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The Special People Of Advent

            Who are the special people to whom you will be giving Christmas gifts?   Who are the special people to whom you will be sending Christmas cards?  Are those lists identical, or is the card list longer than the gift list?  Do you find it challenging either to expand or contract those lists?  For example, do you expand the gift or card list to include new co-workers?  How long do you have to be on the job before it’s appropriate to send someone a greeting card or gift?  How well do you have to know them?  How about new neighbors?  How long after you move into a new neighborhood do you wait before you send a card or give a gift to your neighbor?  How long after they move into your neighborhood or apartment building do you wait?  How about relatives?  Do you send cards to all your uncles and aunts?  To all your cousins?  At what point do you cut off sending gifts or gift-cards to nieces and nephews?  When they’re out of elementary school?  High school?  College?  Figuring out who the special people are for Christmas gift and card lists is as difficult as coming up with a wedding guest list.  Whom do you include?  Every friend you’ve ever had or met since you were little?  All of your college buddies?  Do you invite your parents’ friends who watched you grow up even though you personally don’t really know them?  Whom do you leave off?

            We’re in the Advent season of the church year, preparing for Christmas, preparing for the arrival of our heavenly Groom.  Who are the special people of this season?  In the first Scripture lesson today from Malachi chapter three, the prophet comes right out and identifies The Special People Of Advent.

They are the preparer

            Elijah was the first in a long line of prophets, called and positioned by God to deliver his messages to the people of Israel.  Malachi was the last.  After that God sent no more prophets.  God’s silence after Malachi for four and a half centuries spoke volumes, “You Israelites have all you need from me in order to identify the Messiah when he arrives.”  But before the centuries of silence began, God spoke one last time through Malachi, “Right before the arrival of the Messiah there will be one last prophet, one last messenger.  Look!  I will send my messenger.  His ministry and message will be somewhat surprising because when he points to the Messiah, it will seem unexpected.  Suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come.  His job description will be exactly the same as all the other prophets.  He will prepare the way before me.  He is going to prepare the way for the Christ.”  That last prophet, that preparer, was none other than John the Baptist.

            John looked and sounded a little rough around the edges.  He wore scratchy, uncomfortable clothes and lived and ate like a Survivor character.  He did all that to gain attention, not for himself but for his message.  And his message had two parts.  First, he plowed the ground of people’s hearts.  How can the seeds of God’s love for sinners be planted and grow in cement-like soil, in hard hearts, unless you first dig it up and remove the barriers, boulders, and stones?  So, John sounded as rough as he looked when he hollered at the we’re-better-than-others-because-we-don’t-really-sin crowd, “You brood of vipers … every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire”(Matthew 3:7,10).  Secondly, John pointed to the Savior.  “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”(John 1:29).  Once he had people’s attention with his rough exterior and rough message, the way was prepared, the highway was rut- and pothole-free, for the Lamb to bring his blessing, for the Lamb to do something about those sins.

            Because John was so unique, there were some folks who thought he was the end goal of all God’s promises.  “Are you Elijah come back from the dead?   Are you the Christ?”  But John kept deflecting attention away from himself to the Savior.  “He must become great; I must become less”(John 3:30), is how John himself put it.  We consider John, the preparer, to be one of the special people of Advent, but his own evaluation is, “I am the least.  I’m not even worthy to untie the Savior’s shoes!”  Yet, as low as John considered himself to be, here is the Savior’s evaluation, “I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John”(Luke 7:28).  How about that?  Jesus said, “John may be last, but he’s certainly not least.”  While John didn’t consider himself to be special, Jesus did.  Apparently, Jesus makes all the difference, giving worth and special-ness to those who feel worth-less and not-so-special.

They are the purifier

            The whole point of Malachi’s message and John the Baptist’s message and every message from every other messenger of God is clear – to get sinners in a position where they can have direct access to God.  Malachi says that when the preparer arrived, he would signal the arrival of the ultimate messenger from God, the one who will complete the ultimate promise or covenant that God made when he actually swore by his own reputation, “I will send a Savior from sin!”  Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come.”  But how can sinners ever be in a position to have direct access to God when God is so pure and allows nothing dirty and no one dirty to get near him, not even one speck of dust, not one little smudge on our heart?  Who can endure the day of his coming?  Who can stand when he appears?  In Malachi’s day, there were lots of dirty people.  Oh, sure!  They bathed.  They went through the motions of following God’s rules about ceremonial washing.  But their hearts were dirty with selfishness and greed.  Aren’t you glad you’re above that?  I am … glad for you because I have to admit that I’m not, and I’ll bet you’re not either.  We need cleansing.  We need to be purified.

            That’s what the messenger of the covenant, the Savior, the Messiah, came to do.  He is the Purifier.  Whether hand-rubbing industrial strength soap into the stains of our spiritual clothes or tossing chunks of the dirty rocks spiritual life into a blast furnace to fire away the crud and leave behind pure, precious metal, the Messiah Jesus was and is up to the task.  He will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.  He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify[people] and refine them like gold and silver.

