A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 9, 2018
St. Dunstan’s Anglican Church, Largo, FL
The Very Reverend J. Michael Strachan
Malachi 3:1-4; the Benedictus (Luke 1:68-79); Luke 3:1-6
I want to talk this morning about
the way New Testament Christology functions because I think this is important
for us to understand and because this topic directly relates to Advent. But,
first, let me clarify what I mean by New Testament Christology. What I have in
mind for this morning is the question of how the New Testament authors conceive
of the divine identity of Jesus of Nazareth. To put it another way, I want us
to consider why the New Testament authors thought that Jesus was divine and how
they show that in their writing.
way many people in the West have conceived of an answer to this question goes
something like this. We know that God has specific attributes, let’s say
attributes X, Y, and Z, and for Jesus to be divine, for Jesus to meet the
definition that we have given to the word ‘God,’ then attributes X, Y, and Z
must be true of Jesus as well. In this case,
we start with God as the known, i.e., we know what God is like, and with Jesus as the
unknown. So, for us to say that Jesus is God he must meet our definition of who
God is. God is the known; Jesus is the unknown.
The problem with this way of
thinking becomes pretty obvious once you stop and reflect on it. Christmas is
approaching, and while it’s in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that we find the
stories about Jesus’ birth, it’s the introduction to the Gospel of John that
gives us the theology of what we celebrate at Christmas. And this is how John
concludes his introduction. He says in
vs. 18 that no one has ever seen God, but Jesus, the Word made flesh, has made
him known. In that case, Jesus is the known, and God is the unknown.
And this is important. This is not just semantics, and this is not
just an intellectual conversation. This
is a paradigm shift in how we think about Jesus and how we think about his divinity. We don’t ask, “What
is God like and does that apply to Jesus?” because frankly, that’s not going to get you anywhere. God is omniscient,
omnipresent, and eternal, Jesus says there’s at least one thing he doesn’t
know, he’s located in a physical place
because of his body, and he dies, something God can’t do almost by definition.
On the contrary, instead of looking to God and asking how what we know of God
applies to Jesus, what we should be doing is looking to Jesus and let him
reveal to us, make known to us, what God is truly
is why you can never read the Gospels too much. This
is why when we read the Gospels in church
we treat those books differently than we do the other parts of Scripture, even
though all of Scripture is the Word of God. We recognize in these four books God himself is revealed to us in the person of Jesus of
Nazareth, and the more we can reflect on who he was, what he did, what he said, and the life that he led, the more the
heart and character of God himself are
So, what does this have to do with
our readings, and how does this connect to Advent? The thought process of the
New Testament authors was quite different
from our own, which is based heavily in Greek ways of thinking. Instead of
thinking about the attributes of God and how they applied to Jesus, they were confronted with a different question. They
had a narrative in mind. They had a role that God was supposed to play in their
history, and the starting claim of all four authors of the Gospels is simply this: Jesus
of Nazareth has played the role that God was supposed to play in the history of
Israel. Let me show you how this work.
Let’s look at our first reading.
These verses in Malachi are the divine response
to two complaints by the people: why is the world not ordered the way that God
said it would be and where is the God of justice who will set it right? The divine answer comes in vs. 1 as a promise: the Lord whom you seek will come suddenly to his Temple, but
before he does, there’s going to be a messenger who prepares his way. What
Malachi is doing is riffing of the opening words of Isaiah 40, but I don’t have
time to show that here. But let me be crystal clear about this. Advent isn’t
about waiting for the Messiah; it’s about waiting for God. Some people
conceived of a role for a Messiah figure to play when God finally returned to
his people, but there is, historically speaking, far less messianic expectation
than you might expect. What the people of God were waiting for first and
foremost was not a Messiah but the Lord himself, who would send a messenger
before him, come to his Temple, and set the world to rights.
Now let’s look at the Benedictus.
We’ve all heard countless times that John the Baptism was the forerunner of the
Messiah. Except when John’s father spoke of his birth, he never once said that
John would be the forerunner of the Messiah. Instead, he said this, “And you,
child, shall be called the prophet of the Most
High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his
people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of all their sins.” You will
go before the Lord. John isn’t the
forerunner of the Messiah. He’s the forerunner of the Lord.
So now, turn to our Gospel reading,
starting in v. 3: “[John] went into all the region around the Jordan,
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah
the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of
the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Prepare the way of the
Lord.
So, this is now New Testament
Christology function, what we say about John the Baptist has direct implications for what we say about
Jesus. This is the narrative. God was
supposed to come back to his people, come to his Temple, and set the world to
rights, but before he did, he would send a messenger. John is that messenger,
and Jesus is the one for whom Jesus prepared the way. Jesus is the one who has
come back to his people. Jesus is the one who will come to his Temple and find
it wanting. Jesus is the one who through his death and resurrection will set
Jesus plays the role of God in Israel’s story,
so as we wait during Advent, I want to remind you that what we’re waiting for
isn’t just the Messiah. He is the Messiah, but
he is so much more than the Messiah.
You’ll notice if you keep reading in Luke’s Gospel that some people ask him if
he’s the Messiah. It’s not odd to call a human the Messiah. It’s not a lead.
But what we will do at Christmas is so much
more than that. What we will do is look at that baby in the manger and say not
just that he is the Christ, but more shockingly, more dramatically, more
surprisingly, we will look at him and say, “Here is God in the flesh. He has
returned. He has become one of us.” And if we will listen to him, if we will
watch him, if we will follow him, then he will show us the heart of God
himself. That is what we should be longing for this Advent, for God to reveal
himself to us through his Son to show us how to be the people he has created us
Maranatha: Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
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