Gaudete – The Third Sunday of Advent

December 15, 2024

Matthew 11:2-11

“Drain the swamp” is either a threat or a promise. It depends on which side of the swamp you reside. Turning a swamp into solid ground would require significant upheaval of terrain.

When the prophet Isaiah says the valleys shall be lifted up and the mountains made low, there’s a similar political aggressiveness to it. The explosive power to bring down a mountain is not trifling. The mountains are the rulers – kings and emperors; the valleys are the little people who pay the taxes and are fodder for their masters’ wars. Kings on mountains don’t take kindly to threats.

Thus prophets who preach repentance have a way of getting killed. That’s in the background of today’s Gospel. John the Baptist preached against the Herodian swamp. Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great, who ordered the Bethlehem massacre. Antipas was the Herod who incarcerated John. Antipas had divorced his first wife in order to be with Herodias, his sister-in-law who also happened to be his niece. There are all kinds of sixth commandment issues in this family.

How about with you? Let’s recite it together. Look on p321; what is the Sixth Commandment? You shall not commit adultery. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife love and honor each other.

It’s easy to take shots at Herod. Most of our politicians today aren’t really models of family life. But what would John the Baptist say about you? Is your life chaste and decent? Is your marriage an icon of holiness? Are you delaying marriage because your priorities are askew? Get married, stay married, have babies, baptize them.

John the Baptist said that Herod’s divorce and remarriage was a sin. And the way you deal with sin is repentance. For the real swamp that needs to be drained is the bog of your corrupt heart.

And like draining an actual swamp, such a process is going to involve tremendous upheaval. All our priorities are misaligned.

The way through all of this is trial, spiritual trial. For John, the spiritual trial is imprisonment. For his disciples, it is seeing their teacher losing popularity and influence – and the questioning of their own purpose in life.

German theology has a special word for this spiritual trial that is usually left untranslated. The term is Anfechtung; it is spiritual distress that brings the temptation to despair; it often involves the assaults of the devil, bringing one to the edge of the loss of faith and hope in God. In Luther’s funeral sermon for the Elector John the Steadfast, he says Anfechtung “is the real, horrible death, when the devil wears a man down.”

In His mysterious wisdom, God allows us to be so afflicted. The Anfechtung, the trial can come in the death of a child, sometimes in the horrible isolation of miscarriage; or the spiritual struggle comes in the long slow decline of someone we love; or the hopelessness of a seemingly bleak future; or the bitter pain of what seems a losing struggle against besetting sin; or the seething resentment against one who has betrayed you.

The disciples of John the Baptist bring their Anfechtung—the darkness of their spiritual struggle—to Jesus. And that’s the real purpose of any trial. We go from the prison house of despair to the messianic work of Jesus. We bring our sins, our doubts, our complaints, our despair, to the One who invites us to load Him up with everything weighing us down.

Luther put it this way:

Now if God allows faith to remain weak, one should not despair on that account, but rather recognize it as a trial and temptation [anfechtung] by means of which God tests, prods, and drives a person to cry out all the more and plead for such faith, saying with the father of the possessed boy in the gospel, “O Lord, help my unbelief” [Mark 9:24], and with the apostles, “O Lord, increase our faith” [Luke 17:5]. Thus does a person come to learn that everything depends on the grace of God: the sacrament, the forgiveness, and the faith. Giving up all other hope, despairing of himself, he comes to hope exclusively in the grace of God and cling to it without ceasing. [LW 35:19]

In Bible class the last few weeks, we’ve learned that Jesus calls the poor in spirit blessed, and the poor in spirit are those who despair of themselves. They can make no claim upon God. They can make no demands upon God. The only thing left is an appeal to mercy, an appeal to God’s grace. The poor in spirit need God to come from the outside. They need Him to come and forgive sins and raise the dead.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that is His messianic work: “Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.” The offense, among other things, is the scandal of the cross, the mystery of suffering. We have to go through death to resurrection. Everything we love, everything we trust, everything we value in this life has to be stripped away.

The dead will be raised up. That is coming, but it is not yet. It is darkest before the dawn. Today we pray “Lighten the darkness of our hearts by Your gracious visitation.”

Repent. Obey the sixth commandment, and all the others. Bring your Anfechtung, your spiritual trial, to the Lord Jesus. He who descended to hell as Conqueror of death and demons will never leave you nor forsake you, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true. +INJ+