Living the Real Miracle of Christmas Today - Looking for the Messiah

The First Sunday in Advent
November 30, 2008

The Reverend Tony Barnard

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Through Advent, we are going to dare to explore the mind of Christ. At one level this does not sound like an Advent theme. Advent is the time of preparation for Christmas, and Advent is about coming. Traditionally one might take as one’s theme -- ‘He came’ -- ‘He comes’ -- and ‘He will come again.’ Picking up that last theme, one might preach a series on the end: Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. We shall not do any of that, but we will, instead, try to understand how the mind of Christ developed. How was it that this vulnerable child, this ‘infant, muling and puking in his mother’s arms’ (to misquote Shakespeare) became the Messiah, who changed the face of the world? For this is the real miracle of Christmas. Not virgin birth, not God coming to earth, but the fact that a carpenter’s child, born in a stable, should become the expected Messiah, the saviour of the world. But what do we mean by the expected Messiah? The word really means ‘anointed one’. Kings and prophets were anointed; chosen and marked if you like; picked out by God. Rather as Samuel anoints first Saul and then David to be king. Not so different from the mark of the cross made on your forehead at baptism. The ‘People of God’, at that time were looking for God to act, on their behalf, and bring forward an anointed leader -- a Messiah.

The people’s life was not great. The Romans had taken over from the Greeks. They were ruled by foreigners, heavily taxed; their lives constrained by rule and regulation. It had been like this for centuries. Before the Greeks, it had been the Persians, before them the Babylonians and Assyrians. And yet, they were supposed to be the chosen people; they had been promised blessing and a good life, in a land flowing with milk and honey. Surely, they thought, the God who had acted in the past, who had led them to freedom through the Red Sea and into the Promised Land, would come again, in power, and set them free, giving them a new life of blessing.

“O that you would tear the heavens and come down … so that the mountains would quake at your presence, and the nations would tremble.” And the scriptural passage (Isaiah 64) continues, in v.9, “Now consider (‘Think about it’) we are your people.”

“O come, O come, Emmanuel” (God with us) as the great hymn says, “come and save us … come and ransom captive Israel, mourning in exile.” “Come and sort us out,” they might have said, “bless your people and judge the oppressive nations.” This of course is where the element of judgement comes in. You must have seen it pictured. I think of the Tympanum at Vezelay, or the chancel arch in a mediaeval church in Salisbury (UK), where the souls of the dead go to heaven, with the angels and apostles, or to hell, with the devils!

Jesus, however, did not fulfil their expectation. They may have looked for God to send a king like David, who would lead them to victory and freedom, but Jesus came and challenged their way of life, speaking with an authority they found it difficult to accept. He refused to give them a sign which would assure them of his credentials; he gave them the slip when they tried to make him king; he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, not a charger; he wept over the city (their pride and joy) and died an ignominious death. Some Messiah!! They looked for a messiah to challenge their enemies, applaud their way of life and lead them to victory and a kingdom of power: Jesus challenged them, taught them a better way of life, and led them into a kingdom of love. So- why did it happen? How did it come about?

3 clues and an example: First, turn to the story, in Luke, of his birth and notice that when the shepherds, alerted by the angels, go to Bethlehem, they ‘made known the saying which had been told them concerning the child.’ It is there, in Luke 2.11 -- “A child is born in the city of David; a saviour who is Christ (Greek for Messiah) the Lord.” And all who heard it, Luke records, “wondered at what the shepherds said”. But, and note this, “Mary kept all these things pondering them in her heart.”

I find this a powerful word “pondering”. It may be what Jesus did, ponder the Scriptures. It may be what we should do too- ponder …And, secondly, further on in the same chapter of Luke, Jesus and his parents go to Jerusalem, for the Passover. And you all know the story- he gives them the slip and is eventually found in the Temple, sitting with the teachers “listening to them and asking them questions.” When his parents remonstrated with him, what did he say? “Surely you knew I had to be ‘in my father’s house’ or more probably ‘about my father’s business.’ And, once again we are told that Mary kept all these things in her heart. We know so little about the infant Jesus, but this story should, surely, not be overlooked. It reveals Jesus thinking about his faith -- questioning the tradition -- and pondering, as his mother before him. Clue three: The story of Emmaus -- Unrecognised, Jesus joins the friends on their way back from Jerusalem, sad, because of the crucifixion. “We had hoped, they say, that he was the one to redeem Israel.” They had pinned all their hope- that hope of which we spoke earlier -- on this charismatic character, and now he was dead. In response, Jesus ‘beginning with Moses and all the prophets’ interprets the Scriptures to them (Luke 24 v.27).

Later, when they have recognised him, in the breaking of bread, and he has vanished from their sight, they say to one another some very significant words. “Did not our hearts burn within us, while he talked with us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” v.32

As if this were not enough, Luke later records that, before he ascended, Jesus ‘opened the minds (of the disciples) to understand the Scriptures’ v.45. Was it the most important thing he could do for them?

Three clues, which, I believe, may tell us how Jesus, ‘muling and puking in his mother’s arms’ became the confident Messiah. He pondered the Scriptures, searching for their meaning; he questioned the teachers, about their meaning; and they became the most important thing he would share with his disciples before he left them. He had surely concluded that the scriptures were the key to the Kingdom and to his messiahship. And one example:

We get several insights into how the prophets worked, but one of the best is surely Amos. Three times, in chapter 7, this C.8th BC prophet gives us an insight into how he knew what God wanted him to say to the people of his day. Imagine him- a shepherd, out on the hills with his sheep, watchful, concerned to keep them safe and find good pasture for them. And, at the same time, a man of faith, zealous for God and anxious about the way of life of the People of God, of whom he was a part.

According to his book, he would go on to be highly critical of them. He describes them as ‘drinking wine in bowls, anointing themselves with the finest oils and failing to grieve over the condition of those in their care’ (6.6). Suddenly he sees a plague of locusts- swooping down -- stripping bare the grass of the fields and the leaves of the trees, and something clicks for him!

Why could God not act and abandon this people, who had let him down? When he then sees a fire, equally devastating, the same thought comes. And then, on his day off, he is walking near home and sees a builder using a plumb line to measure the line of a wall. What if God should test the value of his people in a similar way?

And so the conviction is born. He must speak for God and warn the people of the judgement to come. “The Lion has roared, he says (3.8), who will not fear?

The Lord God has spoken, who can but prophesy?”

Thus, Jesus, I would suggest, pondering, questioning and exploring the scriptures, and knowing the way of life of those around him, concludes that he is called to be the voice of God, the Messiah. Not the Messiah they were expecting, but the anointed messenger, calling on the people to repent, to change the direction of their lives. This is the real miracle of Christmas. What that meant will be our concern for the next three Sundays, but do not imagine that we shall be content simply to explore the nature of the Messiah, who came all those years ago. No, Advent is also about his coming today, and in the future. But, if he is to come today, to enter into the lives of people now, then I would suggest that it is us, this community at St Mark’s, the community at Lichfield Cathedral, Christian communities the world over, who must discover what it means to be the anointed messengers of God, bringing salvation to a needy world, and so working for the kingdom of God to be realised on earth as it is in heaven.

As we keep Advent and explore the mind of Jesus- ‘seeking new life through our stories’, as your education motto suggests, the question is ‘Are we ready to take on messiahship today?’ Can we take on what we shall discover Jesus took on as he grew from the ‘muling and puking infant’ to be the Saviour of the world?