Isaiah 40:1-11; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; St Matthew 11:2-11
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Awake and hearken, hear the Word of the Lord which is preached to you. Listen to the Gospel which heals you and gives you life in the place of death. For God the Lord speaks peace to His people; to His saints. Hear Him and believe, though you cannot see or feel it.
Be patient. Do not give up hope. Do not despair. But wait upon the Lord who comes to save you. He is at hand with mercy and compassion in all His dealings with you. He has not forgotten you. He shows you His steadfast love and grants you His salvation.
Be patient also with your neighbor. Do not complain about, criticize or condemn him. But bear with your neighbor in love and with forgiveness, in the faith of Christ Jesus, the Lamb so long expected, who comes with pardon down from heaven.
Would you try to wrest away from God or your neighbor by force, have on your own terms what you can only receive as charity? You may try. In our restlessness and weakness of faith, but we can’t do it. You are not greater than John the Baptist. Neither he nor you can escape from the prison house of sin and death. You cannot break your own way into the kingdom of heaven. For you, like John, like all mankind, are born of women. Which is to say, by your natural birth, the inheritance of your parents all the way back to Adam and Eve, you are burdened and beleaguered, subject to infirmity and mortality, blind and deaf, crippled and impoverished. Once dead in trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1).
Of yourself you are a reed shaken by the wind. A leaf that is blown away by even the slightest gust. You are prone to discouragement and despair, impatient with God and man, irritable, angry, and cranky.
You have not suffered as the Prophets, not as St John, the holy Apostles, or Christ Himself have. You have not been sifted and sorted by Satan to the extremes that Job was. Yet you doubt, you wonder and worry, you question and complain. You shake your fist and wring your hands and rail at the heavens that your life is not fair, that God is not fair, that His shepherds desert you, that you have been abandoned.
Amen, I say to you, the Lord has been faithful to all His servants. He has not abandoned them, but delivered them in mercy. He is faithful to you as well. And in His love He will never leave you or forsake you. He deals with you, not as you deserve, but with compassion: by and from and with His own Cross, by the way of His voluntary suffering and death, the shedding of His precious blood for you.
Though you may languish in your own sort of prison, do not be offered by the Cross and Crucifixion of your Savior and Lord, your Refuge and great Reward. But rejoice! Rejoice in the Lord always!
It is by His Cross that He has opened the way into the Kingdom of Heaven. By His Cross that blind eyes are opened and deaf ears unstopped. By His Cross that the lame walk and lepers are cleansed. By His Cross that the dead are raised with Him to new life.
It is the Gospel of His Cross that is preached to you in the wilderness, in your weakness and frailty. By the Gospel of His Cross that He levels the hills of your pride and raises you from the valley of despair. It is by that Gospel of His Cross - especially by your death and resurrection with Christ in the waters of your Holy Baptism - that you are born again to a new and living hope in the Kingdom of God.
This way and means of the Cross is a paradox and a contradiction. But do not take offense at it. It appears to offer nothing, to do and accomplish nothing. It promises life and health and every blessing, but you remain hungry and hurting, imprisoned or worse, whether in mind, body, or other circumstances.
Even the preacher of the Gospel of the Cross, the steward of the Mysteries of Christ, comes to you in the frailty and weakness of mortal flesh and blood like your own, as feeble and fallible as you are. Like withering grass or fading flower. They are not dressed in soft clothing living in luxury, but are beaten and beleaguered just as you. What good are such prophets and apostles of the Cross if they too are sick or in prison, hungry or thirsty, tired or anxious? How can they help or save you if they can’t help or save themselves?
Yet, if St John the Baptist exceeds all the Prophets before him, because he ushers in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God in the flesh, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, your own Pastor surpasses St John in the Word that he preaches and the gifts that he gives you from the Cross of Christ. With Hebraic emphasis, the prophet Isaiah proclaims, Comfort, comfort My people, says your God. St John is the first comfort sent to Jerusalem to speak tenderly to her. He is the Voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. The second comfort has likewise come, the Lord Jesus Christ, the One for whom the way is prepared.
So that the faithful servant of Christ not only points to the coming kingdom, as St John did, the Kingdom of Heaven not only at hand, but already here, fully accomplished! The One who made Himself least in the Kingdom of Heaven is the greatest. Even Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.
