The Old Testament readings for Advent remind us that Israel was pretty much always in trouble. Though they were God's own people, they continually turned away to false gods and continually treated each other like dirt. How did the Lord put up with them? Over and over they sinned and He punished them in order to turn them back to Him. In the wilderness, they ended up having to stay 40 years because they did not trust in the Lord to keep His promise of giving them the Promised Land. Once in the Promised Land, the Lord had to continually chastise His people with enemies because they didn't trust in Him. After so many wicked kings who led the people into idolatry, the Lord sent His people into exile among the Assyrians and the Babylonians. And what is the preaching that would come later? “Comfort my people! Tell them their struggle is done. Their sins have been paid for double.” How is it that the Lord continues to put up with these people? They turn away. He brings them back. They run off. He seeks them out. He comes in the flesh and they nail Him to a cross and He prays, “Father, forgive them.”
It should be apparent that the Lord is not like us. When someone wrongs us, we don't let it go. How many of you have had someone say or do something that hurt you. What did you do? Let it go? Forgive them? Or hang on to it? Hold it in your heart? Sit around imagining the conversations you would have with that person and what you'd say to put them in their place! “Yes, pastor,” you say, “But you don't understand what they did. You don't understand how much it hurt. You don't understand how much they deserve the treatment they get.” I'm sure I don't. And I'm sure when I do the same thing, nobody else would understand how much the person that sinned against me deserves my scorn and hatred either. Advent reminds us with these vivid words that we are not like God. He constantly puts up with people we'd be done with after the first wrong thing they did to us. He sends His prophets and preachers over and over to tell His people that He has forgiven them and to turn their hearts back to Him in repentance and faith. Advent reminds us that is what repentance is all about. To repent isn't to feel an abstract “sorriness.” It is to recognize how unlike God we are and how much we need a Savior or we are doomed. It is a time to turn from the sins we love to cling to the God who is still bearing with us and putting up with us. Repentance is the Lord's gift which rescues us from thinking we're so good in comparison to others and teaches us that we are such awful sinners our only hope is the Son of God. Let that be your Advent repentance: to put aside your sins and the sins of others and trust in Christ all the more for His forgiveness and grace.
Now let's be clear here. If you're holding a grudge against someone and you act like you like them and forgiven them, that's not going to fool God into thinking you've made yourself repentant and worthy. Likewise any other sin. Just trying to kick a bad habit or change your ways is no proof to the Lord that you've figured out how to act like a Christian. You see, repentance means you want to do better but it doesn't mean you can. And it doesn't mean you can get rid of your sins yourself. For that you need the Lord to do what He does: forgive sinners. And how does He do it? By coming in the flesh Himself and being crucified by those very sinners. The Lord doesn't do what you and I would do. He doesn't plan His revenge and then, when the moment is just right, spring it on all those evil unbelievers who hate Him. No, He lets them take hold of Him, mock Him mercilessly and drag Him out to be nailed to the cross. The Lord brings us comfort by undergoing suffering. He brings us peace by being hated and crucified. He earns forgiveness for our sins by paying the price for our sins: suffering and death. The One Man who really could give us what we deserve for our hatred of God and others instead takes that hatred upon Himself and bleeds and dies and then rise from the dead. There's double for your sins! There's an answer to your sins that wipes them out! There is the comfort Isaiah is talking about!
Isaiah says that a voice will cry out in the wilderness. That's John the Baptizer. What does He cry out? Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight His paths. All flesh is grass and will fade away!” John came to remind people that the way to be prepared to receive Christ is repent of their sins. Not that they could get rid of their own sins, but rather repentance was being baptized in the Jordan and believing in the Christ, the Lamb of God that John pointed out. The warning that we are grass and that we fade away is a warning that we have no strength to save ourselves. John's preaching is a reminder not to be like the Pharisees who came to see Him and didn't get in the river to be baptized. They looked around and down their noses at others because they knew they were better, knew they were less sinful. They didn't have any need for a Savior. Advent, with Isaiah's and John's preaching, is a warning not to be like that. Don't think that you are better than others. Don't think you deserve the Lord's forgiveness but someone else out there doesn't deserve yours. Don't act like you can live without God's Word and Christ's Body and Blood. Don't live as if your neighbor owes you everything and you can treat others however you want. That sort of living is like the grass that fades and dies!
But while the grass fades, the Word of the Lord does not. And here is our Advent comfort. The Lord gives us a double portion of taking care of our sins in His Word and Sacraments. Baptism: the water and the word that washes us. Absolution, the words of forgiveness target to our particular sins. The Preaching of the Gospel: the Good News heard over and over that Christ crucified has rescued us from sin and death. The Lord's Supper: the Body and Blood of Christ by which He gives us forgiveness, life and salvation. Double portion? That's like a quadruple portion! The Lord's forgiveness is given to us in all these different ways, so overflowing and abundantly. To be in the Lord's church, to be in His Divine Service, to live in these gifts is to know the comfort of Isaiah's preaching: that we have received double for our sins. That they are taken away.” There are no other gifts by which we are forgiven before God than these. There are no other sources of our strength and the Spirit working in us to teach us to let go of the sins of others and to love our neighbor as ourselves. True repentance is to turn from our sins, not to something in us by which we can improve ourselves. True repentance, the repentance of Advent, is to flee from our sins into Christ's church where He gives out His saving and forgiving gifts. Where His never-passing-away Word is heard.
How is it that we are so quick to hold on to the sins of others and the Lord is so quick to forgive? That's what makes Him our Lord and Savior and we the people who need saving! Brothers and sisters in Christ, Advent is the time to throw out those things which drag us down, both our sins and the sins of others. Comfort, comfort, people! Your Lord is speaking tenderly to you today from the lips of Isaiah. His tenderness is that He will not pay you back for your sins. He has paid FOR them by His Son. Cling to that Savior whose birth is near and whose Second Coming is not far away! In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
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