Advent 1
Beloved. Today for us it is New Year’s as we begin a brand new Church Year. The New Church Year is a great comfort to us. When we begin a new calendar year, it is full of uncertainty. Yes, there is hope and expectation but they are uncertain; will they really pan out? And then there is always the unknown, things happening that we never saw coming. That’s what the new calendar year is; but the new Church Year is completely the opposite. We know exactly what will happen because the same thing happens year after year in the Church Year. Each Church Year is a year of our Lord’s grace to us. In the Church Year, we will again hear the events of our Lord’s life—we will again hear of the birth, the miracles, the suffering, death and resurrection and glorious ascension of Jesus. In short, in the new Church Year, the events that brought us our salvation are retold and recounted to us. Also in the new Church Year, we will again hear the teaching of our Lord, things that He told us are necessary for our life and our salvation. Not only will we hear of these events, but we will receive the gift and benefit of them; we will receive what they promise; we will receive the fruit of Jesus’ work. When we come to church in the new Church Year, we will come and again receive in faith our Lord’s gifts of the forgiveness of sin and eternal life that He gives us in word, absolution and sacrament; we will receive Him and unite with Him as He gives us to eat His very body and His very blood in the Blessed Sacrament. The new Church Year is filled with nothing but a most glorious certainty of God’s grace and His gracious working in us and on us! And that’s why today’s Gospel is so fitting for this first Sunday in Advent, this first Sunday in the new Church Year.
It is the account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Here, we are right away brought to the heart and core of the Christian faith—Jesus coming to be our Savior, pictured so powerfully here as on Palm Sunday He rides into Jerusalem in all humility to suffer and die for our sins. Here we see in full force the unfolding of what Jesus said about Himself shortly before Palm Sunday [Mt. 20.28]: The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. And then notice what St. Matthew says in the Gospel: This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’” So also now Jesus comes to us humble and lowly as He comes to us in His word, as He comes to us “mounted on” the simple and lowly bread and wine. He comes to us lowly and humbly so that we are not scared off by His holiness and divinity. He comes to us now so that He may draw us to Him. He does not now come in wrath and judgment but in mercy and grace calling us to Him, offering us the fruits of His work—the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. This is how He comes to us in this new Church Year—and this is how He came to us in all the other Church Years we have experienced. May we welcome Him this new Church Year as the Palm Sunday crowds did then: Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!
This season of Advent that we are now in, is a season of preparation. We use it to prepare our hearts and minds for the celebration of Christmas, to hear the proclamation of the angel [Lk 2.11]: For unto you is born this day…a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. We use the season of Advent to prepare ourselves and to remember Jesus’ coming to us now today in His word and Sacrament. And we use the season of Advent to prepare our hearts so that we are ready for Jesus’ return on the Last Day. And that’s what St. Paul is talking about in our epistle. Jesus’ return on the Last Day gives form and focus to our lives here and now. And the season of Advent reminds us of His Second Coming and to be prepared for it. Advent teaches us to know the time in which we are now living; and it teaches us that our salvation/ the day of Jesus’ return is nearer now than ever before.
You know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. St. Paul is writing to people who are already Christians, people like you and me. And he reminds us to know the time. This is a two-fold knowing. We must know the times that we live in. That means that we must hold up all that we hear and see from the world around us to the light and mirror we God’s holy will. Is it in accord with what God says in His word? We dare never just accept a thought or idea or way of thinking just because it is the prevailing view of the day. In our text, St. Paul lists six vices that had gained dominance in Rome and held great sway over the peoples and here he specifically warned these Christians, and us, against them: Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.
Look at the world today and see what passes itself off as acceptable and which is regarded as “correct”. We have things like abortion, homosexual “marriage”, transgenderism, suicide etc. Such things hardly are in accord with the word of God and yet so many accept them and go along with the current trends. Let that not be us! Let us know the times because the enemy of our soul, the devil, uses the world and its ways to deaden us to the word and will of God, to draw us back into his kingdom of sin, death, and damnation. You know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep.
This requires hard diligent work from us. We dare never wander aimlessly through life. We must know the times in which we live and what is and what is not in accord with God’s will. To do this, to keep ourselves unspotted from the world, we need to know our Scriptures, what God actually says in the Bible. And we cannot wander aimlessly through life when we know what the future is. And the future is Jesus coming again in all power and glory. We know the time of our final salvation is coming. We want to be ready for Jesus’ return and what we do now affects our readiness.
