The text this morning is from the Gospel according to Mark, the first chapter:
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ” John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
John the Baptizer is kind of a weird guy. He wears camel hair clothes. He eats locusts and honey. His beard and hair are long and unkempt. And most of the time, he’s standing up to ankles in water, yelling out at people. And what happens? All of Judea and Jerusalem are coming out to see him.
Now, you might think that they’re going out to look at the strange sight. You might think they’re going out to make fun of him. But, what does Mark say of this? They’re going out and confessing their sins. They’re not going out to mock this man of God, but to submit to his preaching, to do what he says.
And why is this? I think there’s this impression out there that John the Baptizer is just this fiery preacher, preaching down the law onto everyone’s heads, scaring the wits out of them. After all, he’s called to make the paths of the Lord straight, right? And we kind of assume that involves us getting right with God. And then John comes out of the woods, almost like walking out from behind a tree, and there’s just something that’s kind of scary about him.
But, the real call of John is one of comfort. After all, yes he’s supposed to work to make the paths of the Lord straight. But this means that he calls people to confess their sins, to be baptized, to repent, and to be forgiven. That’s comfort. That’s making the paths straight for the Lord, and for you, for you follow in your Lord’s footsteps, living lives of holiness in service to Him and for the sake of your neighbor. You see, even when the law is preached to you in such a way that you are shaking in your boots, when repentance comes, when you are sorry for your sins, forgiveness always follows right on its heels.
That’s always the way of God. We confess this in our Book of Concord, too, when we say that, “…repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition, that is terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. The other part is faith, which is born of the Gospel or the Absolution and believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven.”
John the Baptizer wasn’t just a preacher of repentance. He wasn’t just interested in putting people in water, or putting water on people, and making them say sorry. He was there as the first pastor, the first one to preach to them that their sins were forgiven. He was there to preach that their sins were washed away in the flood of forgiveness won by the one whose sandals he was unworthy to untie.
And that’s attractive. There are all these churches out there who are doing things to attract people. They have special lighting, smoke machines, loud music, big drums, big old productions. And the people come. There are a thousand organizations out there who promise that, if you follow their methods, your church will grow. They’ve got visioneering, they’ve got business-based models, they have pastors as leaders and not shepherds, they say to downplay the things going on in the service so you can focus on home-based ministries. And sure, maybe some of these things might work for the short-term. That explains why some churches are big, why some churches seem to be growing, even while the number of people claiming to be Christian falls year after year after year.
But the forgiveness of sins is better, it’s longer-lasting, it’s Biblical. The rest of it isn’t. Churches don’t bring people to be disciples of Jesus by attracting them with gimmicks; they bring them by forgiving their sins and, like John, pointing them to the one who takes away the sins of the world.
As an aside, the churches that are growing fastest in the world aren’t in America; they’re in Africa and the Global South. And these churches aren’t bringing people in with smoke machines and lasers and weird pastors. They’re bringing them by preaching repentance, turning away from the old gods, baptizing them, pointing them to Jesus, giving to them the Sacrament of the Altar. There are millions and millions of Lutheran Christians in Ethiopia and Madagascar and their churches are preaching God’s Word rightly and distributing the Sacraments properly. This is how you win disciples of Christ.
Yet, the Lord never promises growth; He promises that not one person given to Him will fall from His hands. I like to remind people that congregations may grow and they may shrink, but the Church has never once lost one of her own. The Church only grows. We may not always see it with our eyes, but by the eyes of faith, we see the Church as bigger than just a particular time and place. We consider also the Church that is all over the world, and not just there, but the Church that has already gone to be with Christ, awaiting the day of His return.
And even if we should be dismayed at the Church in America, how she’s lost her way, how she’s forsaken her first Love, Jesus, for the sake of secret methods or secret knowledge, we should be comforted with the fact that Christ is among us even now and always. Luther once said that the Gospel is like a passing rain shower, staying in one place only long enough to move on to the next. It could be that the Gospel is moving on from America, but it doesn’t mean that we who preach the Gospel, we Lutherans in this place, will give up trying to reach others for Christ. And it doesn’t mean we will compromise our methods; we will do as we have always done, what the Church over the last 2000 years has done, we will preach, we will teach, we will administer the Sacraments until the day comes when there is not one left standing. We won’t give up.
John the Baptizer never did. He preached what was right. He preached what was true. And when His Lord walked by him on the banks of the River Jordan, John lifted his finger and pointed to the one who would take away all of the sins John was baptizing them for. And more than that, he pointed to the one who would baptize others with the Holy Spirit. We read Johns words in the Gospel today, and some are tempted to say, “See, Jesus doesn’t baptize with water. Baptism is a symbol. It doesn’t save you. It doesn’t mean much, except to you personally.”
But, John’s words doesn’t say Jesus won’t baptize with water. It indicates He’ll do that and baptize with the Holy Spirit. And so it is that we believe that the Lord works a wonder in the Baptism He gives to His people. John’s baptism wasn’t yet complete, for the work of the Lord was not yet complete. But, with the declaration of Christ from the cross that all the work of salvation was done, it is finished, the Baptism of the Lord was to be completed, too. That is the Baptism we have today, the Baptism that has washed you clean from your sin, that has killed you in your sin and made you alive in Christ, the Baptism that will be with you through this life and take you into the next.
John never gave this up. John never took his eyes off of the prize of faith. Even when he was arrested for preaching against the marriage of Herod to his sister-in-law, even when his head was demanded as payment for a raunchy dance by Herod’s step-daughter, even when John doubted briefly in prison that his cousin could save him through that situation, John’s eyes were always on the faith he had in Jesus Christ. And look where it brought him.
Certainly, John’s head was delivered on that silver platter. And so, too, may yours, for preaching and teaching and confessing that which is good and right and true. But, no matter what may come, the comfort of Christ, the knowledge that the Lord is greater than all our adversaries, the hope that comes in the resurrection from the dead, will bring you through this life and its troubles so that you may open up your eyes to the day of Life eternal.
That’s because, not only have you repented, not only will you keep repenting, not only will you continue to call sinners to repentance, but you are forgiven, you will be forgiven, and others shall stand beside you in that forgiveness won by the life, death, and resurrection of the Christ. And though the Church may look strange to the world, just as John the Baptizer did, the call of Christ is still there, as it was in John’s day. Those who would repent of their sins, including you, will be forgiven. You are forgiven, you are baptized, you are beloved of Christ and have been counted worthy for His name to receive the gift of eternal life. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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