Sunday, December 15, 2024, Third Sunday in Advent… “God’s Messengers”
Psalm 85; Zephania 3:14-20; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 7:18-28
Divine Service IV with Holy Communion
Hymns: #352 “Let the Earth Now Praise the Lord”; #347 “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People”; #366 “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”
Dear Friends in Christ:
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.
A messenger, by definition, is a person who carries a message from one place to another, or from one person to another. In the electronic, wireless age we’re living in, we’re sending most of our messages by texts and emails and smartphones, but that’s a more recent development. Armies, for as long as there have been armies, have made use of messengers, or runners, to carry the general’s orders to the soldiers on the front line, and to bring back news from the front to the generals. Being a military messenger or runner has always been among the most dangerous jobs an army has to offer. In a book I was reading about World War I, I read about a British Army soldier named James Miller, who was sent to France to fight with the British Expeditionary Force in the summer of 1915. In the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, Pvt. Miller was a runner for his battalion. The account from the battle reads:
On the night of July 30-31, 1916, Pvt. Miller’s battalion had just captured an enemy position. When the Germans began a counterattack, he was ordered to take an important message under heavy shell and machine gun fire, and to bring back a reply at all costs. He was compelled to cross in the open, and upon leaving the trench, was shot almost immediately in the upper chest. In spite of this, with heroic courage and self-sacrifice, he applied a compress to the gaping wound, delivered his message, staggered back with his answer, and fell dead at the feet of the officer to whom he delivered it. He gave his life as a supreme devotion to duty. He was 26 years old.
Being a messenger, especially a combat messenger, does carry its risks.
In this morning’s Gospel reading, we meet another messenger; in this case, God’s brave and courageous messenger John the Baptist. God’s Word is full of messengers God sends. Our God in heaven, who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see, loves the children He created. He cares for us, He wants to save us, He wants us to be free of our sins and live forever. God is a God of love, but He’s also a Spirit, a God without a corporate body or an audible voice. So He sends us messengers in their various forms, to tell us what He wants us to know.
Angels are God’s messengers. (The word angel literally means “messenger.”) God’s prophets are messengers, bringing people God’s Word, telling people, “This is what the Lord says.” John the Baptist was one of those prophets - the last of them, in fact - the one sent to bring the world the good news that the Savior had arrived. The holy apostles were God’s messengers, given the task of spreading the good news about Jesus, and writing down, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, everything they’d heard and seen. God’s written Word is itself a messenger, the living Word God has given us to read, a living dispatch from the King of Heaven. God’s pastors, teachers, and missionaries are messengers, bringing the good news about Jesus to the world. You can be a messenger, too, as you tell the people you come to know in this world about what you’ve come to know about Jesus.
Being a military messenger, a runner like Pvt. Miller, is a dangerous job. Being one of God’s messengers carries its own dangers and difficulties; especially if the message you’re given to deliver isn’t such a happy one. Truth is a good thing, but it isn’t always accepted or appreciated. Those who don’t care for the message often take it out on the messenger. God’s prophets – Isaiah and Jeremiah and so many of the rest of them – were beaten, abused, and often murdered for the messages they were faithful to bring. The first apostles were martyred for their testimony. God’s pastors and missionaries have often suffered similar abuse, in the long history of the Church. Being faithful to God’s Word and being truthful about it isn’t always going to win us friends or influence people or make us friends of the world.
John the Baptist was as faithful a messenger of God as there ever was. His mission was to tell the people their Savior was coming, and to get them ready to meet Him. He called the people to repent of their sins and be baptized, so their hearts would be ready when He came. And when Jesus the Savior arrived, John pointed to Him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John, faithful prophet that he was, had no regard for his own personal safety. He’d tell you the truth you needed to hear, no matter who you were. He called the scribes and Pharisees a brood of vipers. Then he called out King Herod himself for the sin he’d committed in stealing his brother’s wife – making Herod angry, and his “wife” Herodias angrier still.
