Sermon for Advent Sunday – 28th November 2021: Jer 33, 14-16; 1 Thess 3, 9-end; Luke 21, 25-36).

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

 

This ancient hymn is based on the Advent Antiphons – or introductions – to the Song of Mary, the Magnificat – that begin on the Feast Day called in the Book of Common Prayer calendar, O Sapientia, translated from Latin as ‘O Wisdom’.

Each daily antiphon is an invocation, so begins with ‘O’, as the verse goes on to address some epithet of Jesus Christ.

So we have ‘O Sapientia’; O Wisdom associating Christ with his very presence in Creation, and the first biblical man – Adam.

‘O Adonai’; a Hebrew name associating Christ with God who reveals himself in majesty to Moses, granting to humanity the ancient law – the Ten Commandments.

‘O Root of Jesse’ – Radix Jesse – Jesse is father of King David whose historic hometown is Bethlehem and of the tribe of Judah.

‘O Clavis David’ – O Key of David – the first King of Israel, introducing royalty into the life of the Hebrews. The royal doors open to announce the coming of another king in the line of David, and Jesus too is born in Bethlehem, the city of Joseph.

‘O Oriens’ – O Rising Star – Christ is the light coming into the world, and is called Sun of Righteousness.

King of the Nations – Rex Gentium – the kingly reign begins in Christ’s birth, and the reversal of our Fall from Grace, and our expulsion from Paradise.

Lastly – O Emmanuel – ‘God with us’ in Hebrew. St. Matthew’s gospel uses this name in the message of the angel of the Lord to Joseph.

Very few hymns incorporate such momentous events – a real history of our salvation. It is appropriate that this hymn of the ‘Great O’s’ should inaugurate this holy season of Advent, translated by the great hymnologist J.M Neale, and set to the solemn, yes, but majestic tune that resonates ancient Latin plainchant.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee O Israel’

In the Old Testament reading from the prophecy of Jeremiah, the prophet alludes to a coming salvation – this is surely what prophecy is – and although he writes several hundred years before Christ he sets some of the ancient biblical tone for what is to come. He speaks of the righteous branch and of King David – resonances of the hymn we have just shared together – salvation will come from Jesse, through the royal kingship David, who represents not just monarchy, but in the biblical tradition, priestliness, for he is an anointed King. True salvation for Judah lies ahead in Jehovah Tsidkenu – The Lord is our righteousness. This brings us back to ‘O Oriens’  – remember, one of those titles ascribed to Jesus, ‘Sun of Righteousness’.

The Covenant between God and King David, with all its royal and priestly overtones, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, with his kingly birth, but born in poverty, with his royal throne, but carved not in fine cedar wood and decorated with ormolu, but in the rough and ready planks of a cross.

This is the new kingdom inaugurated by the coming of Christ. This is the King whose divine reign begins in straw and the smell of domestic and working animals. Often we look to the events of Good Friday and we say that this is a sign to us of a risk-taking God – that he should, in Christ, ascend such a throne of humiliation and powerlessness, the cross,  and so many people find this a stumbling block, because it is challenging and bewildering! Why would God be like this, allowing the Christ to suffer so?

However I would suggest that the crib is as challenging as the cross – and so few of us struggle with this, because the details of the story resonate with everything we find comforting. What can bring about more emotion than the birth of a baby? Yet, if we read the narratives that surround the crib event carefully, we will see that the biblical evidence is shot through with predictions and prophecies of what is to come. We need to ‘double –read’ the crib and cross, to understand the God of risk.

In Advent we are preparing ourselves for a risk – the risk of God Incarnate – imagine it Emmanuel – God with us. Even at his birth there are signs of the turmoil that is to come; the cross is on the horizon from day one.

It is to the cross we must look to understand fully the apocalyptic words of St. Luke, our gospel reading this morning. Signs in sun and moon; distress and confusion among the nations; people fainting from fear; the Son of Man coming in a cloud. Such portents in society and in the world are both foreboding and forbidding. How easily do we read these words in our current situation with climate change disasters; new waves emerging of the corona-virus just when we hoped we might be beating this beast into the dust under our feet; turmoil in the tragic lives of migrant peoples, pushing to the limits our received assumptions about citizenship, sovereignty, borders both on land and by sea. All this is an easy backdrop to thinking the worst – the type of worst scenario supported by the biblical language to today’s gospel.

It is essential that we read today’s words from St. Luke in their fullest scriptural context. Jesus has set his face away from Galilee and towards Jerusalem. It is in this great city where the prophets are killed and where stones are thrown to those who are sent to it with God’s message. It is the location of the immoveable institution of Hebrew religion, and the very place where God dwells – in the Holy of Holies –in the temple. If there is any place where ‘God with us’ – Emmanuel – will be misunderstood it will be here.

Twice in this part of St. Luke’s gospel Jesus foretells the destruction of the Temple – twice in a matter of ‘paragraphs’ and in between each prediction Jesus uses the language of apocalypse, of end times, of the great ‘Danielic’ descent of the coming of the Son of Man in a cloud. Jesus is talking of the end of an era – the era of the Temple, for HE is the ‘God with Us’, the Emmanuel.

Stay awake, keep attuned, let your spiritual antennae be calibrated to the God who is in our midst – the God whose embodiment in his Christ is the Jesus of the crib, and the Jesus of the cross. Read this language of destruction and judgement  in relation to the salvific truth of the new reign that begins in Christ Jesus – the reign of the old Temple is ending, and the good news is that a new era is on our doorstep. Jesus is that new temple – a new sign of the covenant between God and you (and me). What a message the holy season of Advent announces to us.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel is come to thee, O Israel.