Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

While our gardens and fields are blanketed with snow, it looks quite pretty for a few weeks. But after the snow has been here for a little while our appreciation of it gets lost in the realization that the gardens and grounds underneath that blanket are dead. The cold frost turns our winter wonderland into a winter wasteland, with as much life as a desert wilderness, of the kind that the Scriptures use to describe life in all of its hardships.

 

The people of God endured forty years in the wilderness before they were allowed to enter that promised land flowing with milk and honey. It was a long way across the desert lands from Egypt to Canaan, made longer by the doubt of God’s grace and glory. Likewise, Isaiah prophesied to the people of his day of the long dusty route of travel in the other direction from exile in Babylon back home to the land of Israel.

 

Once Christmas passes we will begin to look at our snow-covered world as a long hard journey toward Spring. The beauty of the pure white covering will begin to accumulate the black particles of pollution and the dirt from the roadways. Then the allure will be lost. Travel will not be filled with jaw-dropping vistas, but rather onerous and even dangerous trips seeming to take much longer than usual as our muscles and minds tense up for winter driving.

 

Life as God’s baptized children can get like that, too. The pure holiness of Christ which washed over us with water and the Word can lose its wonder and awe. Daily living under the tensions of life cause the brightness of our baptismal righteousness to fade with the pollution of sin—our own sins and also the sins that are heaped upon us by a world of wickedness. It can start to become quite dead and lifeless under the snow-white covering of our Baptism.

 

People were drawn to a burst of life appearing in the desert. They went out into the wilderness to see a man dressed in animal skins preaching by the river Jordan. They were drawn to his words about the blooming of a flower in the wilderness, a blossom appearing from a branch sprouting from the stump of Jesse’s family tree. There was new life suddenly shooting out of dry ground. Out of the dead of the desert, word and water had brought new life.

 

John the Baptist preached the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God come down from heaven to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And the people who had felt their dead faith lying dormant under the cover of their religious indifference went to the Jordan River to be baptized by John.

 

What did they go out to see? A reed shaking in the wind? No. That was the dull, normal reality. They had all felt like dry reeds shaking under Roman oppression, Pharisaic pietism, and the guilt and shame of their sinful lives not living as the children of God that He had called them to be. They did not go out to see another dry reed; but a sign of new life, of strength and stability against the winds of the times, an injection of God’s creative power into the dead ground on which they lived.

 

They went out to see a prophet, for prophets preach in the wilderness. Elijah preached in the wilderness, and even Isaiah and Jeremiah who mostly preached in the courts of the kings (where people wore soft clothing) were actually bringing the watering word of God to hearts desert-ed of faith, dry souls that had forsaken God and were feeling the dusty daily tensions of life under threat from powers eager to conquer God’s people.

 

Our life as God’s children gets dry and dusty as we also live under the tensions of a society that seems to grow increasingly hostile to the truths of God’s Word. We live under the tension of being God’s children but struggling to remain faithful. We live under the tension of knowing God’s commandments but lacking the will to keep them. Our spiritual life is drying up. Under the cover of our Baptism we feel desiccated and depressed, like a people covered in the snow-white righteousness of Christ while underneath is the dead stony ground of our hearts.

 

Like the children of Israel on their way to the promised land, part of this dryness is knowing that something much more glorious is ahead of us, but we cannot seem to reach it. It seems just a little too far off. The return of our Lord Jesus Christ will happen, but we have given up on it happening during our lifetime. It is becoming increasingly harder to find the roses in the desert, the bright good news of rescue and redemption. The children of Israel had the glory of the LORD accompanying them in a pillar of cloud and fire, yet they grew weary in faith and fell along the way.

 

We also have the glory of the LORD with us, not obscured by cloud and fire, but hidden in the humble means of God’s grace: a baptism whose newness of life seems to evaporate like the water that was poured over us; the spoken Word of God that seems to become as monotonous as our daily life as God’s children; the body and blood of Christ that seem to taste stale and flat while we endure constant tension at home, at work, as Canadians, and within our own selves.

 

On this Third Sunday of Advent, the call of the LORD goes out for you to rejoice, that is, to remember who He is, what He has done, who you are, and what is yet to come. Hear again the good news of all that will spring and blossom with the coming of the Lord. This is what will strengthen the hands that have gone weak with daily toil and make firm the knees that are wobbling under the weight of anxiety and guilt and shame.

 

For we have become anxious about how dead and lifeless we feel under the snow-white covering of God’s grace. We are so occupied with anxiety over that, that we are no longer anxious for our Lord to come. We have essentially given up hope that He is coming to deliver us and to give us new life. We have forgotten the realities of those means of grace that seem dry and dusty like the desert. They only seem that way. They are not that way. While they may cover up what is dead and dry inside of us, they are also coverings of what is great and glorious of God in us.

 

There is something alive down there—not something that we have kept from drying out or freezing to death, but something into which God has injected His resurrection power. There is something blossoming in the desert of your soul. There is something alive in there that has taken root. “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing” (Isaiah 35:1-2).

 

What did you go out to see? What did you come here to see? A reed shaking in the wind? You see that every day in the mirror. You didn’t have to come here to see that. No, you came here because of the news that something blossoms in the desert. The saving waters of your baptism have not completely dried up. There is life under that covering, divine life, the power of God to spring forth in hope and joy and peace.

 

Your Baptism continually reminds you to get ready. The Lord is coming with salvation. He has come to you and He still comes to you to give life where you feel there is only death. Do not fear what looks hopeless. Be strengthened with hope. There is something ready to burst into glorious flower. For Jesus comes to you to undo the effects of sin that dry you out.

 

Isaiah prophesied that life would spring forth with the glory of God when “the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert;” (Isaiah 35:5-6).

 

Jesus told the disciples of John the Baptist to go and tell him what they saw. And Jesus tells you what they all saw at His coming. “the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them” (Matthew 11:5). This is what happened when Jesus came. This is what happens now when Jesus comes to you. This is what will happen when Jesus comes again.

 

He brings life to the wasteland. He undoes the effects of sin that wear us down. As the poor have the Gospel preached to them sins are forgiven, the dead ground of the soul springs to life, and refreshing streams of hope flow in His people. Weak hands are strengthened for their daily callings. Feeble knees are made firm to stand strong. Anxiety is relieved and hearts become anxious for the coming glory of the LORD.

 

Because Jesus comes to you under the covering of word, water, bread and wine, life springs forth in the desert wastelands. He refreshes our dry despair. He brings life to the place of death. And the beauty of our Baptism shines through so that we might travel the way that is laid out for us through the wilderness. We walk the way of holiness, having been absolved with the water that washes away sin. We walk in the holiness of the good works that Jesus accomplishes through us.

 

And this way is not too hard or too dangerous for us. It is the way that God has laid out for His children to come to their promised rest. It is a way that even a fool can follow, for Christ leads us and goes with us, like the pillar of cloud and fire leading the children of Israel. He showed them when and where to go and He was their Protector against all enemies. And that is how He is for us in His Word and Sacraments. He guides us and protects us, forgives us and restores us, bringing water to our dry hope and life to our dead joy.

 

And He does this no matter how deep the blanket of snow, or how desiccated the ground, or how stony the heart. Even when all hope seems lost, He has new life to give to His baptized children. He always provides a way back to the Church and God’s people. The way where He is present so that sorrow and sighing flee away and God’s people come together with singing and everlasting joy.