Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., celebrated the Second Sunday of Advent, Dec. 5, 2010.

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Readings

Isaiah 11:1–10
Psalm 72:1–7, 18–19 (antiphon v.7)
Romans 15:4–13
Matthew 3:1–12

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Prayer

Cleanse us with your fire, O Lord, and stir up your Holy Spirit in us, so that we may abandon the ways of sin and return to the faith you have given to us in our baptism into your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Message

Isaiah left us a whole book—sixty-six chapters long—
filled with passages both peaceful and painful.

Today we hear one of his prophecies
about the coming of the Messiah, God’s anointed one.
It begins with those familiar words,
“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” (Isaiah 11:1, NRSV)

We hear that verse, and the words remind us
that David was the youngest son of Jesse.
God had promised David that his descendents
would sit on the throne in Jerusalem in perpetuity.

But Assyria, a great power in the Middle East,
went on a rampage and laid waste to Judah,
and God’s promise seemed broken and bankrupt.

That’s why these words from Isaiah bring hope,
why they speak of promise in the midst of pain.
For us, as we listen to them as a great song of expectation,
we hear them accompanied by the angel choirs
singing about God’s glory in the highest
on a cold night above a hilltop flocked with sheep.

But these words from Isaiah are just a clip,
a snippet from a longer song.
Just before our reading Isaiah tells us
how the LORD will deal with Assyria, Israel’s oppressor:
“He will hack down the thickets of the forest with an ax,
and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.” (Isaiah 10:34, NRSV)

That verse is not so familiar,
but it tells us how God works in the world.
When there are forces that oppose him,
when his people are oppressed and burdened,
then his judgment comes down upon the oppressor,
his strong arms lift the burdens laid on his people.
He swings his ax and hacks down the forest.
Nothing stands in the way of his judgment,
his mighty power to protect and to save his people.

Centuries later, another prophet, the last one, arose in Israel.
Named John, he was the cousin of the Son of David,
the same David, son of Jesse and onetime king of Israel.
A hymn by Thomas H. Troeger, describes John this way:
Wild the man and wild the place,
Wild his dress and wild his face,
Wilder still his words that trace
Paths that lead from sin to grace.

He was wild and he was strange,
but like Isaiah, he was a man possessed by the Spirit,
a man bound to see what God envisioned
and to speak to all who would listen
with “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’” (Matthew 3:3b, NRSV)

John’s signature gesture is a simple one.
He points beyond himself,
showing us the way to the Christ, the Messiah,
turning our gaze to the coming Lord.

And before we can go too far astray
and picture our Lord coming to us
only as a sweet and charming baby,
John reminds us that the Lord who comes
is the same Lord whom Isaiah foretold would come,
sprouting from the stump of Jesse.

Remember, this Lord is King,
and he comes to issue in his kingdom;
his reign over us and the whole world.

And as our King and Lord, he doesn’t let us rest in the security
of anything we have within ourselves.
There is no safety in echoing the crowds’ words to John,
in claiming a special pedigree, that we belong to the right family,
in saying, in our case, “We have Luther as our ancestor in the faith.”
Instead, John calls us to turn from our old ways,
to give up our false security,
to let go of anything that we hold onto that is not God.

Only when we do this,
by the power of the Spirit at work in us,
does God give us the grace we need
to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” (Matthew 3:8, NRSV)

He can do this, no doubt about it,
because he is the one with the power to make new children
for himself out of cold and lifeless stones.

But he wants us to be his children,
he wants us to live in his kingdom,
and so he sends his Son,
to show, to tell, to preach, to teach,
to heal, to exorcise, to pray,
to suffer, to die, and to be raised.

All of this is our Father’s way of bringing about his kingdom.
Through this obedience in life and death,
his Son, the Messiah, the shoot from the stump of Jesse,
serves his Father in the power of their Spirit.

And it all comes down upon us
when Christ comes into our lives.
He comes as that “infant holy, infant lowly,”
but he also comes to us as our Lord and King,
as the one with water and fire,
with ax and winnowing fork.

As John tells us so vividly,
“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
His winnowing fork is in his hand,
and he will clear his threshing floor
and will gather his wheat into the granary;
but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:11b–12)

It’s a disturbing message.
It’s not the picture of Jesus we like to hold in our hearts.
He is not meek and mild;
wildness runs in his family.
But, in the end, by faith,
we can find comfort in our Lord’s water and Spirit
his purifying fire,
his ax and winnowing fork.

Remember what the angel told Joseph in his dream:
Mary “will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus,
for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew, 1:21, NRSV)

He will save us…
His mission is built into his name, into who he is.
And Jesus carries out that mission as our Savior,
not the ways we might dream up for him,
but in the ways that he knows we need:
with water and fire,
with winnowing fork and ax.

Look into your heart and be honest with yourself and God.
Search out all of the parts of your life that,
in the secret places of your own thoughts,
bring your shame and remorse,
that remind you of the ways you have strayed from God.
This is the thicket in the forest of our sins
that our Lord Christ hacks down with his ax.

This is his judgment, his way of judging us,
not to condemn and to banish us,
but to purify and to purge and to make new.
He hacks away at the thickets of our sins,
and he gathers all the brambles and branches,
a jagged and snarled tangle of debris,
and puts it into a huge pile
and burns it with his unquenchable fire.

And then he washes the ash and the dust
from our soiled and tear-stained faces.
He renews us and refreshes us.
He gives us new birth through his Baptism
and forgiveness through our penitent return to the waters of the font.

If God in Christ can raise up children of Abraham from stones,
then surely he can redeem us from our sins.
He will rescue us from the death sentence of our daily lives
and make us new and whole, fresh and forgiven,
cleansed and restored to live as his people.

We can trust that we will be redeemed and gathered to our Lord,
so that what Isaiah prophesied will come to pass:
“…the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the people;
the nations shall enquire of him,
and his dwelling shall be glorious.” Amen. (Isaiah 11:9b–10, NRSV)