December 1998 Issue

Sermons on this lection pick up on familiar Advent themes: preparation; confession; repentance; expectation. John the Baptist's words inspire preachers to ask, "How are we preparing ourselves? What have we to confess? What have we to expect?" These are some of the questions preachers treat in sermons on this text.

In Prepare The Way of The Lord!,¹ Lutheran pastor Wilton Bergstrand reminds listeners of the opening of the musical "Godspell." A modernized John the Baptist enters the scene early on, singing a haunting rendition of "Prepare Ye The Way Of The Lord!" The Godspell Baptist breaks through a cacophony of contemporary theological voices (St. Thomas Aquinas to Martin Luther King), each singing their own tune. By the end of their encounter with John, each player joins him in one, unified refrain.

How are we to prepare the way? Bergstrand locates our preparation in three areas: our homeland; our homes; and our hearts. The preacher applies John's call to repentance to current day vices such as substance abuse, materialism, militarism and complacency. "There's not a problem that besets us, not a running sore in our nation that John doesn't confront in his short ministry," Bergstrand proclaims. John points to the rocks in the wilderness and says, "From these stones, God can raise up children of Abraham" (v.9), and Bergstrand interprets: a whole nation is excommunicated. As a nation, we must look at our sins and make the choice John sets before us, the choice between and Holocaust and Pentecost.

We must do "spiritual housecleaning" at home, too. Recalling A Charlie Brown Christmas, Bergstrand makes an appeal for a de-commercialized season. Advent is a "new broom," a time to sweep up the unnecessary. Linus recites Luke 2 to Charlie Brown, concluding, "That's what Christmas is all about." Charlie Brown makes his decision, "Nobody's going to commercialize my Christmas for me."

We are to prepare even closer to home, in our own hearts. We must look within, repent, and expect that God will act to change each of us. Bergstrand stresses the personal nature of Christmas. Christmas came "not to the masses but only to the few," the Wise Men watching and the shepherds sleeping. He draws a parable from the set-up of the manger crib in The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. One has to bend down very low to get through a tiny door in order to see the crib. "The proud and smug never get to Christmas, because they don't know how to bend. Only the humble and reverent get to Christmas." In which group are we?

Another preacher who proclaims the importance of repentance is Henry Ward Beecher. In The Nobility of Confession,² preached on October 4, 1868 (before lectionaries were in common use!), Beecher hones in on vv.5-6. Beecher is concerned with the phrase, "confessing their sins." A particularly helpful insight running through the sermon is that while we find it easy to confess our sinfulness, we resist confessing our sins. We all sin; to be sinful is our fate, that we are sinners is "to be expected." We confess to sinfulness readily, but not to the particulars of our own sins. We resist telling our own difficult truths to God.

Beecher points out, however, that the religious life begins with confession. Those around John the Baptist were called not to join the church, but to repent. We are called to confess, not so much to our religious leaders, and not so much to everyone in our communities—Beecher counsels against making "injudicious confessions" to "injudicious persons"—but to those individuals affected by our wrongs and to God. One of the main reasons we're called to confess is that when we lose our "sensibility to sin" we also lose one of the "prime stimulants to righteousness." Moral growth begins when we recognize just what we are, when we know ourselves well enough to confess, when we are willing to tell the truth.

While we often imagine confession to be a degradation, Beecher preaches that there is nothing more noble than recognizing a wrong, feeling and expressing sorrow for it, and renouncing it. Confession is painful only as long as we "strive against it." The more difficult part of confession is not doing it; the rewards come when we do. Beecher makes it clear that confession does not bring with it immediate moral advancement. The appropriate attitude in confession is one of attaining rather than curing. Even so, it is better to seek than to hide. For having been honest with God, ourselves and one another by confessing our sins, we "breathe the very breath of heaven."

St. John Chrysostom delivered a homily offering another perspective on repentance.³ In a homily that covers the middle section of the text, Chrysostom gives encouragement to would-be repentants by describing God's role in the process. While John the Baptist's warning should scare us, we should not despair. The axe is simply lying on the root of the tree; the actual cutting depends on us. By seeing the axe so close to our roots we are motivated to change and reminded that we can. "For thou hast yet a hope of change," Chrysostom proclaims, and the fear present in the text helps us realize the choices we must make. The good news is that if we are willing to change, God will remove the axe and we will bear fruit. The entire process of spiritual change is not primarily up to us, after all, but to God. "For not the nature of the root only, but also the skill of the husbandman contributes the most to that kind of fruit-bearing." If we could trust that God is not against us but for us, we would be doing much to prepare for Christ's arrival.

Susan Steinberg

1.Wilton Bergstrand, "Prepare The Way Of The Lord!," in Augsburg Sermons (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1974), pp. 19-24.
2. Henry Ward Beecher, "The Nobility of Confession," in The Original Plymouth Pulpit, Vol. I (New York: Fords, Howard and Hulbert, 1893), pp. 29-44.
3. St. John Chrysostom, "Homily XI," in The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Gospel of Matthew, trans. Rev. Sir George Prevost, Baronet, revised Rev. M.B. Biddle, in Nicence and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. X, ed. Philip Schaff, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.