Tag: Advent

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent: “The Beloved Judge”

This sermon was originally preached at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas, on Sunday, December 8, 2024.

Texts: Song of Songs 2:8-14, Psalm 50, Luke 21:25-33

Advent is a time when we remember and celebrate the coming of Christ into the world— but which coming?

For many Christians, it is the first coming of Christ into the world, when the Holy Child is born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And so, Advent is a time to remember Mary and her pregnancy— to prayerfully await the joy of Christmas, the birth of Emmanuel.

But for others, this emphasis is too sentimental, and the stress is instead laid on the second coming of Christ, when he returns in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead. Advent, then, is a time of repentance, of preparing for the judgment we all must face.

To focus on both at once may create for us a sense of dissonance in this season. We may ask ourselves, What is it we’re really getting ready for?

But the wisdom of the Church in ordering the church year this way is revealed when we realize that we cannot understand either coming of Christ except in relation to the other. We cannot understand the Last Judgment unless we truly understand the miracle of the Incarnation.

For the One who judges us is the One who was born for us.

Our understanding of the Judgment Day must be grounded in who Christ is, in who he has revealed himself to be as the incarnate Word of God, the Son of Mary. Otherwise, every Scripture about judgment can become distorted and turned into something of an anti-Gospel.

And there are many passages of Scripture about God’s fearful judgment of the world at the end of time. We have two of them in our readings:

In Psalm 50: The LORD shall call the heaven from above, and the earth, that he may judge his people. “Gather my saints together unto me…” And the heavens shall declare his righteousness; For God himself is Judge.

And in our Gospel, Our Lord speaks of his return to judge the world at the end of the age: “And there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”

These scenes of the fearful return of Christ and of his coming to judge the world have inspired some ghastly images in the history of Christian art— images of condemnation and terror, of fright and despair.

One of the most memorable scenes of the Russian film Andrei Rublev is when the titular character, the great painter-monk, admits that he is utterly unable to complete his assignment: to paint a fresco of The Day of Judgment, with the requisite images of sinners being cast into the flames while monstrous demons breathe smoke out of their nostrils.

For the saintly artist, this is unbearable. He cannot paint such a spectacle, because however much it might bewilder and unsettle his audience, to him, it doesn’t speak the truth about who Christ is— it does not fit with his idea of the lovingkindness of the merciful God.

(And in real life, the fresco he ended up painting is quite subdued— he doesn’t depict the condemned or any demons, but only the righteous).1

If our idea of Judgment has no trace of love in it, if Christ the Judge is seen as vindictive and sadistic— in other words, if Judgment Day has been disconnected from Christmas— then something of the heart of the Gospel has been ignored.

Our Judge is the One who loves us. The Judge before whom we will stand on Judgment Day is the One who came as a Babe, laid in the manger. The Judge of the living and the dead is the One who took flesh of the Blessed Virgin Mary: the One who became human, who became like us in all ways but sin, who lived a human life, who faced temptation and sorrow, who longs for the salvation of all, and who died on the Cross and rose from the dead to defeat those infernal powers which constrain his beloved creatures.

The character of Christ does not change between his earthly life and his Return. He is who he is.

And one of the great miracles of the Incarnation is that the Judge of all has become one of us. God now has a human face— and not simply so that He may look upon us, but that we may look upon him. On the Last Day, we shall see our Judge face to face. We shall behold him who is our Life.

And if we have truly understood who Christ is, and if we are truly living as his disciples, his return and his judgment are not fearsome but something to be welcomed. “When you see these things taking place, look up and lift your heads, for your redemption is drawing near.”

When the celestial powers are shaken, and there are signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, and the Son of Man comes on a cloud with power and great glory, most of the people on earth will bow their heads in fear, but we will look up to behold our Savior. For we know that the One who comes into the world once more is not just the fearful Judge, but the Desire of every nation, the Joy for which every heart longs.

We look for Christ with the same eagerness the Bride looks for the Groom in the Song of Songs. “The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved says to me, ‘Arise my love, for the winter is past and the spring is here. The fig tree puts forth its fruit and the flowers blossom.’”

On that Last Day, the Lover of Humankind will bound forth to meet us. Jesus will look at us with his eyes of compassion, and we will raise our eyes to meet his, to behold that holy face. The Judgment Day is the revelation of the Beauty of Christ, whom we long to see and whose countenance delights us.

We want to meet him, we want him to judge us, to reveal to us who we are and who he is. We long for him to set all things right in us, to destroy all that is false in us so that what is truly real can endure. And it may be painful for us on that Day to see who we really are and how we’ve actually lived. The Truth is painful, sometimes. And Christ, for us, is Absolute Truth come to save us and heal us. The process will be difficult, yet it’s what is needed for us to enter the joy of our Lord.

And this process begins here and now, as we continually look to the Lord, repenting of our sins and falsehoods, so that we may become more and more the persons God has made us to be.

May we all see the Face of the Beloved, the Face of the One who loves us, the Holy Child and the Merciful Judge, the twice-Adventing Lord of Lords.

Come, Lord Jesus, and look on us even now in judgment and in love. And we shall behold thy face and be radiant, unto the ages of ages. Amen.

1 Rublev’s fresco of the Last Judgment can be viewed here: https://www.wikiart.org/en/andrei-rublev/the-last-judgement-1408

Homily for the First Sunday of Advent

“Out of Time”

Sunday, December 1, 2024

Texts:

  • Amos 5:14-15, 18-24
  • Romans 13:8-14
  • Matthew 21:1-13

This sermon was originally preached at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas.

