Sermon for the Nativity of St. John the Baptist
Isaiah 40:1-5 + Luke 1:57-80
On this Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, you won’t see a holiday aisle at Walmart or at the Home Depot. No colorful lights adorning streets and houses; no trees with presents under them to remind us of the gift of John’s birth. In the same way, when John was born, there were no herald angels singing, no wise men bringing gifts from afar, no guiding star to lead anyone to his house.
And that’s the way it should be. John the Baptist was not the Christ, as he himself freely admitted. John was the forerunner sent by God to run ahead of Jesus and announce to the Jews that the Christ was right behind him. And once Christ appeared, several months after John appeared, John told his disciples, “He must increase, and I must decrease.” So it’s just as well that the Nativity of Christ gets all the attention. John would have wanted it that way.
But it’s also good and right to pause today on June 24th, six months before that greater Nativity celebration, and give thanks to God for John the Baptist, who was just six months older than Jesus, as the angel Gabriel had announced to Mary that her elderly relative, Elizabeth, the wife of the priest named Zacharias, was already six months pregnant when she herself heard the angel’s announcement.
You may remember how that all happened, how Gabriel appeared to Zacharias while he was ministering in the Temple and announced to him that he and his wife, Elizabeth, even though they had been unable to have children and were now old, were finally going to have a son who would be the prophet of the Most High God and would prepare the way for the Messiah. But Zacharias didn’t believe the angel, and so the angel told him that he would be unable to speak until the child was born.
Well, the child was conceived, and then, nine months later, he was born. That’s where today’s Gospel picks up the story. And then one week later, it was time for him to be circumcised and given his name. Their friends and relatives wanted to call the child “Zacharias,” after his father, but Elizabeth and Zacharias obeyed, instead, the angel’s words and gave him the name “John,” “Yo-hanan,” “The Lord—Yahweh—is gracious.”
The people present for the celebration were amazed and asked, “What then will this child be?” But they already had their answer. His name is “John,” the one who proclaims that the Lord has been gracious in finally sending the Christ into the world.
Well, didn’t all the prophets preach about God’s grace, and the apostles, too? Of course they did. Grace is one of those attributes of God that make up the definition of who He is, a God whose love doesn’t depend at all on a person’s worthiness or goodness. It goes out to all, freely, unearned, because that’s who God is. As He said to Moses, The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.
John, when he grew up, certainly did also preach about that other truth about God that Moses recorded, that He will by no means clear the guilty, that He visits the iniquity—the sin—of the fathers on the children. John never minced words. He gathered up the whole people of Israel under sin, and showed them their guilt, and warned them about the coming wrath of God. “Repent!” was John’s message in the wilderness. Repent, for even if you are a good and decent person compared to your neighbor, you are guilty before God, and God will by no means clear the guilty, but visits their iniquity upon them.
But what did Zacharias sing in his Spirit-inspired song? “Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited and redeemed His people, And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of His servant David.” God’s wrath is being visited against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. But God has also visited and redeemed His people and provided the shelter from His wrath. Where? “In the house of His servant David.”
Now, John, Zacharias’ son, was not from the house of David, but from the house of Levi. Zacharias was not singing about his own son, but about the baby who had been growing for three months now in the virgin Mary’s womb, the virgin Mary of the house of David, who had been staying with them for three months.
So just as John’s father pointed to Jesus on the day his son was circumcised, so his son would point to Jesus in his future ministry and preach how the grace of God had visited the Jews in the person of Jesus Christ, how God, in His grace, had sent the Redeemer into the world, to redeem Israel, to redeem all who would put their trust in Him. All of God’s goodness and promises were wrapped up in that one Person, wrapped up so tightly that there is no grace of God anywhere else. Only in His Son Jesus Christ.
And so Zacharias’s song continues, That we should be saved from our enemies And from the hand of all who hate us, To perform the mercy promised to our fathers And to remember His holy covenant. This is what John would preach—that in Christ there is salvation from our enemies—salvation from sin, salvation from death, salvation from the devil. That in Christ God has shown mercy and continues to show mercy. That this mercy was promised long ago to the people of Israel, in the holy covenant He made with Abraham, to bless all the families of the earth through the Son of Abraham, the promised Christ.
Jesus was the Heir of that covenant. And then He Himself established a new covenant in His blood, in which God continually and fully and freely forgives all the sins of the one who is part of this new covenant. You enter this new covenant through baptism and through faith in Christ, because by His blood Jesus has paid for the sins of the world. And so God invites all people to repent and find forgiveness of their sins in Jesus.
But God doesn’t do that inviting silently or secretly. He doesn’t do that inviting with whispers in your ear, or with trumpets sounding from heaven, or with a burden pressing down on your heart. He calls people to faith in Jesus through the spoken word. That’s the task to which John was appointed from birth, to be a preacher of grace, the last of the Old Testament prophets who would herald the Christ, standing right there at the door. That’s what Zacharias sang, “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest; For you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, To give knowledge of salvation to His people By the remission of their sins.
But again, God doesn’t just throw His grace, life, and forgiveness up in the air, to be scattered on the wind for us to go chasing after, trying to find it, trying to catch it. God locates His grace, His life, His forgiveness in the spoken word, and in water that is connected with that word. John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
What John started 2000 years ago is what every preacher of grace has been doing since—showing secure sinners their sins and pointing penitent sinners to Jesus as the location of God’s grace, and bringing Jesus to sinners, with all His grace, with all His forgiveness, in the spoken word and in Holy Baptism, and now, also in the Holy Supper of the forgiveness of sins, the Meal of the New Covenant.
Now pastors are the preachers of grace God sends to His people, to walk in the footsteps of John the Baptist and point people to Christ. John is the chief role model for every preacher, so it’s for good reason we bring him into our Divine Service each and every week. There’s the Baptist, pointing us again to our Baptism in the Invocation, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” John’s there in the Gloria where his own words are quoted, “Lord God, Lamb of God, who takes the sin of the world, have mercy upon us!” He’s there directing us to Jesus’ body and blood on the altar as we sing his words again in the Agnus Dei, “O Christ, Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us!” Eleison! “Have mercy!” Or another translation would be, “Be gracious to us!” And then there’s John, the preacher of grace, one last time, every week, in the Benediction, “The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you.”
Yes, the Lord is gracious, and has been gracious to us in sending His Son, the Lord Jesus, who is, as Zacharias so joyfully sang, the Dayspring from on high who has visited us; To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, To guide our feet into the way of peace. Amen.
