Isaiah 35:1–10

December 17 2008 Advent Midweek Sermon 3

¹The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; ²it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the LORD, the majesty of our God. ³Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. ⁴Say to those who have an anxious heart, "Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you." ⁵Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; ⁶then 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; ⁷the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. ⁸And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray. ⁹No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. ¹⁰And the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Almost plaintively, the cradle hymn cries, Away in a Manger "Be near me, Lord Jesus; I ask Thee to stay" (Lutheran Service Book, 364:3). How every Christian's heart burns with this desire! As we have heard repeatedly this Advent season, the Lord has heard our cry to be near us. Jesus became incarnate and lived among us: "We have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:18). And we know that He "will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you" (Isaiah 35:4). He came once, born of Mary, and He has promised to come again to judge the world. But how does Jesus respond to our cry now, caught as we are between these two "comings"? Do we somehow have to get along without Him for the time being? Has Jesus left His body, the Church, without a head? Of course not! He himself says: "Behold, I will be with you until the end of the age." He is with us. But I am afraid that often we get the wrong idea about his presence. We sometimes understand this promise to be with us in some sort of foggy, ethereal way. We think of him as present in our feelings or emotions or with us spiritually. We don't expect him to actually be here physically in some way that we can see, or hear of touch. The Apostle John says he "heard, saw, touched and handled" the Christ. But we often think of his presence as some sort of nebulous, spiritual presence.

But in reality, Jesus is here among us in a more concrete way. He is with us through the stuff of the creation. He is really present in the Word and Sacraments. He is present in our worship. We hear him speaking directly to us when He pronounces the absolution of our sins at the beginning of the service. He speaks directly to us when he blesses us at the end of the service. He is speaking in the Scripture, throughout the liturgy, the sermon and the hymns. He is really present in the water of baptism and it is Jesus who washes away our sins and pours out his Spirit into us through the water. Jesus is really present in the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. It is not just some murky, otherworldly presence, but his body and blood are truly present and we really consume his very body and blood. Christ is present with us today in a very real, substantive way. He is here, not just as a phantom, but in reality.

And he has been present since his ascension. He will always be present with us until his return. There is no "best if used before" date stamped on His promise to be with us always. The manger is never empty. Even as our Christmas decorations always includes a crude wooden manger—and always the same manger—so our Lord uses the familiar and seemingly crude means of speech and water and bread and wine to be among us. These means of grace have no outward beauty that should attract us to them. They, too, share the apparent weakness of the little Lord Jesus, "asleep on the hay." They, too, hide the Child, as did the clothes in which Mary, His mother, swaddled Him. But mundane things such as words, water, wine, and bread are now employed by God to bear heavenly blessings to His people.

The Word of God bears God to us. Every time the manger of the Word is opened, it is a little Christmas as God comes to us. Our mouths are often filthy hovels, yet God lives there through His Word. As we read and pray and preach Scripture, God comes through the Word. Martin Luther says of this coming: "It is in Scripture and nowhere else, that he permits himself to be found. He who despises Scripture and sets it aside will never find him. The angel gave a sign to the shepherds [Luke 2:12]; but to Mary or Joseph or to any other man, however pious they may have been, he gave no sign except the swaddling clothes in which he was wrapped, and the cradle into which he was laid, that is, the Scripture of the prophets and the law. In these he is enclosed, they possess him, they speak of him alone and witness to him and are his sure sign" (AE 52:171). Such a sense of weakness surrounds the Word of God that some among us choose to ignore, blaspheme, disregard, and ridicule it. We don't want to hear or read it or study it. We place it on our table at home as a decoration but never find time to open it and read it. Christ places this Word in our hands, in our ears, on our lecterns, on our desks, and on our nightstands. But this Word is powerful when it is in our mouths and hearts, as St. Paul says, "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)" (Romans 10:8). If we have the inscripturated Word, that is the divine Logos (John 1:1) swaddled in the pages of Holy Scripture, we have the incarnate Word.

Young children often are frustrated by the limits of their immaturity. For example, they may be able to stand, but they cannot reach the refrigerator handle or have the strength to pull it open. We adults understand children's frustration. We may satisfy a hungry child by taking the grapes from the refrigerator, putting them in a bowl, and placing the bowl on the table within our child's reach.

Our heavenly Father understands our spiritual need far better than we do. Through the Sacraments, God brings to us Christ, our salvation and our heavenly food. God puts the gift of life into the bowl of the font and on the table of our church. We do not have to fly up to the divine refrigerator; God opens the door and pours out His abundant gifts to us here, where we need them. When we cry, "Be near me, Lord Jesus," He responds, "Here I am in the Sacraments." Water combined with the powerful Word of God is applied to us through the apparently childish means of the washing of Baptism to cleanse us and wash away our sin. Wine and bread combined with the powerful Word of God are placed in our mouths for the forgiveness of sins. Cradled in our hands, placed in our mouths, this precious gift of Christ's body and blood now resides within us. He comes no closer than this, until He comes to rescue us from this present evil age (Galatians 1:4).

Sinners constantly need to hear the words of God giving us forgiveness. We need to hear these words often and personally, because in our weakness we doubt that God could truly be gracious to the likes of us. Our pastors use their unclean mouths cleansed from the altar to speak for God, "I forgive you." We cry for the Lord Jesus to stay with us, and He sends ministers from whom "we receive absolution, that is, forgiveness, from the pastor as from God Himself" (Luther's Small Catechism, 26). Be so near me, Lord Jesus!

When the Messiah comes, Isaiah says "the eyes of the blind [will] be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy" (Isaiah 35:5–6). Who has ever heard of blind people who now see, those who are deaf who now hear, or the lame who now leap like the deer? Such things are signs of the new age that is to come. God speaks them into being. And at this new age, a way of holiness will be raised over the desert wastes. What was once an unfruitful land, a land consumed by sin and its rage, will become fruitful in the hands of the Christ. In His first coming, Jesus has paid the ransom to make us His people. Now we receive the fruits of this ransom through the means of grace, God's Word and Sacraments.

Long before our asking him to be present with us, Jesus has determined to stay close by us forever. He has used the mundane means of Word and Sacraments so that between His first coming and His second coming on the Last Day there is still a coming of grace for us sinners. The manger is never empty.

Amen.