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Rejoice, Rejoice Believers!

            You’re standing in front of the Christmas tree with three strands of lights dangling from your hand onto the floor in a twisted mess.  You untangle the mess ever so slowly, get the lights wound onto the branches, and realize that you need more.  On with the coat and gloves, out the door to the car, carefully negotiating the crazy traffic, you slosh through the parking lot, stand in line to buy your lights, get back to the car, step in a puddle just outside your trunk, arrive back home, and finish the tree.  Then you stand back to admire your efforts and realize that one strand of lights is burned out.  Oh, great!  Digging among the branches to remove and replace that strand, your forearms get scratched, and a couple tree needles poke under your fingernails.  Is it worth it?  Is it worth all the effort?  Where’s the joy in preparation for Christmas when you’ve got a million other things to do, and you can’t even get the lights on the tree to work?

            For true joy in this Advent time of Christmas preparation, put yourself in the sandals of a poor woman who came from a nice family, married a handsome prince, but rebelled, ran away, and ended up in the gutter as a prostitute, beaten down, covered with sores, coughing, hacking, wheezing, disheveled, and dirty.  Huddled in the rubble of a bombed out city, she reaches into her pocket for a half-used Kleenex to wipe her runny nose and discovers a crumpled piece of paper with a poem from the prophet Isaiah, a song which causes her heart to warm up and makes it seem like the sun just broke through the dark clouds.  The message?  A prince is coming and announces to her, “I’m going to marry you.”

            During our midweek Advent worship we are going to use passages from that poem of Isaiah with the focus captured in phrases from successive stanzas of an Advent hymn summing up the Lord’s call to us this Advent season, “Rejoice, Rejoice Believers!”

Let your lights appear – Prepare the road

            Isn’t the re-worked Marquette Interchange marvelous?  Those of us in Milwaukee who travel east to west and west to east fairly often can recall crossing five lanes to get to that single lane ramp heading west onto I-94 or doing the same in reverse to get here.  Highway reconstruction is not easy.  It is not easy now, and it was not easy two thousand six hundred years ago.  They did not have the heavy equipment, cranes, trucks, and road graders we have now.

            So, how could a broken-down street lady or any Israelite exiled in Babylon carry out the Lord’s call through Isaiah, “Pass through, pass through the gates!  Prepare the way for the people.  Build up, build up the highway!  Remove the stones.  Raise a banner for the nations”?  They could because this was not a call for muscle straining.  This was a call for soul straining to prepare the road into their hearts for the coming of the Lord.  And the call went out not just to a few broken down Israelites but to all sinners of all nations.  “Come out, come out of the cities where you are hiding behind walls of fear and guilt, where you want to keep others from seeing the blots and blemishes of your life and even hide them from God.  Pass through the gates, and let your lights appear to light the way into your heart and to light up what is in your heart, as dirty and embarrassing as it may be, because your prince is the Savior God who says, ‘I’m coming to clean up your messes and marry you.’ ”

            Preparing the road into our hearts is not any easier for us than it was for the Israelites in Babylon.  In fact, it may be harder.  The Israelites who languished in exile or who returned to a ruined Jerusalem knew that their lives were in a mess, and it was their own fault.  Do we realize that?  I’m afraid that sometimes our lifestyle can make us callous to the seriousness of our sin and desperate need for a close connection to God.  Even in bad economic times with the media blaring, “Recession!” we’re still better off than ninety-six percent of the people on this planet.  Whether we realize it or not, our lifestyle can have a negative impact on our life with God, leading us to think, “Spiritual stuff is nice, but I don’t really need it.  Worship? – I’ll go if I feel like, or if I don’t have too many other things to do.  Prayer? – I’ll toss one up to the Lord now and then.  Pondering the seriousness of sin? – What sins are you talking about?  I’m not that bad!  Bible study? – The scheduled studies don’t fit my schedule.  Besides, I’ve heard most of that before.”  Until something terrible happens, and then we either blame God for allowing it to happen, or want him to make it better right away, or both.  Come out, come out of the cities where you are hiding.  Remove the stones of fear and guilt or the stones of arrogance and indifference.  Rejoice, Rejoice, Believers!  Let your lights appear so you can go at it day and night and prepare the road into your heart for the coming Savior.