            Some clothes get so stained you don’t know what to do.  I once had a permanent marker in my shirt pocket … with the cap off.  Oops!  I rubbed and scrubbed.  Try as I might, that was the end of that shirt.  Into the rag bag it went.  My sins are like that.  I can try to rub them out.  You can try to remove your sin-stains.  Try as we might, nothing will work.  We’re headed for the eternal, smelly, slimy rag bag.  But there is one who can remove all sin-stains – every stain and any stain.  He’s the ultimate Purifier.  He is the one the preparer pointed to.  When John called out, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,”he could just as well have said, “Look, the Purifier who removes all sin-stains so sinners have direct access to God.”  That’s what makes Jesus the ultimate special Person of Advent.

They are the priests

            Jacob had twelve sons, the “fathers” of the twelve tribes of Israel.  Each of his sons had descendants who eventually occupied one chunk of real estate in the Promised Land – all except one, Levi.  Levi’s descendants didn’t get land because their ancestor Levi had been involved in a murder plot.  But, as is the norm for God, he did the un-normal and undeserved and surprising.  Levi’s descendants were designated by God to be involved in Israelite worship.  Most of them didn’t really lead worship services but were busy with related tasks – carrying the portable worship facility’s tent posts or tent curtains, tending sheep to be used for sacrificing, shoveling sheep stuff, cooking, sweeping.

            Only one particular clan among the Levites served as the actual worship leaders, did the animal sacrificing, sprinkled sacrificial blood, entered the temple, and prayed to God for the people.  Those select Levites were known as the priests.  Why only a few among so many?  God was teaching the Israelites that only special people could have direct access to him – certainly not foreigners, certainly not all those dirty sinful Israelites, certainly not all those untrained Levites, only Aaron’s descendants.  And even at that, only one of the priests got to be high priest.  Think of John the Baptist’s father.  He was a priest and a very old man before he had the once-in-a-lifetime shot at actually entering the temple and burning incense on the prayer altar.  Ask the rest of Levites, and they’d say they didn’t feel very special.  Ask the priests, and many of them like Zechariah rarely got to feel special.  You see, the key to being special is having direct access to God.  Being special in God’s sight has nothing to do with our height or weight or singing voice or ability to color within the lines or GPA or scholarships or having perfect eyesight or being cancer-free or never making mistakes.

            It’s hard to feel special even during the season of Advent.  We want to get our act together and get prepared for Christmas, but it’s hard to focus.  The team we want to win often doesn’t.  The hero we’d like to cheer for falls on his face in public scandal.  The money is tight, and we can’t buy for others what we want.  We’d like to gather with friends for a Christmas party, but there’s no slot left on the calendar, and even if there were, no one has invited us.

            But something has changed, and the change comes from what God reveals to us in the Bible.  One of fun things about Bible study is to discover the concept of “centering” in Hebrew writing.  We expect a story or poem to have the zenith of the story, the zinger, at the end.  But Hebrew writers often put that in the middle.  The middle is the most important.  In middle of all history is Jesus.  What’s on either side is important, prophets pointing ahead, “He’s coming!” and people today pointing back, “He has come!”  But none of that would matter if Jesus were not in the middle.

            In the middle of this message from Malachi is Jesus.  What’s on either side is important.  The preparer, John the Baptist, came before Jesus, and according to Malachi there will be priests following after.  Then the LORD will have those who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings … will be acceptable to the LORD.  But the middle is most important.  Why?  Because Jesus makes both sides important.  Jesus turned back and said of John, “He’s the greatest,” and Jesus turns to the future and says of you and me, “The one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he”(Luke 7:28).  I can’t claim to be in John the Baptist’s ballpark.  I’m not even in the parking lot.  You probably feel the same way.  We are tiny compared to him.  But as a small person on a mountain top has a better view than a giant in a valley, so we have a better view than John since he never actually saw the cross and the empty tomb.  We can look back and see those things by faith as clear as the noses on our faces.

            You may not feel special, but Jesus has purified who not just who we are but also everything we do.  He declares us to be royal priests and joins himself to us.  We walk with him, joined at the hip, like a three-legged gunny-sack race at the church picnic but never stumbling with direct access to God – and no security checkpoints to see if we’ve got fluids in little bottle in Zip-locked bags.  Jesus makes sure, “You’re not just Levites.  You are priests.” Everything we do is a part of our priestly offerings, wrapped in the bow of Jesus’ righteousness and purity – doing dishes, scouring pans, vacuuming the carpets, working on a class project, changing diapers, writing a note to a friend, getting up and going to work, doing your job faithfully, looking for a new job to utilize your talents, bagging groceries, selling cars, going on the road for sales calls, engineering software, drawing plans for buildings, planning a date night with your spouse, reading stories to kids, doing homework – all of that is special because you are special.

            Some parents may want to cover the ears of their kids, but I’m going to say it any way.  Certain characters of the holiday season are wrapped in myth.  OK!  Uncover their ears because here’s something for all to hear.  Jesus is real.  He’s making a list of all the special people of Advent and checking it twice.  Who are the special people of Advent? … I’m looking at them.    Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on December 6, 2009

Services

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

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