[Sermon Archive] - [Weekly Devotional Guide]

This Week's Sermon The Nativity of Saint John the Baptizer 24 June 2007 "It's All About Christ" Luke 1:57-80 LSB Series C Vicar Hans W. Fiene Soli Deo Gloria!

As some of you may remember, Katie and I didn't know if we were having a boy or girl before John was born. So we didn't really do much clothes shopping until after his birth. So, after he was born, I was extremely excited about buying clothes for my son. If we went to Wal-Mart or Target, I usually wanted to rush over to the baby clothing section and pick something out. This excitement didn't last very long, though. In fact, it wasn't long at all before I really didn't like clothes shopping at all. This wasn't because we couldn't afford the clothes we wanted or anything like that. Instead, I just got really sick of all the work it took just to find one T-shirt or onesie that didn't have some obnoxious saying or phrase on it.

If any of you have young kids or young grandchildren, you may have noticed that these shirts have become somewhat of a popular thing. You can buy shirts for little kids with saying written on them like, "my sister did it" or "I didn't do it." Now things like that really just aren't my style in the first place. But the shirt I saw that really bothered me had this written in bold print: It's All About Me.

Needless, to say, I didn't buy that shirt for my son. Nor do I think that any other father should but that shirt for his son because, quite frankly, it's a terrible thing for a father to teach his child that it's all about him.

Now, on this issue of father's teaching their sons, I feel compelled to point out that sometimes the liturgical calendar and the secular calendar come together well. But this time, they barely missed each other. In a way, I suppose it would have been nice if this text would have come up last week, since last Sunday was Father's day. And in today's text for the nativity of St. John the Baptizer, Zechariah gives us a wonderful example of what it means to be a truly Christian father. In short, Zechariah doesn't teach his son that it's all about him. He teaches his son that it's all about Christ.

Of course, there was a whole miraculous sea hanging over the air that would have made it very easy for Zechariah to teach John that it was actually all about him. After all, much like Sarah, the wife of Abraham, the father of the Jews, John's mother Elizabeth was both old and barren when she conceived. To add to that miraculous event, Zechariah had been unable to speak since he initially doubted the angel Gabriel's proclamation. However, when he wrote down on a slate, "His name is John", indicating his faithfulness to God's command that his son have that name, Zechariah's tongue was loosed. So, you can see how all this miraculous stuff going on caused many people to think that it was all about this child John. You can see why it is that, as Luke describes, everyone who heard of this was asking himself, "What then will this child be?"

Zechariah, however, knows precisely what this child will be. He also knows precisely what this child will not be-namely, the Christ. Zechariah knows that all of the grace God has bestowed upon his son is not for John's own glorification, but for the ultimate glorification of God's Son. And so, filled with the Holy Spirit, Zechariah speaks to John for the first time with these words that so beautifully depict the glory of Christ that John will prepare. He says: "And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

In these words, Zechariah is clearly proclaiming that everything centers around Christ and that everything about Christ centers in the forgiveness of sins. So, all of this language describing the sunrise giving light to those in darkness and the guiding of our feet in the way of peace-all of that is what happens to us when Christ brings forgiveness to the world. This is what Zechariah teaches his son. But the teaching of our sinful nature is exactly the opposite of this. Our sinful nature wants us to believe that, instead of our lives as Christians being all about Christ and His forgiveness, it's all about us-about our own wants and desires.

If you look at all the problems that an average congregation will have, none of them actually come when people look to Christ and His forgiveness. Instead, those problems come about when people believe that it's all about them. When people fight and claw at each other over congregational budgets and projects and things of that nature, they don't do that because their eyes are fixed on Christ and His forgiveness. They do it because their eyes are fixed on themselves, their own egos and their own agendas.

In another example, when members suddenly stop coming to service after years of faithful attendance, but don't have any doctrinal reason for doing this, they're not looking to Christ. Instead, they're saying that their own desires to be personally entertained by the service or to be popular in the congregation are more important than hearing the word of Christ's forgiveness.

These are just a few examples of how making it all about us instead of Christ can manifest itself. And in whatever way we give into the sinful temptation to take the focus off of Christ and put it onto ourselves, we actually achieve the opposite of what John was sent to do. As our Old Testament reading from Isaiah states, John's ministry was "to make straight in the desert a highway for our God." John prepared the way for the Lord by clearing that path of our sinful vanity and self-absorption. But whenever we give in to the teachings of our sinful nature, our self-centeredness has once again set up a roadblock on that path in the face of that message of forgiveness.

But for John the Baptizer, it never was about himself. It was always about Christ. And because of that, John's first century ministry is still as authoritative and wonderful for us today. Because when our self-centeredness has set up that road block to Christ's forgiveness, John's message, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand", breaks that road block to pieces. And when the path that John prepares has once again been made straight, John doesn't demand that we look to Him. John's declaration from 2,000 years ago still rings true today. He still points our eyes to Christ, declaring, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

John points us to Christ because it is Jesus who walked down the highway made straight in the desert. He points us to Christ because Jesus Himself walked that path all the way to the Cross. Jesus Himself shed his blood for the world and, through his death and resurrection, poured out His forgiveness upon everyone. It's Christ who breaks forth into the darkness and illuminates the world, Christ who gives light to those who dwell in darkness by achieving the forgiveness of their sins.

And it's through that word of forgiveness that we come to see what a wonderful thing it is when Christ stops everything from being about us and makes our lives as Christians all about Him. When our lives as Christians are defined from a self-centered point of view and it's all about us, sin is the only result of this. When it's all about us, all this yields is anger and hatred and frustration at each other and, even more importantly, it yields a totally lack of respect and appreciation and understanding of God's word of forgiveness. When our lives are all about us, they're not lives at all. It's nothing more than death in sin.

But when Christ makes the life of a Christian all about Him, everything is different. When Christ proclaims that He has taken away all of the sins born from our self-centeredness, then we find our lives as Christians defined by love and light and peace and unity. Our death in sin is no more. When Christ is the center, we come to see that we have true life in Him. John points us to Christ because it's only through Christ that this true life becomes ours. It's only through Christ that we can echo the words of St. Paul, who says in Galatians, "For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."

In those beautiful words of the Benedictus spoken to the infant John the Baptizer, we see that Zechariah was a good father because he taught his son that it was all about Christ and Christ's forgiveness. And when the Baptizer states, in the third chapter of John's Gospel, "He must become greater. I must become less," we see that John believed his father and always remained faithful to this teaching.

And so, because of that teaching, we celebrate the nativity of St. John the Baptizer. In Matthew 11, Christ says, "Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." The reason we celebrate the nativity of St. John the Baptizer is not because he was such a great man. The reason we celebrate the nativity of John is because, through this great man, God revealed to us Christ and His salvation. Even though, by Christ's own words, we know that John was greater than any man born of woman, we celebrate because he still pointed the eyes of the world to Christ, knowing that it is only through Christ that man can become great in the kingdom of heaven. In complete keeping with John's theology, the nativity of St. John the Baptizer isn't really about John at all. It's all about Christ. And that's why we celebrate it today.