John 1:6-8, 19-28
12/14/08
This past week my mother came to visit me.
Now, you know that when you’re expecting visitors of any kind,
your mission is to put your home in order and try to get it as clean as
possible before they arrive. Well, that’s even more the
case when your mother is coming to town. Preparations for her
visit include dusting, vacuuming, deodorizing, mopping, mowing, washing
the linens, and cleaning the bathrooms. The goal is to make your
home as worthy of her presence as possible. The last thing you
want is to fail her inspection.
Now, when we hear the message of John the Baptist
that we are to prepare the way of the Lord and make His way straight,
we often respond the same way we would if some dignitary (or mom) were
about to visit us - cleaning things up and putting them in order, so
that our home might be worthy to receive them when they arrive.
And since the home that the Lord is coming to is our bodies and lives,
the stuff that we think needs to be cleaned up are things like our bad
behavior, our bad language, and our bad habits. If we can just
cut these things out, we’ll be presentable, worthy of our
Lord’s presence when He comes. He won’t be appalled,
criticize, or abandon us. Instead, He’ll be happy to dwell
with us, praising and commending us for cleaning up our lives for Him.
But this is decidedly not the way one prepares the
way of the Lord. In the first place, it’s impossible for us
to prepare His way in such a manner. And yet, this is what
Christianity is to many people. It’s all about morality,
consisting of a lifetime of trying to ride oneself of all outward
appearances of sin - from bad language, bad behavior, and bad habits,
to going to “R” rated movies, smoking, drinking, and
gambling. For the people who believe this way, you can clean up
your life yourself, making your body and life worthy to receive the
Lord when He comes to you. According to them, you can even invite
the Lord to come in, as He stands as the door of your heart and
knocks. And, of course, with everything in order, dusted,
vacuumed, and deodorized you’re sure to pass the Lord’s
inspection with flying colors.
But this is the deception of the devil, because
sinners can’t clean up their own sin. Have you ever tried
to mop a floor with a dirty mop? Have you seen those commercials
where the dirty mop is replaced by the Swiffer mop? The dirty mop
is replaced, because it’s dirty to begin with. All it does
it move the dirt around, if not add to it. The Swiffer mop,
however, is clean to begin with. It gets dirty as it pulls up the
dirt off the floor onto itself, leaving the floor clean. So with
us sinners: We’re dirty to begin with, so we can’t
clean up our lives ourselves. We can put on a good show! We
can make it look like we’re clean on the outside. But God
looks at the heart and sees that it is desperately wicked. Like
the Pharisees, we’re like white-washed tombs - beautiful on the
outside, but full of dead men’s bones.
It would seem, then, that either we can’t
prepare the way of the Lord by trying to clean up our lives, or that we
can’t prepare the way of the Lord at all. Our ways are
crooked. How are we to make the Lord’s way straight?
The answer is really counter-intuitive. It runs totally contrary
to our way of thinking. That’s because it’s
God’s way, not ours. And that way is to confess our
unworthiness, our crookedness, and our uncleanness before Him.
Can you imagine saying that to your guests or to you mother?
“Sorry, mom! I knew you were coming, but I just wanted you
to see how I really live. Here I am, among all the dust, dirty
laundry, dirty dishes, and messy floors, together with the unkempt
lawn, the dog hair and odor, and the mildewy bathrooms.” If
she didn’t leave, she’d at least be very disappointed.
But the Lord already knows how dirty your life
is. He already knows about the sin that you’ve tried to
hide from Him. And He already knows that there’s nothing
you can do to clean your life up yourself. You are not worthy of
His presence nor can you do anything to make yourself worthy of His
presence. All He wants you to do to prepare for His coming is to
confess this of yourself. Follow the example of John the
Baptist. If anyone could boast that his life was clean enough and
worthy enough to receive the Lord when He came it was John the
Baptist. But even he confessed that he was not worthy to untie
the strap of Christ’s sandal. Christ, however, comes to
unworthy sinners. If you could clean up your own life, you
wouldn’t need Jesus. It’s only when we confess
ourselves to be the dirty, messy sinners that we are that then the way
is cleared for Him to come to us to do His cleaning.
Jesus alone can clean us, because He alone is
clean. He is like the Swiffer mop. He starts off
clean. But as He applies Himself to our bodies and lives He
becomes dirty. Our sin is transferred to Him, and we become
clean. Now Jesus looks like the unworthy sinner. In order
that He might become clean, He must go through a washing, or a Baptism
as He calls it. It is a washing that will cleanse away the filth
of sin once and for all. But it is no earthly washing. No
amount of water or detergent can remove the stain of sin. The
washing that Jesus would undergo would be the Baptism of the cross, and
the cleaning agent would be His own blood. This blood alone
removes the grime and grunge of sin. It cleansed Jesus of our
sin, so that He could come forth from the grave pure and free from
sin. It cleanses us from all sin, when applied to us through our
Baptism, so that we too come forth from that bath pure and free from
sin. Now, with all of our unworthiness having been removed by
Jesus, we stand before God cleansed, truly worthy to have Him make our
bodies His home.
With God taking up residence in your heart, He daily
applies the blood of Christ to those sins that continue to stain your
body and soul. And if there’s any sort of change of
behavior for the better, if your bad language is cleaned up, if bad
habits are gotten rid of, then don’t take the credit
yourself. Rather, give thanks to the Lord that He’s having
His way with you. And when you find that there are those stubborn
stains that the Lord just doesn’t seem to take away, live under
His promise that before God, those stains are removed with the blood of
Christ. God does not see you clothed in the filthy garments of
sin, but in the righteous garment of Christ.
With Christ’s worthiness given to us, we are
now ready to receive Him who comes to us today in His holy
Supper. You who are unworthy in and of yourselves are worthy in
Jesus Christ, having been cleansed of your unworthiness with His blood
and clothed with Him at your Baptism, and you may approach His Table to
receive His body and blood in your mouths for the forgiveness of your
sins. The only worthy participants in the Lord’s Supper are
those who confess that they are unworthy to receive such a gift and yet
come at the Lord’s invitation. A worthy guest at the
Lord’s Table is one who confesses his unworthiness and yet
believes that Christ’s body and blood are given to him to eat and
to drink for the forgiveness of his sins. As Luther writes in the
Small Catechism, a person must believe in these words,
“’Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of
sins.’ But all who do not believe these words, or doubt
them are unworthy and unprepared; for the words ‘for you’
require all hearts to believe.” If you believe the
Lord’s words are true and that they are spoken for you, then you
will partake of His Supper in a worthy manner.
By confessing your own unworthiness, repenting of
your sin, and trusting in God’s promise of forgiveness in Jesus,
you will prepare the way of the Lord and make His way straight as He
comes to you today through His Word and His Holy Supper. Not only
will you then be counted worthy of eternal life and live under
God’s grace and mercy now, but on the Last Day you will be able
to receive the Lord when He comes for you and you will be able stand
before the throne of judgment clothed in the worthiness of Jesus, safe
from the wrath that God will pour out on the unworthy - those who
reject Christ. In Jesus, you pass God’s inspection, for He
can no longer find any sin in you. You have been washed in the
blood of Christ, and now you are clean. Amen.