Advent
Several weeks ago,
Lee and I went to a seminar on “preaching on the last things” – eschatological
sermons (if you like). The speaker noted that in the church’s teaching of the
first centuries after Jesus, there were four “last things”: Death, Judgment,
Hell, and Heaven. He organized his remarks around these four headings, but he
also added something about them that surprised me.
Today is Second
Advent. We have four Sundays in Advent, and each Sunday has its own special
theme. This year the four themes are hope (which Pastor Lee talked about last
week), peace (our theme today), joy, and love. These four, or some variation of
them, are the usual themes for Advent, but they are not the original Advent
themes. Guess what the original themes were: Death, Judgment, Hell, and Heaven.
These four
original themes – dark and foreboding – lie behind our contemporary emphasis on
peace and joy. It makes sense really. Think of our four themes. Why do we need
hope? Because we are afraid of the problems and struggles that we face in this
life. Why do we long for peace? Because we live in a world of hurt and
conflict. Why do we celebrate joy so eagerly? Because we see so much grief and
sadness around us. Why do we rejoice in God’s love? Because we have experienced
the hatred and anger of a world without God.
The message of
Christmas, to which all four Sundays of Advent point, is that God enters our
death-filled world and uses what we call the judgment to get rid of all evil in
what we call Hell, making you and me able to live forever with God, a state
that we call Heaven.
Peace
Our focus
statement this morning is, “Imagine the wideness of God’s embrace of all
creatures and creation! It will widen our hearts to do the things that make for
peace.” Consider where this peace comes from. It sure does not come from the
world around us. Looking around our world, we see people in conflict with each
other. I have lived a third of my life in Canada, a third of my life in the
USA, and a third in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Four countries, and in each country, I
have seen how the power of Evil corrupts people and breeds conflict.
There are good
people everywhere, and I love the people in each of these countries. There is
so much that I love about Zimbabwe – such as the idea of “ubuntu”, the way that
we become fully human in community. An Ndebele proverb says that we become
fully human in and with other people. I love it! But I have also seen how
people in Zimbabwe can shut out people who don’t fit in their group. I grew up
as part of a White minority, only four percent of the population, who held
complete political and economic control over the whole country. This is the
precise opposite of wide-open hearts that make for peace.
I love the USA. In
Canada, we are ready to point out the problems of our southern neighbours, but
the truth is that Americans can be remarkably helpful and friendly. But we also
see how they can turn against each other, fighting against each other over an
amazing array of issues. Their gun culture, for example, makes many of us walk
a little more carefully when we cross the border.
I love Canada.
Canada has become home, and Manitoba is a wonderful place to live. But we have
our problems, and we see people turn against each other and shut each other
out. Every place I have lived has this mixture of good and bad. I have avoided
specific examples because I think you can provide your own illustrations better
than I can. We see the problems all around us, and it takes a lot of
imagination to think of God embracing the whole of creation. The Advent idea of
judgment is not so far-fetched!
How do we move
from the problems we see to the vision of God’s wonderful, saving embrace?
Let’s look at the Scripture texts that we read.
Malachi 3
The book of
Malachi is set in the period after the return from Exile in Babylon and Persia.
The Jews had experienced great distress, being carried off into exile by the
Babylonians a few hundred years before. Now they have been back in their own
home for perhaps 200 years – long enough to have fixed the political and
economic problems that they had faced. But life is still hard. They live with
constant danger and problems. There was a growing expectation that God the Lord
would come to God’s people – what we refer to as the coming of the Messiah.
The prophet speaks
to the people about this expectation of God’s coming. “The Lord whom you seek
will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you
delight—indeed, he is coming.” This is good news! But then the prophet changes
his tone. “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he
appears?”
Before joy comes
judgment. Before we can realize our hope, we must be purified – made right with
God and with each other. Before we can walk in the way of peace, we must look
squarely and honestly at all that we do that destroys peace.
That is where Malachi
leaves us: Hoping for the coming of God who makes all things right, but
recognizing that we need purifying before we can stand in God’s presence. We
are broken people, and we need fixing.
Luke 1
Often during
Advent, we listen to and preach on Mary’s Song: “My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour.” Mary sang this song when she
visited her cousin, Elizabeth. They had both been visited by an angel telling
them that they would have a son. Now birth announcements are cool, but these
two were unusual. Elizabeth was “barren and getting on in years” (1:7), and
Mary was a young woman who was still a virgin (1:27). One guesses that the
young woman looked up to her older cousin and went to visit her when she
discovered that they were both pregnant. Mary’s song is her response to Elizabeth’s
celebration of her pregnancy.
A few verses
later, Elizabeth gave birth to John, and in response, his father Zechariah was
filled with the Holy Spirit and sang his own song of joy, a prophecy about his
baby son’s life.
·
Verses
68-71: He gives praise to God for saving them from their enemies. This sounds
like he thinks that John will be the Messiah who sets Israel free from their
enemies. In their time, the primary enemy was the Roman Empire.
·
Verses
72-75: He thanks God for the mercy of salvation, which restores God’s covenant with
Israel and makes them able to live rightly with God and with each other. It may
still sound like he is talking about his son, John, but the next verse makes it
clear he sees that John’s birth actually means that the Messiah will follow
him.
