God's Righteous Judgment

In the Name of the One God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

You’re all surely familiar with the common themes of Advent: Hope, peace, joy, love, and all sorts of nice and cheerful things, but there is another theme running throughout: judgement, and the call to repentance in preparation for the Lord’s return. The Day of the Lord is near! Keep awake! Repent of your sins. As we heard in the Gospel on Sunday “The axe is laid at the root, and every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down.” In a season when Hallmark and just about every other channel are showing saccharine Christmas movies ad nauseum, the spirit of Christmas—whatever that is—seems to have thrown up on every aisle in every store you enter, and the radio stations are all playing identical set lists featuring the exact same songs every hour, in the midst of all the holly and jolly, we hear of the coming of Our Lord, we hear of Judgment, and we hear the call to repent.

And we don’t like this kind of talk. Our sinful nature absolutely hates being called out; we hear the word “Repent” and boom! our guard automatically goes up, and we certainly want nothing to do with judgment. Our sinful nature would have us believe that we’re fine and dandy; maybe others need to hear the call to repentance—especially those godless heathens over there—but me? Nope. I’m all set.

Well, the Lord God is quick to disabuse us of these notions of having no need of repentance. Here on this chilly December evening, we’re confronted—as we always are when hearing Scripture—with the Law. We hear the call to repentance, we hear that, no, it’s not all fine and dandy. It’s not just the people we don’t like that are the problem: the call to repent and prepare for the coming of our Lord is extended to all. In our first reading, we hear of God’s judgment on sin. The Prophet is given a vision: Israel has reached its end. The Lord’s judgment is coming, and Amos vividly describes what it will look like. The “songs of the temple” will become wailing. So many dead bodies! as the English Standard Version translates it. The bodies are tossed about and piled high. The wailing is over and all that is left is silence. God’s people stand condemned, and the judgment is coming.

The words of the Prophet are hard words. Death, woe, destruction. And why? God’s Covenant people have violated that Covenant. They have neglected the poor, they have oppressed the needy, they have lorded themselves over the powerless and in doing so, they have abandoned the true God—the Holy Trinity—and given themselves over to idolatry. And God, in His righteousness, is going to mete out judgment. His people will be conquered by the Assyrians, leaving nothing but bloodshed and destruction in their wake. History shows that this is precisely what happened. God executed His righteous judgment. The Assyrians conquered and pillaged the land. Israel was no more.

The people of Israel were consumed—like ripe fruit—for their idolatry, their greed, and their mistreatment of the poor. As one of my mentor pastors often points out, some of God’s harshest judgment is reserved for those who neglect the poor. Israel during Amos’ time was doing just that; they oppressed the poor, exploited those in need by price gouging, giving the poor the short shrift, peddling shoddy wares, and all sorts of other deceptive practices. Simply put, the people (especially those in power) exalted themselves above their neighbor. Whether they knew it or not, they had rejected God and His Covenant by which they were brought into His life. To live in the life of the Holy Trinity means a life of humble service to our neighbor. Israel failed miserably. They were not the blessing to the nations that God had intended them to be. They exalted themselves above all others.

The Scribes and Pharisees in this evening’s Gospel lesson are guilty of the same sin. They may teach the Law, but they have set themselves over others, binding heavy burdens on the backs of those less powerful, everything they do, they do to be seen and applauded by others. They preach but are not willing to lift a finger. They, too, have replaced the God of the Gospel with a god of their own making, namely, themselves. Jesus calls them out, “Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

This is precisely what God did with Israel, and what He eventually did with Judah. They had exalted themselves, and were thus humbled by God’s judgment.

My dear friends, let’s not be too hasty to judge Israel, the Scribes, and the Pharisees tonight. When the mirror of the Law is held up to our face, we see that we are just as idolatrous, just as greedy, just as neglectful and oppressive to the poor. We see that we are just as guilty of exalting ourselves above our neighbors. Our sinful nature is as active today as it was thousands of years ago. We have, at our core, an incorrigible selfish streak that constantly seeks to knock God off of His throne and set ourselves in His place. Repent.

Life in the Holy Trinity means a life of humble service to our neighbor. It means valuing others more highly than we value ourselves. It means working to ensure that our hungry neighbor is fed, striving to ensure that our homeless neighbor is housed, seeing that our addicted neighbor is helped, aiding our teenage mother neighbor in raising her child, seeing to it that our outcast neighbor is welcomed in, even when they smell bad or look rough. Life in the Holy Trinity means stepping out of our comfort zones, going out of our way to work for justice. We are called to humble ourselves as God humbled Himself in His Incarnation, the Creator and Ruler of the universe humbled Himself to be born into a poor carpenter’s family. The words of St. Mary’s song, which we will speak in a few minutes, are especially beautiful: “He has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things.” Life in the Holy Trinity means humbling ourselves as He humbled Himself, loving others as He first loved us. And we will fail. Miserably.

But, my dear friends, hear this good news: in your baptism, you were brought into the life of the Holy Trinity. You were brought into God’s family, made one of His own dear children. Your sins—even your idolatry, your self-exaltation—every bit of it has been dealt with by Jesus Christ on the Cross. You have been lifted out of your sins and brought into new life. Because of Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, your sins are forgiven. There is no condemnation for you; you have nothing to fear. For you, there is nothing but hope. The Holy Spirit is at work within you, stirring up faith to trust Jesus’ promises made to you. He is at work stirring you to love your neighbor, calling you to serve and value your neighbor more highly than yourself. He is at work, softening your heart, growing you in love, both love to God and love to neighbor. The Holy Trinity who brought you into life, is preparing you for the life yet to come, when Christ Jesus returns to bring you and all the faithful into His presence, into an unending life, into God’s restored Creation, living as He always intended it to be. This Life in the Holy Trinity is yours.

My dear friends, the central theme of Advent is hope, and that hope belongs to you, because of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.