This is the Word that is preached and proclaimed and announced to you in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ - the Gospel of the full and free forgiveness of all of your sins. The Word of the Cross, a Word of contradiction, of rejection, or persecution, but for all that a Word of Christ, who heals and gives life.
Now, for a little while, it may seem as though this Word does nothing, as though it were a lie. Yet you cannot live without this Word of Christ which endures forever and by which you, in fact, live forever. Go and hear that Word. Get you up to the high mountain of our Lord’s pulpits and altars, hear the proclamation to the cities of Judah: Behold your God. For this is your life! If you cannot go out to hear it, then ask that is be brought and spoken to you, wherever you may be confined. Don’t suppose that you already heard it and know it well enough. You need to be hearing it, to keep, to hearing it, for as long as you shall live.
You need to hear this Word of Christ given you by His messengers, for faith comes and remains only by this hearing of the Gospel. And you need to hear it so that you have the Word of Christ to speak to your neighbor, including your Pastor, in their weakness and affliction. As St Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God (2 Cor 1:3-4).
For it is by this Word of Christ that you are patient with the Lord and with your neighbor. Patient with the Lord in faith and patient with your neighbor in love. For we preach the immediacy of faith, but patience in fruit. That hearing what God the Lord speaks, peace to His saints, you do not turn back to folly, but bear in love with your neighbor so that instead of grumbling and complaining, you forgive and you encourage. Instead of envy and jealousy, bitterness and resentment, you have mercy and compassion even for those who hurt you.
You live in love toward your neighbor because you live in the true freedom of the Gospel. You body, even your mind, may be imprisoned by any number of restrictions, but you are free indeed in Christ. Herod may even put you to death or Pilate may crucify and bury you, but yet shall you live. For the strong arm of the Lord is also His shepherding arm. He rules in mercy and shepherds in love.
Be patient and rejoice. The Lord is coming for you. He is always coming to you, always preaching His Gospel to you. Even now He is standing at the door. In His Word to you, He is with you, now and always. His preaching of the Gospel is not empty or useless. His Word is true as He Himself is true. And He is for you. He has not forgotten you. He will not forget you. He not only loves you, He even likes you.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Even now He is present with you in His Body and Blood, for the full and free remission of all your sins. He is the Christ and He is for you. You need not look for another.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Awake and hearken, hear the Word of the Lord which is preached to you. Listen to the Gospel which heals you and gives you life in the place of death. For God the Lord speaks peace to His people; to His saints. Hear Him and believe, though you cannot see or feel it.
Be patient. Do not give up hope. Do not despair. But wait upon the Lord who comes to save you. He is at hand with mercy and compassion in all His dealings with you. He has not forgotten you. He shows you His steadfast love and grants you His salvation.
Be patient also with your neighbor. Do not complain about, criticize or condemn him. But bear with your neighbor in love and with forgiveness, in the faith of Christ Jesus, the Lamb so long expected, who comes with pardon down from heaven.
Would you try to wrest away from God or your neighbor by force, have on your own terms what you can only receive as charity? You may try. In our restlessness and weakness of faith, but we can’t do it. You are not greater than John the Baptist. Neither he nor you can escape from the prison house of sin and death. You cannot break your own way into the kingdom of heaven. For you, like John, like all mankind, are born of women. Which is to say, by your natural birth, the inheritance of your parents all the way back to Adam and Eve, you are burdened and beleaguered, subject to infirmity and mortality, blind and deaf, crippled and impoverished. Once dead in trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1).
Of yourself you are a reed shaken by the wind. A leaf that is blown away by even the slightest gust. You are prone to discouragement and despair, impatient with God and man, irritable, angry, and cranky.
You have not suffered as the Prophets, not as St John, the holy Apostles, or Christ Himself have. You have not been sifted and sorted by Satan to the extremes that Job was. Yet you doubt, you wonder and worry, you question and complain. You shake your fist and wring your hands and rail at the heavens that your life is not fair, that God is not fair, that His shepherds desert you, that you have been abandoned.
Amen, I say to you, the Lord has been faithful to all His servants. He has not abandoned them, but delivered them in mercy. He is faithful to you as well. And in His love He will never leave you or forsake you. He deals with you, not as you deserve, but with compassion: by and from and with His own Cross, by the way of His voluntary suffering and death, the shedding of His precious blood for you.
Though you may languish in your own sort of prison, do not be offered by the Cross and Crucifixion of your Savior and Lord, your Refuge and great Reward. But rejoice! Rejoice in the Lord always!
