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

The Second Sunday in Advent
December 7, 2008

The Reverend Tony Barnard

We are on a quest, this Advent, you and I together, to discover the real miracle of Christmas. Not so much the miracle of the virgin birth or the miracle of the mystery of the incarnation, but how it was that this vulnerable child, born in a stable, laid in a manger; this infant ‘muling and puking in his mother’s arms’ became the Messiah, who saved and saves the world. That the people of God, at the time of Jesus, expected a messiah is not in doubt. They longed for God to act. To ‘tear the mountains and come down,’ as we heard last week. They looked for a moment of judgement, when God’s messiah, a king like David, would challenge and vanquish their enemies and bring them the blessing of new life, in a kingdom of power. Jesus, however, came and challenged them to change their ways. He taught them a better way to live, and led them into a kingdom of love. How did this happen, we dared to ask last week? Why did he not gain their acclaim by meeting their expectation? And I suggested the answer might lie in the idea that he pondered the Scriptures and questioned the tradition, and that, gradually, his mind was formed, by what he read there. Now, I know that this is to treat Jesus as thoroughly human, but I believe that we should not be afraid to do this.

Let me share a picture with you. A Christian artist, I know, Mark Cazalet, has a remarkable gift for portraying aspects of the Christian tradition, in challenging ways. One of his recent pictures shows Mary and Elizabeth having a picnic. While his cousin John (the Baptist) is running around, Jesus is being taught to walk by Mary. This is a human child, learning as he grows up. Perhaps we do not often think of Jesus in this way, but let’s continue to explore how the mind of Jesus might have developed, and led him to conclude that he needed to be a prophet messiah.

We will start from Caesarea Philippi. All three Synoptic Gospels (Matt., Mark and Luke) record that Jesus asked his disciples ‘who do men say that I am?’ They reply, ‘some say that you are John the Baptist, others Elijah or one of the prophets, like Jeremiah.’ The people would know, as the disciples would know, and Jesus himself, that Moses had said, a thousand years or more before, that the Lord would raise up a prophet from among the people, and that indeed he had; many of them, generation after generation. They would also recall that the last prophet, Malachi, had said that God would send Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord (4.1-6): the day on which God ‘will burn the evildoers, but heal those who fear his name.’

And now, here was, first, John the Baptist, whom the people had flocked to, according to the Gospels, and then Jesus. Perhaps he was the prophet who should come, and their dreams were about to be realised. But then Jesus did not behave as they expected, preparing them for glory, instead he challenged them to change their way of life, and to learn to love. Why? What had they got to learn? What led him to act this way? Why had Jesus rejected the message of judgement they longed to hear; the message of the burning of the wicked and the blessing of the just, and followed ... Well, whom had he followed? Do you recall, from last week, the example of Amos, who knew he had to roar for God? Jesus could equally have followed another prophet -- Jeremiah.

Like Amos, Jeremiah, some 100 years later, is in no doubt about the failings of the people. They need to change their ways he says (ch.7), execute justice one with another, cease to oppress the alien, fatherless and widow, stop shedding blood, and going after other gods. “You steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to other gods and then come and stand in my temple and say ‘we are saved’”, he says. And one day, he goes into the town and watches a potter. As he treads the wheel and works the clay, it goes out of shape, and he starts again; he throws a new pot. Well, that is enough for Jeremiah. God is the potter and we are the clay, he thinks, and God could start again, with another people. But he goes further. He calls together the leaders of the people, and he takes them to the city wall, and throws a beautiful pot over the wall. It smashes on the ground below. ‘Koh amar Yahweh,’ says the prophet. ‘Thus says the Lord: so will I break this people.’ How might this story affect Jesus?

Jesus would see that the people are not entirely free under the Roman yoke, but he would have been more concerned to see, as he grew up, the injustice within his own people: the exclusion of the poor, the maimed, the leper and the gentile. Surely he would have wondered if the People of God were living the right way; living by love and sharing that love with all. Going back to the prophets he would see Isaiah summing it up all too clearly. ‘My Beloved had a vineyard, on a fertile hill, planted with choice vines’ he says in chapter 5, and ‘he looked for grapes and it yielded wild grapes.’

