[AI translation] My Christian Brothers and Sisters!Advent, the happy, mysterious time of waiting for the coming of Jesus, has quietly, imperceptibly come to us. The happiest time in the life of a small child is the half hour or an hour when he or she trembles with excitement waiting for the arrival of the Christmas angel. A mysterious anticipation, a thrilling hope fills his soul: what will he find under the Christmas tree? He may not even know exactly what he is waiting for, but he feels that something great, great joy is coming to him, great, great happiness. When the door finally opens, it is almost impossible to know which is shining more, the earthen Christmas tree or the laughing child's eyes. Happy is the adult who can live the mysterious time of Advent with such a childlike spirit, with such enthusiastic, happy excitement. A bride who lived far from her fiancé once told me that she looked forward to his visit weeks in advance. One must prepare for the real joy in advance. What greater joy can there be in the life of a man, a society, a humanity, a world, than the coming of Jesus Christ? The joy of Christmas depends to a great extent on the anticipation and preparation for Advent. The reason why so many Christmases disappear from our souls without a trace is very largely due to the fact that we have not prepared enough.
This recurring Advent has a recurring figure who appears in Christian pulpits at this time, teaching people again and again how to wait for the coming Saviour, how to prepare the way for him, and what to do to enter the kingdom of God to come. This someone is John the Baptist, the great Advent prophet, a bridge between the Old and New Testaments. Now again, his giant figure looms before us in the story we are reading, and we see in it the meaning of the Advent expectation. Before we waste time on how to prepare the way for the coming Messiah, what to do and how to wait for Him, we must ask the big question: is there any point in waiting for Him, is it worth making spiritual preparations for Christmas? These questions are answered in the story we are reading, if we look at it from two perspectives, namely John the Baptist's question and Jesus' answer.
1) John the Baptist's question to Jesus was, "Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?" From this question comes a note of doubt, even disappointment. How could it be that even John the Baptist's soul was gripped by doubt? After all, prophets are God's special people, with whom God has had a personal conversation, and John the Baptist was the foremost and most perfect of all the prophets. Jesus himself once testified to his spiritual greatness when he said that of all those born of women, none was a greater prophet than John the Baptist. This testimony places him high above even the greatest scholars and the most serious heroes of the faith. Even this mighty man had his moments of weakness in life, when he looked upon the figure of Jesus with disappointment and doubt.
We know that John was thrown into prison by the immoral King Herod for daring to speak out against the sins of the royal court. But the news of Jesus' emergence and the beginning of his redemptive work also reached him through the thick walls of his prison. John happily listens to everything he is told about Jesus, not caring if he languishes in prison, only that Jesus grows. John has two kinds of messianic expectations in his soul: on the one hand he expects a merciful messiah, on the other a punishing messiah. He preached of Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world on the one hand, and as the eternal Judge of the world who has a handkerchief in his hand, who cleanses the serpent's mouth, and who will bring eternal judgment on the ungodly.
John's semi-Old Testament soul did not know that the coming Messiah would not bring both mercy and judgment, did not know that the Saviour would come to this earth twice, once to seek sinners and die for them, and secondly to judge sinners who did not believe in his first coming. John did not know that thousands of years, an entire age, would pass between the two comings of the Saviour. Therefore, what he heard about Jesus did not satisfy his soul. Gradually, he became more and more doubtful, because he was disappointed: this was not the Messiah he was expecting, who would always proclaim mercy but never exercise his judicial power! In this Christ, of whom he is brought to the prison, there is nothing of the power of the all-destroying tempest, the earthquake that shatters rocks, the fiery lightning that strikes down in destruction, but this Christ is meek and humble - and it is this that strikes the Baptist as a stone of stumbling. This Jesus is not what he imagines, what he expects and desires, for behold, he hides his world-judging power and mission. He cannot stand it any longer, he sends his disciples to him to ask him, "Are you the one to come, or shall we expect another?"
John the Baptist is at his most human in this scene. If at other times we feel His mighty figure high above us, here we see Him as we are: a disappointed, doubting, grey man. Let me say now, brothers and sisters, that this doubting is part of the joyful time of waiting and preparation for Advent. In the days of Advent we must especially give ourselves an account of what Christ means to the world. This world often doubts and is disappointed in Christ, and sees Christ as a stone of stumbling. For twenty centuries the Word of Christ, the gospel of Christ, has been heard on this earth. Many thousands of times have his servants proclaimed that Christ is King, who reigns over all creation. The trouble is that sadly little of this kingdom of Christ has been realized on earth. In contrast, the reign of sin is inexpressibly great. Satan shapes people's world view, he dictates the morality of society, and he is the master of political, scientific and artistic life. What does Jesus oppose to Satan's domination of the world? Weak congregations that make little difference in the world's great turmoil. But even these weak little congregations, even their members, often serve Satan as much as they serve Christ. There may be mission among the Gentiles, but what Jesus gains among the Gentiles, He loses at least as much among Christians, who are falling further and further back into the arms of modern paganism.
