Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent
A Letter to a Dear Friend Back East
(Preached With His Permission)
Dear David (changed name),
What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God
has given to the children of man to be busy with. . I perceived that there
is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they
live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his
toil-this is God's gift to man (Ecclesiastes 3:9-10, 12-13).
As I mulled over our recent telephone conversation, I began to realize that
we might have been discussing two related but distinct topics. You expressed
regret for your temper and for your bad feelings toward your co-workers and
others. You also expressed a desire for your wife and child(ren) to be proud
of you and to think only the best of you, especially in terms of the way you
make your living. If I were to give theological terms to these strands of
our conversation, I would say that one strand has to do with sanctification
(God's gift of holiness) and the other with vocation (God's gift of your
daily bread).
You are not alone in struggling with either of these things.
By God's mercy and grace in Christ Jesus, He has provided you with the gift
of struggling with your inner feelings in the way that you do. My own inner
struggles are not the same as yours, but you may rest assured that I have my
own inner struggles, along with my own repeated failures, frustration, and
sleeplessness over them. My struggles are God's gift to me as much as yours
are His gift to you. Our sin remains imbedded in our flesh because our God
wants it to remain there. Through such good and life-long gifts as struggle
and sin, our merciful Father in heaven prevents us from ever thinking we can
outgrow our need for Jesus. God forbids us to stand independently on our own
two feet, and He really wants nothing more than for us to lean exclusively
upon Him.
Despite those struggles you spoke about, you are holy. I know this because
you were baptized. I was there and I saw it. When you were baptized, "you
were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:11). God
declared you-and every part of you-holy, sinless, and perfect in every way.
You cannot see or feel this holiness in your own heart and mind, I know. I
cannot perceive holiness in myself, either. But I live and die on God's
promise that we have it. I do not feel holy at all. In fact, I feel quite
the opposite all of the time. But I believe in this holiness and I confess
this holiness in the creeds because God has said it is so.
You already know that the curbs we place on our behavior are not placed
there for God's sake. As you know, we do not become righteous through what
we do. I will go even further and say that, for the most part, the curbs we
place on our behavior are not there for our own personal sake, either. Short
of self-destructive acts, you and I do not struggle against ourselves for
the purpose of self-improvement. You can put sugar on manure pile, but it's
still a manure pile.
We place curbs on our behavior exclusively for our neighbor's sake. God's
name is holy by itself. We curb our tongues so that we do not dishonor the
name of our God thus drive our neighbor away from Him. God's kingdom comes
without our prayer. We curb our behavior so that we will not stand in the
way of God's kingdom coming also to our neighbor. We make it our business to
do no harm to our neighbor, antagonize him, or make his life bitter. Simply
stated, your struggle against yourself is all about love for neighbor.
It is hard to feel loving toward your neighbor, especially when he makes you
angry. Thanks be to God that love for your neighbor has absolutely nothing
to do with how you feel toward him!
Love for neighbor has to do with the deliberate way you decide to treat him
or avoid treating him. Love for neighbor has to do giving him only the best
treatment, whether or not he wishes to be loved and treated that way. Love
for neighbor does not consist of getting rid of your negative feelings
toward him. It consists of restraining yourself so that you will not act on
those feelings.
These things are not distant from me. I am explaining my own personal
experiences to you. I have not learned this by reading a theological
textbook or by listening to a seminary professor. I have learned these
things by being required to love my neighbor. Every aspect of my job is love
for neighbor.
Every aspect of your job is love for neighbor, too. The one and only
difference between my daily labor and yours is the place where we each
report for duty. We both serve God by serving our neighbor. We both must
faithfully respond to our employer's requests and demands. We both must get
along with people whom we do not necessarily like. We both must carefully
determine whether the situation at hand requires us to be patient or
insistent, flexible or unmoving, circumspect or blunt, loud or quiet, fast
or slow, and so on. (Some people make these decisions selfishly: they may
wish to ingratiate themselves to the boss, get a leg up on the ladder, or
simply keep a peaceful rapport with their coworkers. You and I possess those
motives, to be sure. These motives must be pushed into the backseat,
allowing love for neighbor to take the wheel.)