So as our Gospel reading begins, John, the faithful messenger, has been thrown into Herod’s prison, in danger of losing his poor head. The reward for faithfulness, at least in this world, isn’t always what we hope it will be. John, from his prison cell, hears about the things Jesus has been doing. I won’t say that John was losing his faith; but he may have been losing hope about ever getting out of that jail. He may have been wondering if the Lord who opens prison doors had a miracle for him.
So John sends his disciples to Jesus with a question, looking for a little hope for those doubts that are bound to creep in in a situation like his. “Jesus, are You the Coming One, the Messiah, the Savior, the true Lamb of God? Or was I wrong, and should we look for someone else?” And John’s messengers come to Jesus, bringing Him John’s question. And at that time, our Gospel says, at that very hour, “Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind.” It looks very much like Jesus, in answer to John’s question, is saying to the messengers, “Watch and see! Watch this!” And He turns to the crowd and begins to touch people, one after another. “Be healed! Be cured! Hear! See! Walk again!” Jesus is God’s messenger in His own wonderful way, bringing the news of God’s love in an audible voice, and in physical acts of grace and mercy.
Then, after showing them the proof they’ve come looking for, after letting them see the power of God with their own eyes, he tells the messengers to go back and tell John, “Go tell John what’s you’ve seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” (The Greek here says the poor are being “evangelized,” or better still, “gospelized.” I’d never run across that word “gospelized” before, but I like it. Isn’t that a great name for what we’re called to do, Church? To “gospelize” the world around us, to get the Good News into people’s ears, to tell them all about Jesus? May we all be about the business of “gospelizing” the world!) “Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of Me," Jesus says. Blessed is the man who keeps the faith. Blessed are you, John, as you cling to your precious faith in that terrible place.
After John’s messengers left, says our Gospel, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about him. (They may have been wondering themselves why Jesus didn’t rescue His friend). Jesus asks them, “What did you go out into the desert to see?” What kind of “messenger from God” were you looking for? One who’d tell you just what you wanted to hear, and that everything was going to be A-OK? One who’d tell you God “loves you just that way you are,” and won’t ask you for anything, or ask you to change anything? What did you go out to see? A preacher in a $3000 suit, with a twenty-room mansion, a Bentley, and a corporate jet? One who’d promise to solve all your problems in an instant and make you rich? That wasn’t John. But if you were looking for a true prophet, that’s what God gave you. If you were looking for a messenger who’d bring you the truth that could save you, that’s what John was. His message wasn’t, “Hey, look at me!” It was, “Look for Jesus! Wait for Jesus! Trust Jesus, the One who’ll take away your sin!”
Jesus says of John, “I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he." John was the greatest of God’s prophets, faithful, true, and honest to a fault, like a messenger of God ought to be. And yet, Jesus can say that you and I, “least” as we are, can also be like John, and do what that faithful messenger did. John was “a faithful servant who only did his duty,” and we, by God’s grace, are called to do the same. “Whoever wants to be great among you must be the servant of all,” Jesus says.
Jesus was God’s in-the-flesh messenger to this broken world, and He brought the good news of God’s love to us in the greatest way it could have been done. His message from Heaven was written in blood, as He spread out His arms on the cross. Look at the cross, and what Jesus did there for you, and you’ll get the message about how much God loves you. Look at the tomb left empty on Easter morning, and you’ll see the gift of life you still have coming. Look what’s waiting for you on God’s altar, a message from God in body and blood.
“Rejoice in the Lord always,” St. Paul says. And not just in this place, you messengers of God, but out there in the world where your rejoicing needs to be heard. Let your gentleness, your loving spirit, your kindness, your agreeableness, be evident to all. Let the joyful love that’s in you show! Let the rest of the world give in to anxiety and fear, like people will do. But you and I will go on praying, praising, and using our beautiful feet to carry the Good News. It’s good that we can live in the peace of God, that “peace beyond all understanding.” (What a gift from heaven that is!) Better still when we can share the message of peace in Christ, and help others to know Him, too.
Be of good courage, be strong, be faithful. “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” In Jesus’ name; Amen.