Let your lights appear – Prepare to receive the LORD’s reward

            The poor, destitute prostitute found joy in the call to prepare for the arrival of her prince.  Her smile widened and her whole face lit up as she unfolded the poem from her pocket and read further about what he would bring her.  The LORD has made proclamation to the ends of the earth: “Say to the Daughter of Zion, ‘See, your Savior comes!  See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.’”  Normally, a reward is something earned.  But what could that poor, broken-down woman earn other than contempt and ridicule?  What reward had she earned?  The answer is nothing.  But her prince had gone into battle and conquered his worst enemy and hers.  He earned the victory and brought that victory, his reward, as a gift to her.  He promised, “I am going to marry you and turn you into an all-time winner.”

            There have been occasions when I’ve heard someone ask why our worship services can’t be all upbeat and why our hymns sometimes have a somber, serious tone.  The answer comes from a realization that spiritually speaking we are like that poor, broken down woman.  What have we earned other than the angels standing around the throne of God with their hands clasped on their mouths trying to hold back their snickers and ridicule because we have the gall to think that we deserve to be near God?  But our Prince, Jesus, has gone into battle and conquered his worst enemy and ours.  He earned the victory and brings his victory, his reward, as a gift to us.  He promises, “I am going to marry you and turn you into an all-time winner.”  That’s the reason our worship and hymns are both solemn and upbeat.  Rejoice, Rejoice, Believers!  Let your lights appear and prepare to receive the reward your Savior has earned and is giving to you.

Let your lights appear – Prepare to enjoy your new name

            You have probably noticed that there are some women nowadays have gotten married and have hyphenated their maiden and married names or have retained their maiden name.  We are not here to pass judgment on that.  After all, there may be reasons for that beyond pride in her own family’s history such as maintaining what’s called a “stage name” to keep one’s private life private or security reasons if a woman’s professional career puts her in contact with unpleasant elements of society.

            But put yourself in the sandals of that poor, broken-down woman.  She had a reputation for being dirty.  Her name was mud.  But as she continued to unfold the poem in her pocket, she read that her prince was going to marry her and give her his name.  Her new name indicated that she was now royalty.

            The people of Israel had been loved by God and treated with special care as his bride.  But they rebelled, ran away, and ended up in the gutter, having prostituted themselves with idols, making themselves spiritually dirty.  They had deserted God, and he rightly deserted them.  They were taken into exile in Babylon.  While they were not necessarily thrown in prison or enslaved, and while many of them had decent jobs, they were called “Deserted” and their land “Desolate” (Isaiah 62:4).  But the Savior God promised to come to them in love and give them a new name, changing their status by forgiving and forgetting their sins.  They will be called The Holy People, The Redeemed of the LORD; and you will be called Sought After, The City No Longer Deserted.

            Most of you don’t give a hoot about your status in life.  That’s because you know your role in life and station in life, whether young or old, single or married.  But the big reason you aren’t too worried about your status in life is because you know your status with God in this life and you know your status with him in the life to come.  Here’s the connection with Advent.  Are you taking time to enjoy that status?  God is not asking us to quit our jobs or even cut back hours, but he does want us to be reminded of our status with him so that we can use that to cope when bad days come.  And bad days will come.  Even during the holidays, you don’t have to look too far to have a tug at your heart strings.  Maybe you recently had a reminder that everything in this world is “like grass … the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more” (Psalm 103:15-16).  That’s when we need a reminder that God brightens our lives with the promise that we are given the name and status of God’s children at our baptism.  Rejoice, Rejoice, Believers!  Let your lights appear as you prepare to enjoy your new name.

            Jesus once told a story about ten bridesmaids who were supposed to welcome the groom to the wedding reception.  They knew he was going to arrive soon but did not know exactly when.  Five bridesmaids had their lamps lit.  Five did not.  Five were prepared.  Five were not.  I’m going to add one element to that story – the bride.  The wise bridesmaids had plenty of oil to keep their lamps burning.  Don’t you think the bride did, too?  Don’t you think she would let the lights of her house appear as she looked forward to her groom’s arrival, especially if she happened to be that broken-down woman who had pulled Isaiah’s poem from her pocket and read about her prince and all he would do for her.

            Rejoice, Rejoice, Believers!  Let your lights appear to prepare the road to your heart, to prepare to receive the reward your Prince brings, and to prepare to enjoy your new status.  Our Savior is coming, and that’s what makes all of our Christmas preparation worthwhile.  Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on December 3, 2008

Services

Sundays 7:45, 9:00 & 10:30 am

Mondays 6:30 pm

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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