·
Verses
76-78: John will be “the prophet of the Most High”, who “will go before the
Lord to prepare his ways”. The Lord – that is God, in the person of the Messiah
– is coming to guide God’s people “into the way of peace”.
We see the same
progression as we noted earlier – from death and judgment to mercy and hope,
from conflict and despair to peace and joy. It is notable that when John comes,
he preaches, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is near.” In the same way, when
Jesus comes, he has the same message, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is near.”
“Repent” is actually a simpler word than we might think: It means simply “turn
around”, go in a new direction. But it is harder to do than we often realize:
We are really stubborn; it takes a lot to make us change direction in our
lives.
Death and Peace
I’ve been thinking
a lot about death and dying recently. The seminar Lee and I went to was
actually a seminar on how to talk about death and how to prepare for funerals.
It’s just over a year ago that I spent 10 days in the hospital, wondering if I
was on the verge of major heart trouble. Then, yesterday, a friend sent me an
article from the Atlantic magazine by Tim Keller.
Keller is the
founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York. He has
been ordained in the Presbyterian Church since 1975. He recently wrote a book
on his experiences walking with people near the end of their lives. Then, a
month after the book came out, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
As he wrestled
with the diagnosis, here is part of what he writes in the article:
Our beliefs about God and an afterlife, if
we have them, are often abstractions as well. If we don’t accept the reality of
death, we don’t need these beliefs to be anything other than mental assents. A
feigned battle in a play or a movie requires only stage props. But as death,
the last enemy, became real to my heart, I realized that my beliefs would have
to become just as real to my heart, or I wouldn’t be able to get through the
day. Theoretical ideas about God’s love and the future resurrection had to become
life-gripping truths, or be discarded as useless.
Keller notes that
as death approaches, Christians and non-believers alike struggle with the
reality of our own end. There is no panacea or simple strategy to make death
easy. As Christians, however, we have the opportunity to discover the reality
of our relationship with God. As Malachi puts it, God comes to us, even though
we are afraid of God’s approach.
The Hope and Joy
of Peace
Where in this
struggle with death – which is really the struggle that we all have with life
itself – where in this struggle is peace? Tim Keller describes his own
experience this way: “I found that to embrace God’s greatness, to say “Thy will
be done,” was painful at first and then, perhaps counterintuitively, profoundly
liberating.”
That is, the path
of peace is repentance – repentance in the sense of turning around,
re-orienting our lives to God’s life, seeking God’s presence, walking in God’s
will. My Dean at Providence has described something that he learned through his
wife. She was taking a course on spiritual formation, and they talked each day
about what she was learning. From their conversation, my friend said that he
has adopted a simple yet profound spiritual discipline. As part of his prayer
every night, he asks two questions: “When today was I most aware of God’s
presence? When today was I least aware of God’s presence?” (These are
adapted from the Examen in Ignatian spirituality.)
These are useful
questions. Reflecting daily on how we have lived in God’s presence can reveal
what the true goal of our lives is. When we realize that our true goal is
anything other than God and God’s reign in our lives, we repent. We turn from
the deepest goals we have that take us away from God, and we pursue God. That
is what Mary did. That is what Elizabeth and Zechariah did. They experienced
the presence of God and knew the promise of salvation and the paths of peace.
Conclusion
The truth is that
God wants everyone to turn and follow God. God wants us all to know the peace
of life in Christ and the peace of living with each other in true community. We
also want that peace and security – at least, most of us do. But we often think
that we can create peace on our own. We can’t. We live in a world that is
fundamentally crooked. Until the second advent, when Jesus returns in power and
great glory, our world makes real peace impossible.
Advent is the
reminder that our impossibility is God’s possibility. Where we cannot make
peace, Jesus does. Where our ability to embrace others runs out, God’s saving
embrace stretches wider and wider. God purifies “the children of Levi” – that
means the priests, and we are “a kingdom of priests. Purified by God, we find
ourselves able to join Jesus in his wonderful saving embrace of the whole of
creation.
Last week we heard
that beyond our fears lies God’s hope. Today we hear that beyond our conflicts
lies God’s peace. We look forward to the coming of the Lord, even if it means
that we fall down before him, overwhelmed with his greatness and goodness. As
Paul puts it, “What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us,
who is against us? … Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God
who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was
raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will
separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these
things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our
Lord.”
Focus Statement:
Imagine the wideness of God’s embrace of all creatures and creation! It will
widen our hearts to do the things that make for peace.
Scriptures:
Malachi 3:1-4
The Coming Messenger
3 See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the
Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the
covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. 2 But
who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?
For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; 3 he
will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the
descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present
offerings to the Lord in
righteousness. 4 Then the offering of Judah and
Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as
in the days of old and as in former years.
Luke 1:68-79
Zechariah’s Prophecy
67 Then his
father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:
68 “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked
favorably on his people and redeemed them. 69 He has
raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, 70 as
he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, 71 that
we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
72 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and
has remembered his holy covenant, 73 the oath that he
swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us 74 that
we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without
fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness before him
all our days.
76 And you, child, will be called the
prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the
forgiveness of their sins. 78 By the tender mercy of our
God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, 79 to
give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide
our feet into the way of peace.”
Thinking Ahead
Question: How do you connect the birth of Christ and the return of Christ in
your own thinking? Today's advent word is “Peace” – what does the path to peace
look like as you read today's scriptures?
Steinbach Mennonite Church
5 December 2021
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