Wednesday of Ad Te Levavi

The spokesman for the season of Advent is John the Baptist. He is often depicted in church art pointing with a long bony finger. This finger serves two purposes: It is the voice of the Law which accuses: “You have not kept the Ten Commandments. You have not loved God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. You have not loved your neighbor as yourself. Repent, and turn from your sin.” And John’s finger is the voice of the Gospel. Having looked at your own heart and found it wanting, John directs your gaze to Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

John tells us to prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ. And how do we do this? When guests are coming over for dinner, we often prepare by cleaning the house. We straighten things up, break down the pile of empty Amazon boxes, and take out the trash. Perhaps we might try to prepare for Christ in the same way: by cleaning up our hearts and throwing out all the sin. But your own experience will tell you that this is an impossible task. We can clean our houses, but we cannot cleanse our own hearts.

The preaching of John the Baptist does not tell us that there’s a mess that needs a bit of sweeping. He reveals that our hearts are hopelessly corrupted by sin. We can’t clean it up or fix it. It’s like a house filled with toxic mold. Febreze and air fresheners won’t help. It’s time to call the fire department and start over.

John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness. The first step to receiving his message is to admit that we are living in a wilderness. Unlike the beautiful paradise that God first created, we now live in a barren desert of our own making, a wilderness of sin, of greed and anger and pride. And try as we might to clean things up, we cannot. Christ is coming and our hearts are not prepared to greet him, and we are not capable of preparing them.

This is why we must continue to listen to John. Because now his finger directs us to turn our gaze away from our sinful hearts and our inability to fix them. “Behold,” John says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” What we cannot do, Christ can and does. Remove the layers of guilt within our hearts? Restore the lost and sinless image of God? Take away even the stain of sin? These things are impossible with man, but with God all things are possible.

We cannot prepare our hearts with human efforts. How then can we be properly prepared to receive Christ? Luther answers, “It is certain that man must utterly despair of his own ability before he is prepared to receive the grace of Christ.” Preparing our hearts this Advent season is not a matter of works that we do, it is a matter of faith in what Jesus does. The heart that looks to Him knowing that only He can take away the sin of the world is properly prepared. We cannot cleanse our own hearts. Only He can. And so, following John’s finger, we turn our gaze away from ourselves and our own efforts and to the Lamb of God our Savior, crying out, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Amen.