New season blooms
In last week’s reading from Matthew’ Gospel, we heard that the people were waiting. They were longing. They were hoping.
They were waiting for the Saviour who had been promised throughout the Old Testament.
Then John the Baptist arrived, standing in the wilderness, calling people to repent and get ready because the Kingdom of Heaven was near. The people get their hopes up as they recognise John to be the one promised in Isaiah: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord.” They knew that if John had arrived, the Saviour he pointed to would also be arriving, very soon.
One week, and eight chapters later, we hear that this long-promised Saviour, Jesus, had arrived—but John is still waiting, still longing, still hoping. He is not in the wide-open wilderness but confined to a jail cell. He is not dining on locusts and wild honey, but bread and water. He is not powerfully proclaiming, but questioning.
Why had John the Baptist been imprisoned?
John had called the people to repent—to turn to the gracious reign of God with their sins for God to make them clean. But people don’t like hearing they need to repent. We instinctively resist anything that sounds like we would need to change because that sounds like an attack on our identity and capability. Repentance challenges our inner human desire to independently pursue our own plans, our lives, our futures, what we believe, the ways we live and cope, the things we look to for peace, enjoyment and security, without anyone else telling us what we should or shouldn’t do.
Our human nature is to think that we are fine as we are. The natural person sees turning to Jesus as an obstacle to human freedom and self-rule. No one wants to hear that they need to repent because they are sinners, need Jesus, need forgiveness, need saving help and blessing outside of themselves.
Yet God comes where and when he wills to open the ears of those he calls, to hear his word and humble hearts. And so God’s word is either met with acceptance or rejection. His people who bring his word are either met with acceptance or rejection too, just as Jesus himself was.
It’s no coincidence that immediately before today’s text, in Matthew 10 (verses 16-23), Jesus teaches about the resistance to God’s word and the rejection of his servants, summarised with his words: “You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”.
John the Baptist had issued a message of repentance out in the wilderness. He had called the Roman ruler Herod Antipas to repent too; calling him out for marrying his own brother’s wife Herodias. Herod actually feared John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man, but Herodias, held a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. That is why John was in prison. As events unfolded, he would later be beheaded. (Mark 6:17-29).
John’s job was to prepare the people to turn to the coming Saviour—but as he is faced with execution, he doesn’t know exactly who that Saviour will be. His situation is desperate. So, when John heard word from prison about what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” You can almost hear the deep longing, from the depths of his heart.
On this third Sunday in Advent, as we focus on the theme of joy, there’s not a very joyful picture here…but that’s precisely the point. Jesus has come into this world—a world broken and breaking, a world hurting and hurting one another. A world that groans in bondage to decay, death, Satan, and the kingdom of darkness. A world buckling under the weight of grief and suffering. A world filled with selfishness, deceit, lies, war, and terror. A world where people are thrown away like broken appliances. A lost and condemned world where there was no room in the inn, no place for Jesus, no place for the Son of God and the message of his servants, those, who like John, are persecuted just for confessing their faith in him.
Jesus has come in our crumbling worldly existence to bring us true joy by the rescue he has brought us, which we cannot see and in a final sense we have not yet fully obtained. And so, with the imminent arrival of the long-awaited Saviour, the people had joy. Joy is not happiness. Happiness is often a reaction to what happens—a feeling that depends on events. John was not happy to be in prison. The people who came to him were not happy about their suffering and ailments. They were not happy about an abusive and exploitative government and oppressive taxes. They were not happy under the burden of their sin, guilt and shame.
Joy is a deeper, more enduring internal state of contentment and great delight that comes from God and transcends situations and personal circumstances. The people had joy because their long-awaited Saviour had come, and they rejoiced in everything that pointed ahead to.