Look at how St. Paul puts it in our text: The night is far gone. That night is the darkness of sin and evil in this world. It is still a power that tries to make us its own; Satan uses it to try to destroy our faith. And, yes, it is a very real power we fight against. It seems that sin and evil dominate the world and have the upper hand. But what is the reality? The night is far gone. This sin and evil in the world that seems so invincible is on the way out. Just like the deepest darkest night must give way to the new day, so also here. Jesus is returning. He is coming with that full eternal salvation for us, His dear Christians—soul and body in the bliss of heaven— The night is far gone; the day is at hand. This, too, is knowing the time—Jesus is returning. Advent drives home that point to us once again and helps make it front and center in our lives, lest we lose sight of it and get sucked into the world’s way of thinking and its evil, which work to destroy faith.
The hour has come for you to wake from sleep. Remember, St. Paul writes this to Christians—like you and me—in Rome. The very fact that we know that Jesus will return; the very fact that we know the time spurs us on to action. The hope of this hour sets us in motion. We, as Christians, as we take our faith seriously, cannot stay in sin, cannot not care whether we sin or sin. We cannot stay in spiritual sleep of sin; we cannot stay in the spiritual sleep of indifference and inactivity in doing good, in living a life in accord with the holy Ten Commandments. The life of a Christian is one of being awake in the Lord. It is a conscious, waking and waiting life. It means that we renounce our sin and fight against it; it means directing our hearts and minds to fulfill God’s will; it means growth in a life of good works. Again, if we know the time—that Jesus is returning; if the day of Jesus’ return is at hand, how that affects all that we do and think! How that affects what we think is important and vital! How that makes us want to examine everything we hear and see from the world around us, lest we miss out on the blessing, joy and glory of Jesus’ return.
The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Dear Christian, this is the Apostle calling us to live out our baptism by daily confessing our sins, let us cast off the works of darkness, and then, rejoicing in that forgiveness and empowered by the Holy Spirit to live a life of holiness: and put on the armor of light. Dear Christian, in baptism we have been clothed with Jesus. He is our true suit of armor, the armor of light. He both adorns us with His holiness and perfection, as He gives them to us in His word and sacrament and we in faith receive them. We put on the armor of light and reflect Jesus; we show that He is in us and we are in Him. As we live out our baptism and strive to live a holy life and practice the virtues of Jesus, we show outwardly what has taken place inwardly. We are changed. But that we put on the armor of light means that our life of holiness/ our life of faith and good works is a battle, a constant battle against the forces of darkness—the devil and his allies.
But this is not a laborious battle for us. Advent is our great encouragement here because it reminds us that Jesus’ return in near: For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. Each day Jesus’ Second Coming is nearer. And this is a great motivation to keep fighting the good fight of faith, to fight against sin, to strive to be active in good works, to examine and know the times we are living in so we can be on guard against the evils in it. The simple fact is: since Jesus’ death and resurrection and ascension, there is nothing more to be done than for Jesus to return in glory on the Last Day. Our full salvation—soul and body in the perfect joy of heaven with the holy angels and saints before the holy Triune God—is nearer now than ever.
And here is our Lord’s grace upon grace. Not only has He promised us this but as St. Paul writes in our text: The night is far gone; the day is at hand. The image is of the dawn, of the day sneaking up on the night. It doesn’t go from pitch black to bright sunshine. First there are a few rays of the sun. That’s what we experience in the Church. We experience these first rays of Jesus’ coming—and Advent reminds us of that—as He comes to us in His word and Sacrament; as He gives us His Holy Spirit; as He leads us in the fight against sin and keeps us steadfast in the faith. How richly blessed we are already now, but how greatly we will be blessed come the Last Day when Jesus returns. How all our trials and sufferings will pale in comparison! How all our struggles against sin will be so worth it! For the Christian, Judgment Day has lost all what makes the Judgment terrible and something to be feared—Jesus has endured it all for us. For us, the Judgment is Jesus ushering His dear Christians soul and glorified body into heaven to be with Him forever. Then what we can have here only in part we will have in full—we will be renewed after the image of our Creator and be holy and sinless and will love and serve Him perfectly. Advent is a glorious season as it helps us to prepare to meet and welcome Jesus. He is coming. Our salvation is near! INJ Amen.