The
dictionary defines the word paradox in this way:
a statement that
seems contradictory but is actually true.
Did
you ever think about how the Christian Faith is full of
paradoxes? A Virgin
conceives and gives birth, and through it all remains a Virgin.
The weak helpless Baby she bears is Almighty God, the
Creator of heaven and earth.
As God, He is without sin, yet on the Cross He becomes
sin for us, so that we who are sinners can become the
righteousness of God. He
who is the Author of Life is swallowed up by death.
Having died, he is made alive.
And now in the Sacrament, simple bread and wine are the
means by which He feeds us His Body and Blood.
There
are other paradoxes pertaining to our Baptismal life in Christ.
The way up is the way down.
God scatters the proud in the imagination of their
hearts; He puts down the mighty from their seats, but exalts
those of low degree. He
pronounces the meek blessed, but the proud and self-righteous
are under His curse. Humility
is the way to exaltation.
Another
paradox: Death is
the gateway to life. Our
Lord Jesus Christ had to die so that through His death we could
live. In our Baptism
we follow Jesus into death so that we might be raised to a new
life of forgiveness and faith.
And as those who have been given faith in Christ, we know
that bodily death is the portal through which we enter life
eternal in the heavenly presence of the Triune God.
A
final paradox, illustrated by today’s Gospel reading:
Before you attain joy you must first pass through sorrow.
Before you attain the comfort of God’s forgiveness in
Christ, you must first be afflicted by the knowledge that you
are a sinner, justly deserving the wrath of God.
John the Baptist illustrates this by first preaching
wrath, and only then preaching Christ.
One
thing you can say about John the Baptist:
He did not show favoritism.
With his preaching of the Law, he condemned everyone,
high and low alike. He
boldly exposed Herod Antipas as a transgressor against the Sixth
Commandment. He
likewise exposed those of low degree as sinners equally
deserving God’s condemnation.
St.
Matthew tells us that when John saw the Pharisees and Saducees
coming to him for Baptism, he addressed them as a brood of vipers.
St. Luke tells us that when John saw the
multitudes coming to him for Baptism, he called them a brood of vipers.
One can safely assume that were John to preach to
us today, he would extend the same dubious honor to us by
addressing us as a brood of vipers also.
There’s
a reason John did not discriminate.
There’s a reason why in his preaching of the Law he
condemned everyone. It
was because he wanted all to know that by nature they were
sinful and unclean in God’s eyes.
He wanted all to know that they were in desperate need of
God’s mercy and forgiveness, in desperate need of what God
would accomplish for the world through His Son Jesus Christ.
As we heard last week, John was
a voice in the wilderness calling, prepare the way of the Lord.
By exposing everyone as a sinner, John was
preparing the way for the One who would take away the sin of the
world by His spotless life and His saving death and
resurrection.
Admit
it. It’s so easy
to mumble to God the words, We
are by nature sinful and unclean.
We have sinned against you in thought, word and deed, by
what we have done and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not
loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We justly deserve your present and eternal punishment.
Easy
to say, yes. But the
words are not just some mindless mantra to be mumbled as though
they had no meaning. They
are a description of what we are by nature, a brood of vipers in
rebellion against God. Every
sin against God’s commandments is a sin against God Himself.
Every sin we commit stems from our real problem – we
don’t, fear, love and trust in God above all things.
We try to pull Him down from His throne and seat
ourselves there, puny little rebels deceiving ourselves that we
can be our own gods.
But
to try to be your own god is the way of madness, the way of
death, the way of vanity. Adam
and Eve’s experience after their sin is proof of that.
What we need now is to have our madness exposed.
It needs to be made plain to us that because of the
sinful nature inherited from Adam we are walking in the way of
death. We need to
recognize that when we try to live life on our own terms, apart
from God, we are living a life that in the words of Ecclesiastes
could be summed up as vanity of vanities.
And
to recognize these things about yourself is precisely what
contrition is. Contrition
is simply sorrow over sin. It’s
the affliction that comes upon you when you realize that
you’ve strayed from God’s ways.
It’s recognizing that because of your failure to fear,
love and trust in God above all things, you justly deserve not
His blessing, but His wrath.
And
if you recognize these things, if you recognize that there is no
help for you in yourself, or in any righteous thing you try to
do, your contrition, your sorrow over sin can be the preface to
joy. For in your
sorrow over sin you look outside yourself for help.
You look to the One whose coming John spoke of.
John preached wrath and then he directed his hearers to
Jesus Christ, who would rescue
them from the wrath to come.
You look to your Lord Jesus Christ too.
In faith you confess that He is your Help, your
Righteousness, your Peace with God,
He is your Forgiveness and your Salvation.
That,
dear friends, is why John preached the Law.
So that his hearers could sorrow and grieve for their
sins, and then, through repentance and faith, know the joy of
forgiveness found in Jesus Christ.
By His holy Law God consigns all to disobedience, the Scripture says,
so that [in the Gospel of Jesus Christ] He can have mercy on
all. That is
why the Law is preached to you, so that you can know your innate
nakedness before God, so you can know your weakness, your
humiliation. The
ultimate goal is not sorrow. The
ultimate goal is the joy of forgiveness.
Through faith in Christ, by God’s grace, you are
clothed with the perfect righteousness of your Savior, made
strong for a life of good works, and lifted up to a new status
of sons of God for Jesus’ sake.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted, our
Lord Jesus Christ says. There is no greater comfort than in
knowing that Jesus Christ, by His holy life, His death on the
Cross, and His resurrection, has taken away all your sins.
There is no greater contentment than in knowing that He
has washed away your sins in Holy Baptism, and cleanses you anew
through the pastor’s Absolution.
There is no greater satisfaction than in knowing that
your crucified and risen Savior is your Host in the Holy Supper,
who bids you eat and drink of His Body and Blood for the
remission of all your sins.
There is no greater joy than in knowing that although you
deserve God’s wrath and eternal displeasure, He accepts you,
and blesses you, and extends His mercy, love and grace to you in
the Gospel, because He is good and gracious and kind toward the
undeserving.
Rejoice in the Lord always. I
will say it again: Rejoice! today’s epistle exhorts us
Christians. And
why shouldn’t we rejoice.
Our sins have all been taken away by Jesus’ death on
the Cross. We wear
our Savior’s perfect righteousness as our Baptismal garment.
We now have peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ.
We have been set free from sin’s guilt and power, and
can now live a life of love toward our neighbor for the sake of
Christ who lives in us. We have the hope of eternal life, and we
know that when Jesus reappears we will be raised up from the
dust of death. We
will be made forever alive in body and soul, to dwell with the
Lord forever.
Rejoice
in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice.
God’s holy Law exposes our sin, our death, our
weakness, our degradation. But
the sorrow that follows upon these things is merely the preface
to joy when we look in continual faith to Christ alone.
True joy is found in Jesus Christ alone.
He came in the flesh, born of the Virgin Mary.
He comes to us now in Word and Sacrament.
And He is coming again for us His people at the end of
the age. And the joy
He gives in His Gospel shall never be taken away.
It goes on forever.
Gloria Patri.
. .
