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December 19 - December 26, 2022
As such, they themselves disappear into the infinitely larger reality that is God himself. In this sense, it might be better not to talk about angels at all, lest they become a substitute for the worship of God. That’s what the first chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews warns against.
During the genocide in Rwanda, Time magazine put a quotation instead of a photograph on the front cover. It was a statement by a missionary serving in that country during those unspeakable events: “There are no devils left in Hell; they are all in Rwanda.”
He wrote in a letter, “I am not afraid of being hanged, but I don’t want to see those faces again . . . so much depravity. . . . I’d rather die than see those faces again. I have seen the Devil, and I can’t forget it.”
This is a man who takes Christian faith seriously. He recognizes the battle that he is in; he knows that he must operate in shades of gray much of the time; and he has looked the power of greed in the face. He has also learned that the Powers of Sin and Evil can affect the church.
She was “mysteriously and quietly removed” from her job. As events unfolded, and as others began to take credit for her actions, she was all but forgotten.
The battle for justice and righteousness is fought without and within the church. No one of us can ever take our innocence for granted. There are two kinds of evildoing: the kind that is done directly and the kind that is done because “good” people do not protest. The devil loves nothing more than good people not protesting.
But that is the sign of Christian warfare; it does not inflict suffering on others, but bears suffering for the sake of the other, as our Lord suffered for our sins on the cross. It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.
There is no neutrality in Saint Michael’s war.
Wherever the Christian soldier faces the powers of evil, the angelic host fights for you on high. If you stand up for what is right, Saint Michael is standing with you.
No one can be forced to believe the Bible, but it’s not right to try to make it say what it clearly doesn’t say. If we want to read the Bible as the religious thoughts of human beings, we can certainly try to do that, but if that’s what we do, we ought to realize that we’re ignoring the entire foundation that the church’s Book is built on.
We say that every Sunday, but this is a good time to think about it anew.
Most Episcopalians, like most people, think of Advent as the time of getting ready for Christmas. But this is a mistake. For centuries Advent was known as the season of the last things. If you don’t believe me, notice the Advent hymns when you sing them. They aren’t about the birth in Bethlehem at all. Almost all of them are about the second coming. We just read about that: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, every one who pierced him; and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen” (Rev. 1:7).
In the world of the university, “the truth” is an abstraction. But this isn’t what Jesus’s words mean at all. Here is what he says: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (8:31–32), and “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (8:36). Pilate is just like us when we want to read the Bible as if it were science or philosophy.
We want ourselves to be rulers of our own lives. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
Every baptism is a victory over Death.7 “The Lord swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back.” Baptism is the action of God in this world to ratify his “everlasting covenant” in the lives of each of his beloved children. It is the action of Jesus Christ as Lord and King over all the demonic powers. It is the action of God in the tortured death of his Son where, on the cross, he drew into himself all the wickedness and all the pain and all the sorrow in the world and, in the resurrection, conquered it—conquered it because he came from the world where death has no dominion and
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The church’s life in Advent is hidden with Christ until he comes again, which explains why so much of what we do in this night appears to be failure, just as his life appeared to end in failure. If Jesus is the Son of God, he is also the One who, as we learned last Sunday, identifies himself with “the least, the last, and the lost,”3 who takes their part, who is born into the world as a member of the lowest class on the social ladder and identifies himself with our human fate all the way to the end, as he gives himself up to die the brutal, shameful, and dehumanizing death of a slave.
In a very deep sense, the entire Christian life in this world is lived in Advent, between the first and second comings of the Lord, in the midst of the tension between things the way they are and things the way they ought to be.
Advent begins with the recognition that human progress is a deception.
The church’s very ancient liturgical traditions call the theology of blessing sharply into question. A theology of the church as a society of the second-level gallery can’t stand up to scrutiny in the season of Advent. For the church first of all, for the people of God who thought they had been guaranteed prosperity, for the chosen ones first of all, Advent begins in the dark.
In spite of God’s apparent hiddenness, the memory of what God has done in the past continues to activate hope for what he will do in the future. This is the movement of the Advent season. The God who hides himself is still the God of the covenant. He is absent and present at the same time
How is God present at the murder of children? You will get no easy answer to that question today.
Where was God when the young man was hanged? Where was God for the families of Zimbabwe? Where was God for the child murdered just around the corner? I cannot answer those questions. The biblical affirmation is that God is present even in his apparent absence.
The sufferings of God’s people come before him; he has said so. He may hide himself, but it can never be forgotten that he was once present in power and that he will be again. That is Advent—the time between.
“An absence that has been overcome.” That is what the church believes about God. A religion that talks about God being obviously present all the time is not true. That would be a religion that had taken God for granted, that had tried to appropriate God for its own ends. The lament of Isaiah teaches us something different. The church cannot possess or control the presence of God. Only God is in control of his own presence. It is faith that teaches us that God is to be trusted, in spite of appearances.
Where is God when it is dark? The church proclaims that he never hides himself to no purpose. Somewhere, somehow, in spite of all appearances, his vindication awaits the proper moment. At the heart of the Advent season is the proclamation that God did not remain where he was, high above the misery of his creation, but came down, incognito, into the midst of it. Nor did he come down merely to sympathize. Even incognito, Jesus of Nazareth had power to heal every disease and drive out every demon.
God will come, and his justice will prevail, and he will destroy evil and pain in all its forms, once and forever. To be a Christian is to live in expectation of that fulfillment.
In Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God is in head-on collision with the powers of darkness. The point of impact is the place where Christians take their stand. That is why it hurts. That’s why the church has to take a beating. This is what Scripture tells us.
All of us are in rebellion against God in one way or another. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.”5 Saint Paul makes this very clear in his letters to his churches. We must be disarmed by God. That’s the theme of Advent. God is on the move to disarm us all—as Isaiah tells us in today’s first lesson: They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. (Isa. 2:4)
