Fourth Sunday in Advent
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It is now the 4th Sunday in Advent, some would call today the ‘love’ day. I think it may be more appropriate to call it ‘hurry up day’
My boys are ready, our house is ready. They keep asking, how many sleeps until Christmas? Each day they have their little preschool advent sticker calendars, the Christmas program is over, everyone is on Christmas break, we’re all set and now… we wait.
Today, is an important maturity point in the Christian life. Waiting for fulfillment of a promise.
Luke 1:45 tells us:
And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
These words of Elizabeth to Mary are so crucial because they contain all manner of waiting. The waiting of the promise from Micah to the people of Bethlehem:
But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.
This particular promise is the next iteration of one made to David- the not so holy yet chosen King of Israel where David’s lineage will rule forever:
He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever.
This is in fact a refrain of the promise made to Abraham, as we discussed on Wednesday:
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
This is a derivation of the promise made to Adam and Eve:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Do you get it? Ever since creation - the world has been longing for her king but most of us just won’t have it. We don’t like to wait. We don’t like to live in the present, we appreciate nostalgia and the future but contentment is not our strong suite.
Christianity today just ran an article about the average lifespan of a worship song in contemporary American Christianity. In the 90’s a song could last as long as a decade. Now? The average song makes it at most 4 years.
Our sermon hymn, o come o come Emmanuel, was perhaps the oldest in today’s service with it being set in its final form around the 12th century but the backbone being in use no later than the 7th century. You know the story… each year I tell you this. There are a series of antiphons (anti-phon just means back and forth) on p 357 that would be sung by the church.
For thousands of years Israel waited for their king and if we know the story of Christ at all, very few recognized Him when He arrived. Perhaps this is because they expected an angry God. Their patience was distorted.
O Lord God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?
Isn’t that something though, our God when He arrives, instead of anger we see affection:
He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
Now, I also want to make sure that we take the right view on patience. Patience is not to be equated with suffering. I want to be clear, Christians are people who suffer. We would even go so far as to say that one of the characteristics of human nature is suffering but patience does not necessarily include additional suffering. Suffering is an example of patience but not a requirement.
I am typically pretty good at eating three meals a day, breakfast at about 6:15 lunch at right around 11:30 and dinner is almost right at 5. We run a tight ship. By the time I get to both lunch and dinner I am quite hungry- impatient but I wouldn’t categorize it as suffering.
See patience recognizes and requires that there is an end. As Christians we are fundamentally interested in how this all ends up.
If our mindset tells us that we just become mulch, then how does that impact our view of what should transpire today? We have two main options: 1. Get as much as we can today or 2. leave the mulch a better kind of mulch. Neither of these are particularly helpful.
We believe that Christ will come again and will set all broken things right. What this means is that while we work for things like justice and peace, we also know that they will not be complete until our King reappears.
This is reassuring. We should expect to be hungry, to have suffering but we should also expect it to end.
If you have felt like strangers living in a strange land these last days, our king says Welcome to the Kingdom of God. If you have wept because of betrayal from your neighbors, from your household, even your own mind, welcome.
Christ is coming again. While the temptation is to try and come up with coping mechanisms, things to soothe our aches, it may be more helpful to first accurately diagnose that we live in sin. The world is soiled and we have contributed to it. Rather than come up with trite solutions let us tell the truth about how bad it actually is… we can’t quite right this ship. No amount of mindfulness or sacrificial living will fix it.
There are any number of material things in our world that I would consider inoperable. My father in law owned a refrigeration company forever and he always said there are two kinds of repairmen, those who throw parts at a problem and those who tinker with settings. Some want to sacrifice parts or offer quick solutions.
Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.
See, the Lord has come to set things right and He will come again to bring peace and manifest love. The scriptures tell us that God is coming again to make all things new.
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
Isn’t that a vision of life that is worth waiting for? This is the plan God has for you. We can wait because we know it is worth it, more than that we know for sure that it is going to happen. We have a down payment a guarantee that these things will transpire.
The author of Hebrews states it like this: (edit slide to end with anchor of the soul)
For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain,
Friends, the Lord has fixed your future by securing it in the past events which transpired in His Son. His love made flesh is an assurance and an anchor for our souls as we await the full restoration of this world. Let us cling to Christ who is coming soon. Amen.