Sunday, December 1. So… the countdown begins.

24 days til Christmas.

We’ve made it through Thanksgiving and Black Friday. And now, we turn toward Christmas.

For most of us, the holiday season passes in a blur: there are parties and events to attend, gifts to buy, family to host. And so often in December we get the feeling that “There’s never enough time.” In our culture especially, there’s a frenzy to the holiday season, a sense that we have to do as much as possible. It’s that sense of FOMO, Fear of Missing Out. We don’t want to miss out on any experiences worth having. So we pack our calendars as full as we can, since Christmas only comes once a year.

If there were two months between Thanksgiving and Christmas, maybe it would be manageable. Maybe we’d have the time to do all the things we want to do. But as it is, we feel that we’re running out of time. And when Christmas arrives, perhaps we feel that it’s come too soon.

This sense, that time has run out, that there wasn’t enough time to prepare, is key to today’s Gospel reading: Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

Now some of you may be thinking, “Why are we hearing about Palm Sunday on the First Sunday of Advent? I don’t remember that.”

Starting this Sunday, we’re going to be following the readings from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, which is basically the historic lectionary of the Church of England. This lectionary has its roots in the Middle Ages. So if you were an Englishman in the 1300s and you came to church on the First Sunday of Advent, you’d hear this Epistle reading from Romans and this Gospel reading from Matthew. (And that’s something to keep in mind as we go through this church year, that the readings you’ll be hearing on Sunday are the ones Christians have been hearing for centuries).

But the reason this Gospel is appointed for the First Sunday of Advent is found in the proclamation of the prophet Zechariah: “Behold thy King cometh unto thee.” And the crowd meets Jesus as he arrives, exclaiming, “Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord!”

This is the major theme of Advent: The coming of Christ, his arrival, whether we’re ready or not.

And when Our Lord arrived in Jerusalem, the people were not ready. As the Lord said, they did not recognize the time of their visitation.

They had three years during his ministry to prepare for the arrival of the Messiah, but they were not ready in heart to receive him. And so, the crowd that hailed him as King on Sunday was clamoring for his crucifixion by Friday.

This brings to us the question: Are we ready for the coming of Christ? If Christ were to return today, would we be ready to meet him? If Christ were to return today and judge us, just as we are, would we be able to say that our lives are in order? For most of us, the answer is probably not.

“Woe to you who desire the Day of the Lord! Why would you want the Day of the Lord? It would be darkness and not light” (Amos 5:18).

Almost all of us, if we are honest, have not truly repented of our sins. We have not ordered our lives to prioritize the things of God. We do not love others as we should. In general, we are not living the Christian lives we should be.

So this realization should create in us a sense of urgency. We must prepare. There’s no time to lose. As St. Paul says, “It is high time for us to wake from sleep.” So we hasten to “cast away the works of darkness,” to stop doing anything that’s hidden or shameful, anything we would do in the cover of night. We cast away the works of darkness so we can live honorably, as in the day, in the light. Like the Lord who casts the money changers out of the Temple, so we cast out our sinful passions so that we may be a holy temple to the Lord.

And if we really plan to do this, we must go against the grain of what the rest of the culture is doing. For Christians, the next twenty-four days should be a time, not for drunkenness and over-indulgence, but for sobriety and moderation.

Advent should be a time of fasting, not feasting. We feast at Christmas. But now, we curb our appetites to prepare ourselves. Because anyone will tell you, it’s hard to think straight and to have energy when you eat too much. You wanna take a nap or slump down on the couch. So in Advent we eat less, we forgo certain indulgences, so we can be freed up— so both our mind and body can be lighter and able to move quicker and act with more clarity.

And as for our busy schedules, there is an opportunity here as well. We can use this season to make time for spiritual activities, and not just recreational ones. So many of us have that sense of frenzy I mentioned earlier when we’re making plans: “They’re having the Christmas lights, and then we gotta go to this party, and then we gotta go to this event on the 12th…”

Imagine if we had that same eagerness for spiritual activities! What if we had that sense of urgency to create time for prayer and reading of Scripture, for devotions that help us to draw nearer to the Lord? Because after all, Advent only comes once a year.                                                                                                

And all of these spiritual disciplines– the fasting, the prayer, the times for quiet reflection– are not an end in themselves. They have a purpose: they help prepare us to meet Christ. For if the major theme of Advent is the coming of Christ, its hidden wisdom is the truth that Christ is not what we thought he would be. The people of Jerusalem did not expect the Messiah to be like Jesus. And we may have our own ideas of what Jesus is like. But he has a way of surprising us. The Lord is both more loving and more severe than we could have imagined. More demanding and more forgiving than we could have expected. As C.S. Lewis said, “Aslan is not a tame lion. But He is good.”

Advent is a time to discover Jesus anew, to be stirred in spirit and to ask, along with the people of Jerusalem, “Who is this?” To the extent that we enter the spirit of the Advent season, Christ will reveal Himself to us… and he will be more than we ever imagined, and in ways we did not expect.

So, beloved. Let us wake up and await with expectation the coming of the Lord. Let us cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light… or better still, let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision to gratify the desires of the flesh.

Behold our King cometh unto us. Let us prepare in heart and mind and body to meet him. Amen.