I will personally testify that love for neighbor is not an easy habit, and I
am not really very good at it. Love for neighbor is a daily discipline-no,
it is a daily cross-and it is filled with constant failure. Many times you
act to benefit one neighbor, only to end up harming another. Many times you
decide not to love your neighbor, but instead to act on your impulses. Most
of the time this whole love-for-neighbor scheme may even seem like a waste
of time. As I said before, we will never outgrow our need for Jesus. We
continue to lean exclusively upon Him.
Love for neighbor can do more than help you at work. Love for neighbor can
also sit on the throne of your family life. Like you, I deeply desire for my
family to love me and respect me and feel proud of what I do. Yet I also
know that I cannot create their love and respect by the heights to which I
aspire or by the size of the paycheck I bring home. If I let myself enter
that race, I am certain that I will never be satisfied. I will always wonder
whether I have truly done enough to earn that love and respect I wish for
them to give me.
For this reason, I have put all these particular eggs into one basket: I
will nurture my neighbor's love and respect for me and I will do so through
my love and respect for him. When you truly love the neighbor who lives your
home, it ultimately will not matter to anyone at home the sort of work you
do or how much you get paid to do it. When you do what is right and honest
and truly loving for your family, just as you do in your job, neither the
position nor the paycheck will be all that important to them. Through your
neighbor's own love for neighbor, your family will come to trust that you
are a shelter for them when they are caught in a storm; that you will eat
the crow for them when the crow must be eaten; that you give them only your
best, even when your best might not satisfy what they think they need.
There is no doubt that you will fail at this love for neighbor stuff, and
just as miserably as I fail at it. Allow me say it a third time: My
struggles are God's gift to me as much as yours are His gift to you. My sin
adheres just as yours does, and this is indescribable joy. Through these
good and life-long gifts, our merciful Father in heaven will prevent us from
ever outgrowing our need for our Lord's love-for-neighbor death and
resurrection for our sins.
This Sunday is the First Sunday in Advent. Historically, the Gospel of the
Day has been our Lord's Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem. It may seem strange
that the story of Palm Sunday might be the Gospel for the First Sunday in
Advent.
Be that as it may, look at what is happening there: Jesus is riding into
Jerusalem on a donkey. Stated another way, Jesus loves His neighbor, even
though His act of love for neighbor seems low and unbecoming. Probably no
one on that road fully realized precisely what Jesus was doing out of love
for them. They had a different opinion of how His love should be expressed
for them, thinking that He should be seated on a throne rather than nailed
to a cross. But Jesus loves His neighbor. Jesus deliberately acts in order
to give, not what His neighbor desires, but what His neighbor needs. Riding
on that donkey, Jesus is every Christian "father, mother, son, daughter,
husband, wife [and] worker" (Small Catechism, Confession). Jesus' love for
neighbor does more than make possible your love and my love for neighbor.
Jesus' love for neighbor forgives you and it forgives me for our dismal
failure to love.
What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God
has given to the children of man to be busy with. . I perceived that there
is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they
live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his
toil-this is God's gift to man (Ecclesiastes 3:9-10, 12-13).
Yes, dear brother: Be joyful. Do good as long as you live. Take pleasure in
your toil, both in your daily labors and in your struggle against sin. Jesus
has come, but more than that, He still comes in water, in bread, in wine, in
words. Yet again even more than that, Jesus shall come again. That is truly
all that matters for you: Jesus' coming has taken completely off the table
all issues of our success or our failure-whether in career or in family life
or in personal fortitude. All that remains to concern us is our love for
neighbor, and even this has been given by God.
___________________________________________________________________________
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