their sins were like scarlet they would become what as snow.  Perfectly forgiven and perfectly restored.

            This great reversal would happen when a lowly rabbi entered in like a conquering king on a donkey.  Jesus fulfills Jeremiah’s word perfectly.  He is the seed of David, the righteous branch that sprouted up.  The people received Jesus as king at first.  They thought he’d come to do what a victorious king would do.  He’ll make sacrifices at the temple in Thanksgiving to God and then take up David’s throne.  Little did they know that he had come to make sacrifice, but the sacrifice would be his own body.  The same Jerusalem who had rejected God in the time of Jeremiah rejected Him again.  He was enthroned on a cross and crowned with thorns.  People thought this Jesus was the hope of Israel, but now he was gone.  His disciples fell into hopelessness, locked themselves up in rooms lest they meet an end like his.

Then the promised king came to them when they were at their lowest.  He entered through those doors they had shut themselves up in their own hopelessness and misery and said “Peace be with you.”  Hope:  profound and permanent hope was theirs because Christ is risen from the dead.  That is yours in Jesus too.  Jeremiah said that the kingdom of God would be known as “The Lord is our righteousness.”  That righteousness is yours when God placed his name upon you as you joined Christ in his death and resurrection at your baptism.  His death has done away with Israel’s sin, Judah’s sin, your sin, and your sin.  His resurrection has given you life that is in God so you know no matter what troubles you or causes you to lose hope it will never mean God will lose you.

            At the time of Jeremiah the people were not very attractive or lovable at all.  Yet, in this Word God shows us that God does not love us because we’re so lovable  but rather we’re loved before we’re made lovable   We’re forgiven our sins and made white as snow by God’s grace.  Now apply that to your hopeless situations.  The counsel of others is too often  that if you think positively than positive things will happen.  That might be true at times, but it also puts the onus on us; as if hope is something we have to find within.  But think of Jeremiah in the pits of hopelessness.

          Just as in Christ God the Father loves us before we were ever lovable  so also he gives us hope before we were ever hopeful.  Christian hope is not dependent on how you’re feeling at a given moment or what is happening within or outside of you.  Christian hope is summed up in the name Jeremiah promises us, “The Lord is our righteousness.”

         If we take a moment to reflect on those things that try to make us feel safe, secure and hopeful we see that they can’t deliver true hope.  The stock market?  Fiscal plans?  Insurance?  Physical prowess?  Beauty?  Popularity?  All those places that promise lasting hope just can’t deliver.  The wealthiest person can lose it all and he will still die.  The most solid fiscal plan is still dependent on the ups and downs of human and natural history.  How silly to regard any of these things as the end of our hope, to treat them as gods.

          But to say this and to trust this:  “The Lord is our righteousness!”  That gives true hope.  Many people heard Jeremiah’s message and rejected it because they couldn’t see beyond the present.  The present promises of either health and wealth or gloom and doom.  Wherever you place your hope will determine your actions in the present.  So they went chasing after these things and when they failed they fell into hopelessness.

           Yet, some heard Jeremiah and they saw the glory and awesome wonder of their God.  They trusted that one day He would restore all things just as He promised.  That all the things they hoped for and couldn’t find in the world, peace, security, health, and life can only be found in the God who raised from the dead a branch from David.  Wherever you place your hope will determine your actions in the present.  So as they hoped for the future they confessed their sins and received the love of God.  They lived in the midst of their troubles trusting that God will deliver them out of them all.  They sought not to live as they did in the past worshiping and hoping in false things and sinning against their God.  They sought God and looked forward to the arrival of the righteous King.  We should take their example to heart.  We live in the presence of our future hope.  The presence of Christ with us in the present form our future and determine how we conduct ourselves in the present.  Let’s never grow apathetic to the glorious gospel and the future we have in Christ.  This future has the led the Church throughout time to live in the light of the future; doing works of mercy and love towards those around them.

           So, we now rejoice with Jeremiah.  Living in the present with our eyes on the hope of the future of Christ’s return.  We do so filled with hope knowing that we will be delivered from any sin or trouble that besets us now.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.