Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – St. Nicholas of Myra – Dec 6, 2022

6 Dec 2022 – St. Nicholas of Myra

Text: 2 Pet 3:1-18

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Today is the feast of St. Nicholas.  This is the day when many Europeans honor him by exchanging presents.  According to tradition, Bishop Nicholas was a loving and charitable pastor, especially regarding children and the poor.  And we also know that he stood firm for the orthodox faith over and against the Arian heretics.

We Christians give gifts this time of year because we reflect on the gift of Christ coming into our world, the gift of His atoning blood, the gift of His righteousness, and the gift of eternal life that we receive by God’s grace.  And in this season of Advent, we not only look back to our Lord’s first coming into our world, but we also look ahead, to His second advent, to His return in glory.  Our minds not only focus on the past, but also toward the future – to the end of time and the age to come.

St. Peter encourages us to live as people of hope who keep their hearts and minds focused on our Lord – including remembering His promise to return, “stirring up [our] sincere mind[s] by way of reminder, that [we] should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through [our] apostles.”

While we Christians focus on this eschatological hope, the world scoffs.  They place their own “sinful desires” above following the Law and reveling in the Gospel.  They scoff at us for our faith, saying, “Where is the promise of His coming?”  They forget that God created the world (through water), God destroyed the world (through water), God saved the world by His Son’s coming and by the waters of Baptism, and God will recreate the world, promising “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” 

We must remember that these scoffers are groomers and seducers: those who desire to lead the children of light into the great darkness of sin and death.  We are not to follow them.  For we have renounced Satan, his works, and his ways, when we were born again of water and the Spirit (John 3:5), when we were “saved, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing and regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 2:5-7).

And so let us remember St. Nicholas, the giver of gifts.  For the greatest gift of all is Christ, whom St. Nicholas gave out freely when he preached, absolved, baptized, and communed the redeemed: including the poor and the children, who come to the altar, to the font, and to the pulpit to receive a foretaste of the new heaven and the new earth.

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.