It is by His Cross that He has opened the way into the Kingdom of Heaven. By His Cross that blind eyes are opened and deaf ears unstopped. By His Cross that the lame walk and lepers are cleansed. By His Cross that the dead are raised with Him to new life.
It is the Gospel of His Cross that is preached to you in the wilderness, in your weakness and frailty. By the Gospel of His Cross that He levels the hills of your pride and raises you from the valley of despair. It is by that Gospel of His Cross - especially by your death and resurrection with Christ in the waters of your Holy Baptism - that you are born again to a new and living hope in the Kingdom of God.
This way and means of the Cross is a paradox and a contradiction. But do not take offense at it. It appears to offer nothing, to do and accomplish nothing. It promises life and health and every blessing, but you remain hungry and hurting, imprisoned or worse, whether in mind, body, or other circumstances.
Even the preacher of the Gospel of the Cross, the steward of the Mysteries of Christ, comes to you in the frailty and weakness of mortal flesh and blood like your own, as feeble and fallible as you are. Like withering grass or fading flower. They are not dressed in soft clothing living in luxury, but are beaten and beleaguered just as you. What good are such prophets and apostles of the Cross if they too are sick or in prison, hungry or thirsty, tired or anxious? How can they help or save you if they can’t help or save themselves?
Yet, if St John the Baptist exceeds all the Prophets before him, because he ushers in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God in the flesh, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, your own Pastor surpasses St John in the Word that he preaches and the gifts that he gives you from the Cross of Christ. With Hebraic emphasis, the prophet Isaiah proclaims, Comfort, comfort My people, says your God. St John is the first comfort sent to Jerusalem to speak tenderly to her. He is the Voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. The second comfort has likewise come, the Lord Jesus Christ, the One for whom the way is prepared.
So that the faithful servant of Christ not only points to the coming kingdom, as St John did, the Kingdom of Heaven not only at hand, but already here, fully accomplished! The One who made Himself least in the Kingdom of Heaven is the greatest. Even Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.
This is the Word that is preached and proclaimed and announced to you in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ - the Gospel of the full and free forgiveness of all of your sins. The Word of the Cross, a Word of contradiction, of rejection, or persecution, but for all that a Word of Christ, who heals and gives life.
Now, for a little while, it may seem as though this Word does nothing, as though it were a lie. Yet you cannot live without this Word of Christ which endures forever and by which you, in fact, live forever. Go and hear that Word. Get you up to the high mountain of our Lord’s pulpits and altars, hear the proclamation to the cities of Judah: Behold your God. For this is your life! If you cannot go out to hear it, then ask that is be brought and spoken to you, wherever you may be confined. Don’t suppose that you already heard it and know it well enough. You need to be hearing it, to keep, to hearing it, for as long as you shall live.
You need to hear this Word of Christ given you by His messengers, for faith comes and remains only by this hearing of the Gospel. And you need to hear it so that you have the Word of Christ to speak to your neighbor, including your Pastor, in their weakness and affliction. As St Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God (2 Cor 1:3-4).
For it is by this Word of Christ that you are patient with the Lord and with your neighbor. Patient with the Lord in faith and patient with your neighbor in love. For we preach the immediacy of faith, but patience in fruit. That hearing what God the Lord speaks, peace to His saints, you do not turn back to folly, but bear in love with your neighbor so that instead of grumbling and complaining, you forgive and you encourage. Instead of envy and jealousy, bitterness and resentment, you have mercy and compassion even for those who hurt you.
You live in love toward your neighbor because you live in the true freedom of the Gospel. You body, even your mind, may be imprisoned by any number of restrictions, but you are free indeed in Christ. Herod may even put you to death or Pilate may crucify and bury you, but yet shall you live. For the strong arm of the Lord is also His shepherding arm. He rules in mercy and shepherds in love.
Be patient and rejoice. The Lord is coming for you. He is always coming to you, always preaching His Gospel to you. Even now He is standing at the door. In His Word to you, He is with you, now and always. His preaching of the Gospel is not empty or useless. His Word is true as He Himself is true. And He is for you. He has not forgotten you. He will not forget you. He not only loves you, He even likes you.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Even now He is present with you in His Body and Blood, for the full and free remission of all your sins. He is the Christ and He is for you. You need not look for another.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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