The first reading from Isaiah 35 gives a vivid image of this. As John stood in the wild, hot uninhabited valley of the Jordan wilderness preparing the people to meet their coming Saviour, God would do a new thing. Through Isaiah God paints a vibrant picture of new life bursting forth from the wilderness; a new era of salvation and life and freedom…and joy. The wilderness is personified, shouting out in gladness as the glory of the Lord comes and they are themselves transformed by it:
The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
the splendour of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the Lord,
the splendour of our God” (Isaiah 35:1-2)
Isaiah prophesies that it will be God himself who will come to save his people. The glory of the Lord will be seen in the Person of Jesus. The spiritual wasteland will burst into bloom—a picture of the Saviour bringing a great reversal of the brokenness and decay to which the creation is bound, with his transformative power and grace. There will be new life in the midst of death, beauty and splendour, and joy and singing instead of sighing and sorrow with the long-awaited redemption day:
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then will the lame leap like a deer,
and the mute tongue shout for joy.” (verses 5-6)
These works of healing in Isaiah 35 point to the Kingdom of Heaven reigning with grace in the Person of Christ on earth. The works that Jesus is doing shows that God’s new era of salvation has begun. They illustrate aspects for restoring spiritual wholeness: Jesus has come to bring saving help to the people so that they shall be able to see the way of salvation in him. By following him they walk the way of righteousness. They shall not just have their skin cleansed of leprosy, but their hearts made clean and holy. Their ears will be opened to hear the Good News, and by believing they shall be raised to life. These healings point ahead and find their culmination in Jesus’ greatest work of healing—bringing spiritual wholeness: life, salvation and rescue from the imprisonment of sin, death and Satan.
Last week it was John preaching. This week it is Jesus. He proclaims himself to be the Saviour. He said to John’s disciples: “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.”
Perhaps at one point or another on our faith journey we can all relate to John the Baptist’s longing as he waited in prison. We are trapped in our own bodies with frailty and illness. As Paul lamented: “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). We might be imprisoned by anxiety and fear over sudden changes to life circumstances, and trapped by trying to control that which we have no control over. We might feel imprisoned to an endless quest to be loved and accepted by others, which plays out in perfectionism, people pleasing, or being a workaholic. We can feel trapped by the sinful behaviour of others against us, like abuse and bullying. We are all born in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. The flesh continually competes with the Spirit of God.
But because of Christ we can have joy. Like John the Baptist before him, Jesus was also rejected for the word from heaven he brought. He was also despised for his call for the people to repent. He was rejected to the point of death, crucified, dead and buried. His defeat is how he wins the victory. His death is how he brings life to the world. He was pinned to a Cross but could not be imprisoned in the tomb. On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father to have authority and rule over all things in heaven and on earth—an authority and rule in which he comes to save his people.
And he has come to save you. He has come to rule in your hearts. Your longing for Jesus to come again soon is a sign that you have already received the Holy Spirit and been blessed with faith, like the people of old, who came to John the Baptist and were baptised in the Jordan river.
In your baptism, God has come to bring all his saving help to you. Joined to Jesus and his own death and resurrection, washed clean, set apart as holy saints, God has come to do a new thing in your hearts, for whoever is in Christ, the old has gone, the new has come. He goes to work transforming our hearts to blossom with faith, like crocuses blooming in the wilderness; a faith that is sure and certain that even in the midst of our longing, our struggling, our grief, our pain, our brokenness, everything that John pointed to has been fulfilled in Jesus.
As you see the small, gentle flame of the candle of joy on our Advent wreath, may it be a profound image of the joy which Jesus has come to give in a world of despair. It is a small flame but it shines bright to symbolise that Christ has come to shine in even the darkest places of human experience. This flame shows the Christian reality of the present: that God has already given you the life that can only be found in Christ, so that you may have true joy in him. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of Jesus, but follows him faithfully to the end. So this flame also directs our focus to the future: that God himself will come and save you, when we will sing in joy with all the other saints, and the angels forever: Joy to the world, the Lord has come! Amen.
Pastor Tim Ebbs
St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Glenelg
Third Sunday of Advent, 2022
Questions for reflection:
“The spiritual wasteland will burst into bloom—a picture of the Saviour bringing a great reversal of the brokenness and decay to which the creation is bound, with his transformative power and grace”
- Make a list of the things that bring happiness in your life. Compare it with a list of that which brings challenge and suffering. Can you be happy about these things?
- Reflect on the differences between happiness and joy. Where does happiness spring from? Where does joy come from?
- How is distinguishing joy from happiness helpful in re-prioritising what is most important in life? Read through your lists again. Even if you cannot have happiness, can you still have joy?
- John the Baptist’s experience in prison was unjust. He had been faithful to God yet was unjustly imprisoned and suffered death. However, did this change the ultimate reality God had for John? In whom did John place his hope?
- What circumstances and experiences in life can imprison us? How does the fulfilment of God’s promise in Jesus, and his ministry of grace give us hope? How does it bring us joy?
- Paul says: “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation—the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Reflect on the imagery of the wilderness bursting forth in vibrant bloom. How might this portray a fuller picture of the reality of God’s transforming grace in the lives of his people?