‘The Vineyard of God is the house of Israel. He looked for justice but behold bloodshed; for righteousness but behold a cry’. Jesus will, of course, use this same parable in Mark 12, and he will use it to challenge his contemporaries about their way of life.

And there is more in these prophets that we see reflected in the life of Christ. Jesus would surely spot how Hosea says to the people: “I desire mercy not sacrifice; the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (6.6). And Amos, again, “Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gates” (5.15). Then Micah sums up, beautifully, what God wants from his people:

“He has showed you, People of God, what is good, and what does the Lord requires of you -- but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (6.8)

Then, again, Jesus would see something else in the record of God’s servants, the prophets. These spokespersons for God were not well received. People do not like to be told that their established way of life is heading in the wrong direction.

Jeremiah is, again, an outstanding example, He probably tells us more about his inner life than any other prophet. He is put in the stocks, thrown into a muddy well, and at one point he cries out: “Cursed be the day on which I was born -- Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?” (20.14-18). And how could Jesus have missed that incredible passage in Second Isaiah (40-55)? Chapter 53 describes the treatment of the true servant of God.

“He was despised and rejected by all, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

As we read the story of Jesus in the New Testament, can we doubt that he knew that he had to be a prophet messiah, recalling the people, challenging them to turn back to God in trust and love, at whatever cost? As he pondered the Scriptures, we might say, his mind was made up: he had to challenge for change.

The people of his day longed for God to act on their behalf. They longed for a prophet to come and usher in the time of judgement, when the wicked would get their just deserts and God’s faithful people inherit the Kingdom, in fulfilment of the promise to Abraham. John the Baptist indeed came and began to prepare the people for this moment. ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’ he cried, but as our Gospel reminds us today, he also spoke of one, ‘more powerful than I, who will baptise you with the Holy Spirit’. Yet, when Jesus came he did not pat them on the back for their loyalty to God and reward them, leading them to victory and glory, he came to recall them to their way of life, the way of loving service of God. He saw the marginalized, those on the edge of society, those cut off from temple worship and seen as of little account, those excluded from the membership of God’s people; the tax-gatherers, the prostitutes and sinners of our Gospels, with whom Jesus mingled to the horror of the religious leaders and of whom he said “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

It was as though Jesus was saying ‘don’t just keep a clean slate and wait for the Kingdom to come, go out and love the people into the Kingdom now;’ or perhaps ‘don’t ask what God can do for you, but rather what you can do for God’! My eye was caught by the phrase in the Epistle for today from 2 Peter -- “what sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (3.11-12).

The coming of Jesus the Messiah was not comfortable for the People of God in his day. Pondering the Scriptures, he knew that he had to open their eyes and unlock their hearts to the need for love and the renewal of life for all. And I have to ask, whether his coming would be any different today.

He would see a world desperately in need of love. He would see nations, which are war-torn; peoples who are hungry and homeless; societies, which are marred by inequality and racked by injustice hatred and violence. He would also see a church concerned to help, faithful in worship but disunited and lacking confidence and courage at the point of delivery. Would he applaud our loyalty to God or would he challenge us to change, which is what repentance is about? ‘Metanoia,’ in the Greek, which means change of heart or mind, a turning in a new direction.

I think the latter, and I would suggest that as, once again, we celebrate this Christmas, this coming of the Messiah; we should expect to be challenged. The Scriptures suggest that God has a purpose for his people, and that he found it necessary, generation after generation, to send his prophets to recall them, as they drifted from the way of love. Christmas is always a joyful occasion, as we remember the coming of Christ, but Christians and Christian communities may need to ask whether they are ready to receive the Christ child into their lives, again. Whether they are ready to be challenged to look again at their way of life, and check it against the sort of life God requires to bring salvation to a needy world today. Perhaps we may even have to ask what in our way of life, individually and corporately, hinders us from walking along the path of unselfish love; the way which recognises the need of all to be included, the need to be life-giving, life-sharing, active for God in building the Kingdom of love.

For this is our task, our calling, and our responsibility. If the Messiah, who came, is to continue to come into lives today, working for the salvation of all, then we must love utterly: waiting and hastening!

And just one final thought -- about looking for a prophet messiah. Are we ready to face the cost?

The cost of change; the cost of selfless love, which following Christ along the way of love may bring?