Foretaste of the Sermon to Come

A little nibble of the Revised Common Lectionary

Sunday’s readings are Isaiah 9:2-7, Colossians 1:15-20, Luke 2:1-20, John 1:1-14

With the recent deaths of both of my parents and some tough stuff in our daily lives, I have not done the usual decorating and personalized shopping that I usually love to do. No Christmas carols have been playing on my iTunes. The front of my house is dark. I have been sad all 4 weeks of Advent, even though the consecutive messages of hope, peace, joy, and love each week rang out loud and clear from the wreath, the pulpit, and the altar. I had dinner the other night with a dear friend who is a pastor, and we talked about this Advent season being a strange one in our personal lives and also a particularly hard one with the strife in our country and our world.

As we talked it through and the more I thought about it though, the more I came to realize that this Advent is exactly the season into which our God became Immanuel (which means God with us), and the sin, grief, starvation, hate, and violence that have colored my Advent are exactly the reasons God became Immanuel.

“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria.” (Luke 2:1–2. All verses here forward will be from the ESV) Judea was living under the sandaled jackboot of the Roman Empire. Even the ostensible King of the Jews was a brutal puppet-tyrant of Rome who would execute his own wife and three of his children along with all male children under the age of 2 for fear of the child Jesus’ usurping his title. Most people worked for a daily wage which would buy what a family needed to live for that day, and if you didn’t work your family didn’t eat. The station into which you were born was the station from which you died without opportunity for changing your lot in life, and your station was judged — affluence was the result of God’s favor and sickness or lameness were the result of some affront to God. God’s people were living under another boot, and that was the Levitical Law as written, interpreted, and enforced by the Pharisees, who had made ceremony and financial sacrifice more important than the Law God gave to Moses.

It was into this dark time and place that the shepherds of the region saw and heard an angel proclaim, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:10–11)

Before this year, I had focused on the amazing birth in this story: the immaculate conception, Mary’s faith, the humble circumstances of the birth of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The miracle and earthiness of the incarnation. The experience of the new baby smell is real, the feel of his breath against his mother’s neck, the way she could easily soothe his cries by nursing…we parents can viscerally feel the wonder of this moment of Jesus’ birth and marvel that our Almighty God would lie in a manger. This is the story that Isaiah foretold: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” (Isaiah 9:2) Any prior concern I had about Christmas was that people were focusing on shopping and decorating more than on the miraculous birth of this baby, or that some people were missing the warmth of family and a home, or had no access to traditions and memories.

But this year I have become acutely aware that this isn’t just the sweet story of the birth of a baby, it is the story of God putting on his hip waders and getting down to the filthy business of salvation, once and for all, for ALL people, and he does it in the midst of a brutal world and he does it in a brutal way. The infinite is going to enter the finite, and the human Jesus is going to become humanity’s sin in order to kill it on the cross. (2 Cor 5:21) What can be more brutal than the Eternally Holy becoming humanity’s defilement?

So the sweet story of our Savior’s birth in the gospels of Matthew and Luke and the poetry of the first chapter of John are what we tend to focus on during Advent and Christmas, but for me something has changed. For me, this Advent has become a precursor to Lent, and in fact there are only 7 weeks between the two seasons. It is a dark time into which a Light will be born and will grow up to minister to the downtrodden and speak words of justice to the mighty. The Light will creatively speak his creation into discipleship, and we disciples will continue to proclaim the Light to a weary world in the same way it’s been proclaimed from the Beginning: The Word will announce itself in scripture and those who hear it will be changed and will proclaim it to the next and to the next and to the next. The Light will be quenched on the cross and will lie dead on the final three days of Lent, but in allowing itself to become darkness, it will take sin and death with it into the darkness and will be resurrected to Eternal Light and Life on Easter and will make us Easter People. The nativity cannot be separated from the cross and the cross cannot be separated from the resurrection.

I think our Epistle reading this week is my Advent story this year. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. 21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.” (Colossians 1:15–23) And friends, lest you fear verse 23, he has sent our inability to “continue stable and steadfast” in the faith into the darkness along with the rest of our sins. So “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” (Luke 2:10)

Thank you, Lord Jesus. Come, Lord Jesus.