Get Your Shoes Tied!@

December 4, 2011
Second Sunday of Advent

Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
gSee, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way;
3the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
ePrepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,fh
4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6Now John was clothed with camelfs hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7He proclaimed, gThe one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.h
@(also, Isaiah 40:1-5 & 2 Peter 3:8-14)

Get ready for Christmas. Get ready for the coming of Christ. Christ is coming at Christmas, at the end of the world, and today he comes into our hearts and lives. Get ready for the coming of Christ. This was the message of both the Prophet Isaiah and John the Baptist. gPrepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.h

Sometimes it seems that the roads that we have to travel in life are not straight. They are crooked. They are in the wilderness. The road is rough. There are valleys and mountains. Our life is filled with hardships and sorrows: economic, social, political, personal, physical, emotional, inter-personal, educational. I suppose these challenges can make life more interesting, but can also bring great pain and the despair of ever reaching our goals in life.

The Prophet Isaiah and John the Baptist however are not speaking of only those problems, they are also speaking of the spiritual problem we have. The road to God is not straight. In fact, the road has been made so crooked by sin that it has become impossible for people to get to God because they cannot find the right road without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And without the Holy Spirit, many people have given up on God. Many people no longer even care if they ever get to heaven. They are so lost in sin.

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He said gRepent!h Repentance in the Bible means to get back on the right road. Forgiveness of sins means that we are now headed in the right direction toward the target. However, even with all his preaching and baptizing, John really felt his own helplessness. He could proclaim that the Messiah Savior was coming, but he knew that he himself could not save anyone. He was the most holy of men, living his life in harmony with God, but still his holiness could not save anyone. He expressed it this way: gThe one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.h

Sandals and shoes are made for walking. But when Jesus came to save us, at first he came as a child without shoes, rather he was laid in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes. If untying sandals is the job of the lowest slave, then Jesus showed his humility when he washed the feet of the disciples. He said this was the way that the disciples should serve each other: in humility and love and in service to one another. There are a couple of times in the New Testament when we see Jesus without sandals. One was when the woman washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. The other was when he was on the cross. His sandals had been removed in order to drive the nail into his feet to put him on the cross. Feet are for walking, and for Christ, the path he had to take was the path of the cross. This is the path that leads first to death and hell, then to the forgiveness of sin, to the resurrection, and to life eternal.

John the Baptist said, g8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.h The work of the Holy Spirit is to show us the path. From the waters of Baptism, we arise clean and forgiven. The Holy Spirit reveals that Jesus is the Savior. This is the faith which leads us to repent. We daily repent and daily start again on our journey in life with Christ. In Jesusf death and resurrection, God stoops down to loose the bonds of sin that the Johan the Baptistfs best efforts canft effect.

Because of sin, our own sin and the sin of others, the road in life is not straight and smooth. However, we believe and trust the Good News that in Christ the crooked is straightened and the rough places are made smooth. And so, Christ has come straight to us! Now there is power to change our paths and the paths that we walk with other people. We make the paths of other people easier to travel. This is done in the loving and caring and sharing and giving and praying that we do. As the Gospel lesson said a couple weeks ago, we help the hungry and sick and naked and lonely, so that, in the power of the Holy Spirit, this Christmas hope would guide them also.

Christ is coming!

Amen.

Michael Nearhood, Pastor
Okinawa Lutheran Church


Sermon Index