When we see that there are blatant wealth disparities between people, that there is rampant immorality in our society, that some powerful people are preventing not only individuals but whole regions and peoples from asserting their just rights, when we see people consciously plotting to eradicate the faith in God, when we see human madness wanting to erect a statue of Judas on the banks of the Volga as the greatest benefactor of mankind - it is no wonder that one stands before Christ and asks: how can the Jesus who, with a single gesture of His hand, could put all this right and transform everything on earth?! If we look around us, we see very little of His all-conquering power and all-judging glory.
If Jesus would once make His voice heard like thunder, if He would once send forth a devouring fire, if He would once blind the unbelievers and scoffers with the beam of His glory - then we would rest easy, then we would look to no one else and to no one else for the solution of our troubles. But so doubt often arises in our own circles, and we too, with John, ask in disappointment, "Is it you who is to come, or shall we wait for another?"
2) When Jesus hears this question from John the Baptist, He does not enter into a long debate, does not try to prove Himself right, that He is the Saviour of whom the prophets had prophesied, does not take out the Scriptures and lecture the disciples, does not preach to them. He simply refers to his deeds: tell John what you have seen and heard, Jesus said, that "the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them." He adds this exhortation, "and blessed is he that shall not be offended in me." Well, my brothers and sisters, Christ is not a helpless spectator of world events, even if he does not yet appear in all the splendour of his glory. To abolish all might and power, to subdue all His enemies, to judge the living and the dead, He will come to this earth later, at His second coming. So that will not be delayed either, but the time is not yet. For the time being He is quietly gathering His own.
His work, since two thousand years, has consisted to this day in the blind taking the world of their eyes and seeing into their own souls, seeing all the filthiness of their lives, seeing their Saviour who died for them on the cross, and even going beyond the bounds of this earth, for they see into the glory of heaven. They see the life that begins beyond the grave. The work of Jesus today is that the lame walk, no longer powerless to do good, to love God and man, but through Jesus they are able to walk freely and consciously for a lifetime in the law of God. The wonderful work of Jesus today is that the lepers are cleansed, those suffering from the deadly disease of sin are healed, people are cleansed from their tormenting passions, unclean lives are cleansed, human lives, unbearable natures are changed. The work of Jesus is that the deaf hear, that some wonderful inner ear mechanism is opened in man, and at the same time man hears the word of God and hears the pleading voice of men. He now hears voices that he had passed unnoticed before, that had never reached his ears before. The work of Jesus today is to raise the dead, to raise the morally dead to new life, to raise the dead members of the churches to a new life of work and service. The work of Jesus today is to preach the gospel to the poor, "Come unto me, all of you, and I will give you rest". The poor mourners, the desperate, the oppressed, the suffering find comfort and peace in Him alone.
The Gospel story does not say whether John was satisfied with Jesus' answer. But I think it very likely that when the messengers returned to the prison and told the Baptist that they had seen blind men whose eyes had been opened, lame men who had become walkers, dead men who had been raised, John's soul was at rest in the happy assurance that the Saviour who was to come had finally arrived, and that there was nothing more to look forward to.
My brethren, I am convinced that all scorn, doubt and disappointment in Christ would be removed if there were lives among us that testified to the power of Christ. Our Christianity today is like that street vendor who once shouted at the top of his voice in the street that he had invented a great cough suppressant, but could hardly utter his sentence because of his choking coughing fits. Of course, people didn't believe him and didn't buy the 'miracle cure', but looked for another remedy.
The vast majority of people don't need Christ as the solution to their lives because those who preach it, that is us Christians, are not living Christ. If we could say, "Look, this man was blind and now he sees, this man was dead and now he lives, this man was a helpless cripple and now he walks, look, there was nothing here before and now the kingdom of God has come out" - then it is quite certain that people would expect nothing else but Jesus alone. For everywhere there are blind men, lame men, lepers and dead men. Oh, how good it would be if they could become sighted, walking, clean, and alive!
Well, my brethren, let me bear witness to what I, by the grace of God, have seen and heard: I have seen helpless sinners working for the kingdom of God, I have seen men cleansed from the spiritual constipation of the passions, I have seen and heard a wealthy banker read the Bible and pray in his open iron closets, I have seen a communist agitator rise from spiritual death to new life, and I have heard him preach with unspeakable power about the regenerating power of Jesus Christ. Since I have seen these testimonies, I have known that Jesus is the Christ, our Saviour, the Son of the living God, who is as powerful in the world today as he was two millennia ago. He is the one who is to come, we are waiting for Him and no one else!
Wherever He walks, a life is quietly but visibly changed, a life begins to resemble Him. The greatest joy and happiness is to experience this in our own lives. Only in this way can the doubts of Advent become the happy certainty of Christmas. It is not in the life of the world that I must see the work of Christ, but in my own life. If Christ could become real in other people's lives, why not in mine? I too need him, I too hope, I too pray: come, Lord Jesus Christ!
Amen.
Date: 27 November 1938.