In Advent we wait for Jesus, and waiting is hard.  But someone has said, "everything comes to him who waits."  When I was nine years old, my father was in an implement store, and I was with him.  On a shelf sat a small toy tractor, a Ford Model 8N, and I was staring at it.  The storekeeper came up behind me and said, "You want that, son?  I'll give it to you if you ask."  Of course I was a polite Lutheran boy and was taught not to ask for what was not yours.  I said no thank you.  My Dad later bought a real Ford tractor, but I never forgot saying no to that little red and gray toy tractor there on a shelf, that summer day in 1954.

          They say everything comes to him who waits.  Really?  Last summer while teaching a group of adults the commandment about coveting in the 9th and 10th Commandments, I talked about that little red and gray toy tractor.  And I must have sounded wistful, because a few months later a member of that class handed me a box, and in it was this new Model 8N Ford tractor, the very one I had wanted fifty years ago.  Perhaps it is true, that everything comes to him who waits.

          Waiting for something can be difficult, but waiting for Christ's second advent is a sure thing.  Jesus WILL come again.  What believers long for their whole lives, will happen.  You and I can count on it and never doubt it!  Jesus said (John 14:3), "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I WILL COME BACK and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am."  Christ keeps His promises, of that we can be sure.  When it comes to the Lord, everything comes to him who waits.

          But what will Christ find when He comes back?  What will be the state of the church when He returns in glory?  What He finds when He returns will strongly influence what He does.  Some things are certain:  He will resurrect all people and judge the world.  He will condemn the unbelievers to everlasting separation and punishment, and grant eternal life to all believers in Christ.  This is most certainly true.  And all who have been waiting for His great coming again, His Second Advent, will get just what they've been waiting for.

          In the meantime, there is the wait.  We don't know how long it will be, but if we're faithful to Him, the wait will be worth it.  That's why Jesus said (Matthew 24:13), "He who endures unto the end will be saved."  If we hold fast to the promises of God in faith, the wait will be a blessing.

          In today's Advent Gospel lesson, Jesus cleansed the Temple.  Not only were the money changers there overcharging, the sellers were mixing in the worship section.  It was okay to be in the temple.  They fulfilled a purpose.  Sacrifices needed to be bought.  The temple tax had to be paid, and only in Jewish money.  People were there from all over the world, so it was not wrong to change money, or sell needed items.  But the vendors were to remain away from the worshippers.  They were not to enter the Court of the Gentiles.  When the vendors walked the aisles, Jesus stepped in.  He cracked His whip, overturned their display tables and chased them out.  "My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations," He said, "But you have made it a den of robbers." (Mark 11:17)

          The Temple of Christ's day had become what it was not meant to be, a place where sheep got fleeced instead of fed.  They had come expecting a blessing from God, but instead became victims of the merchants.  Jesus told them what the Temple should be: a temple of healing.  And so our text says, "The blind and the lame came to Him at the temple, and He healed them."

          Is the church today a temple of healing or a place to get fleeced?  People rightly should watch what happens in a church.  The Holy Spirit gave us the Church as a place where sinners are healed, not so much of physical problems, but of spiritual problems.  The Great Physician is Jesus the Christ, the Savior who came into the world the First Advent.  He can fix what's wrong with us, if we let Him.  Jesus the Son of God came into the world, not to set up impossible rules but to follow all the rules for us.  He came to take the sin sickness of all mankind upon Himself, so that we can be healed.

          The church is to be a hospital for sinners, as well as a place of fellowship.  It's where we can enjoy each other, encourage each other, and challenge each other.  Here we should be encouraged to take action, whether forgiving each other, or helping each other.  The church's requests around this time of year, whether gifts for nursing home residents, or Bridgeway House or restoring a church in Cuba, should always be motivated by the love of Christ.  Jesus Himself said, "Whenever you do it for one of these little ones, you do it for Me." (Matthew 25:40)

          You and I are sometimes patients in God's spiritual hospital, and sometimes we are nurses on the medical staff.  God calls us to love and serve one another, and that will often mean getting our hands dirty with people we'd ordinarily not know or with projects we'd otherwise not do.  Either way, the church must be a temple of healing, or it isn't worth having.

          Healing begins with repentance.  In John Steinbeck's story "The Wayward Bus," a dilapidated old bus takes a cross country shortcut on its journey to Los Angeles, and along the way it gets stuck in the mud.  While the driver goes for assistance, the passengers take refuge in a cave.  It is a curious company of people and Steinbeck is attempting to get across the point that these people are lost spiritually as well as literally.  As they enter into this cave, all the people pass a word that has been scrawled large with paint over the entrance.  The word is "repent."  Although Steinbeck calls that to the reader's attention, not one of the passengers pay any attention to the word.  All too often this is our story.  This Advent God is calling the world to see the word "repent."  Will we notice it or pass it by like the people on the "Wayward Bus"?

          The message of Advent and Christmas is that God joins the weak and the lowly of the world.  Christ did not come to give us a self-confident swagger, nor hope in the things we can buy.  God's Son came to give His treasures to the broken hearted and the needy.  We all are needy, and we should all be broken hearted.

          At 5 PM this Christmas Eve the youth of our Confirmation class will put on a "Living Nativity" in the church courtyard.  I have been telling them, this is not about them, but about Jesus.  It's not about who gets to be which part, but about what their characters tell everyone who comes.  The Christ child came to help us set ourselves aside long enough to really care about others.

          Just outside Munich, Germany, is the Dachau Concentration Camp Museum.  On a wall of the main museum building is a large, moving photograph of a mother and her little girl standing in line to a gas chamber.  The child, who is walking in front of her mother, does not know where she is going.  The mother, walking behind, does know, but is helpless to stop what she knows will happen.  In her helplessness she performs the only act of love left to her.  She places her hands over the child's eyes so she will not see the horror to come, at least right away.  When people come into the museum they do not pass by this photo hurriedly.  They pause and almost feel the pain.  And deep inside I think that many are all saying, "O God, don't let that be all that there is."

          God hears the prayers of all who come to Him in faith.  He hears us and helps us in our hopelessness and helplessness.  It is in admitting we are needy that God is most honored.  Each year as we worship Christ at Christmas, Christ is born anew within us.  The church must always be a temple of healing, a place where God's love and power are seen.  The church doesn't need riches or great buildings to do this.  It can happen in the giving of the smallest gift, or the gentle hug of comfort, or the shared tear of sorrow.  May this Epiphany Lutheran congregation ever be a temple of healing.  May God's love ever be shared among us.  And may our healing bring God's light into the darkness of the world.  Amen

Copyright © 2004 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.