1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly
Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen. The message from God’s Word
in our 3rd Advent midweek service is taken from Matthew 11:2-15,
it’s entitled, “Not Another Advent,” dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
“Never have I entered on Advent so vitally
and intensely alert as I am now. When I pace my cell, up and down, three paces
one way and three the other, my hands shackled, an unknown fate in front of me,
then the tidings of our Lord’s coming to redeem the world and deliver it have
quite a different and much more vivid meaning.”
These words, that sound as if they could’ve come from John the
Baptist and now inmate, come instead from the Advent meditations of Father
Alfred Delp, written from Tegel Prison, during what would turn out to be his
last Advent on earth, 1944. He was executed the following February. His crime
was trying to envision a new social order, a Christian social order for his
country, once the grip of Nazism was broken. Father Delp’s Advent meditation
continues, “My mind keeps going back to
the angel someone gave me as a present during Advent two or three years ago. It
bore the inscription: ‘Be of good cheer. The Lord is near.’ A bomb destroyed
it. The same bomb killed the donor.”
I can only imagine how different the
message of the Lord’s coming must have sounded to Alfred and to John the
Baptist, spoken through prison bars to men who wouldn’t live to see another
Advent.
3.
But, for many of us here this evening I suspect the
problem isn’t how different Advent sounds
this year. Our problem is that Advent present sounds just like Advent past,
and, we fear, there’s not going to be anything new about Advent still to come
either. Advent’s texts are as familiar to us as the carols of the season. The “Baptist’s cry” and the “prophet’s foretelling” are like the
ornaments we so carefully unwrap, display, enjoy, and then carefully pack away
so we can enjoy them next year. The “spirit
of the season”—Advent’s longing, Advent’s patience, Advent’s hope—these we
slide into again like an old Santa suit that may not fit as well as it used to,
but, it won’t matter, because we won’t have to wear it for long.
4.
We had hoped something different would happen this year. Think
about where we are, what we’re doing. If it were ever going to happen, wouldn’t
it be here? Wouldn’t it be now, this year? Maybe,
it’s not going to happen. Maybe Advent’s lesson for us is this: the more things
change, the more they stay the same. For us.
5.
Because we do have to admit that things seem to be
changing all around us: blind people are seeing, lame people are walking,
lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead live, the poor have good news
preached to them. That’s all great, for them. But what about us captives? Did
you notice that there was no word of release to the captive? Advent comes and
Advent goes, as regular as clockwork, as annual as tax day, as ordered as the
seasons; it comes and goes and the Messiah’s prophet is still in prison, the
violent still oppress us, the poor are still with us, the waiting people keep
on waiting. And the Advent hymn, “Wake!
Awake, for Night is Flying!” slowly becomes for us a lullaby. But, as Martin Franzmann has written, “He who has ears to hear had better hear now
what the God of history is saying at the supreme
hour of history”
(Martin Franzmann, Follow Me, [St. Louis: CPH, 1961], 120). Advent may be for us, but it’s
not about us, not in
the sense that it truly becomes Advent when we feel a certain way, when we “keep it in our hearts.” Advent is Jesus’ presence, not
ours, and when he shows up things are anything but as regular as clockwork and
as ordered as the seasons. His Advent breaks every imaginable pattern:
blindness becomes sight, corruption dissolves into cleanness, death—his—becomes
the predecessor of
life.
6.
And John the Baptist, the prison prophet, is not
exception but proof. The violent had opposed the rule and reign of God. They
had imprisoned and silenced prophets, but not prophecy. The word of the Lord
would be proclaimed even if the stones on the ground had to shout. No king, no
conqueror, no tyrant could silence the voice of the Lord spoken by his
prophets, but now prophets and Law grow silent. What need is there for prophecy
when our King and Lawgiver, the desire of all nations has come?
7.
But, once more would the violent attempt their program of
snatching and silencing, arrest and execution. But, once more would the Kingdom
of God receive violent treatment at the hands of violent men. Surely, if they
could kill the great John the Baptist then this “one of no consequence,” this “little
fellow” who came after John would cause them no trouble. And that was the fatal
flaw in the argument. They had not calculated with the “until now” that this one spoke; little did they know that this “little one” would manifest a greatness
that far exceeded the greatness of his greatest prophet. No longer can prison
or sword or cross or tomb silence this word or withstand this kingdom.
8.
Friends, the prisons that held John the Baptist and Father
Alfred Delp captive were all too real, but the prisons that hold us are, I
fear, largely of our own making. That’s not to say, that our fears and
questionings and doubts and disappointments are only imagined. But to us, this
day, when we ask John’s question: “What
Child is this? What kind of Savior is this? Are you the One?”, the same
answer comes that came to John so long ago. And it’s not, “Search your hearts
and see what they tell you.” No, the answer is look and listen. Our Lord Jesus
Christ was no mere blip on the screen, not some momentary disturbance that the
system has now corrected. The Lord didn’t raise up a new generation of prophets
to point to a new Messiah, to inaugurate a new season of endless waiting. The
people healed by this one’s first coming stayed healed. The good news that the
poor heard is still proclaimed in his name. And the hold of the violent ones on
the people of God has been broken forever. Quite simply, The claim won’t stand that nothing has
changed, that this year brings the same old, same old Advent.
9.
You’ve heard and you’ve seen, but look again! Hear again!
It’s not simply the words of the prophet that fill this room; it’s the Gospel
of the Lord that echoes off its walls. It’s not the Passover that we eat when
we gather for our sacred Supper; it’s the banquet of our Lord, the meal that
satisfies even as it makes us long to partake of the feast to come, the meal at
which the nations sit down together. He has come, and nothing can undo that. He
comes now, and no one can stop him. He will come, and it is a fact that our
salvation is nearer today than it was in Advent 2015.
10.
You’ve heard and you’ve seen. Now go and tell. Tell the
despairing captive. Speak to the anxious heart. Yes, proclaim it to the violent
ones too; preach the good news to those who persecute you. Father Delp
continues with this hope: “Let us pray
for receptive and willing hearts that the warnings God sends us may penetrate
our minds and help us to overcome the wilderness of this life. Let us have the
courage to take the words of the Messenger to heart and not ignore them, lest
those who are our executioners today may at some future time be our accusers
for the suppression of truth.” It’s time the ransomed of the Lord all be
gathered, that we walk together on the Way of Holiness, singing good news along
the way to the day of gladness and everlasting joy. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment