4th Sunday of Advent, Year B
Preached at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Previous Years: 2020 || 2017
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/god-fulfills-his-promises-1703449090/
Transcript
Thanks to J.Y. for editing this transcript.
As per usual, in order to understand Saint Paul’s reading today, you have to kind of get behind the grammar. He writes in such a way—and I think this is an artifact of the Greek—that there is just a lot going on in a different sentence structure than we’re used to in English. So, this is what’s going on. The main sentence is: To Him who can strengthen you…be glory forever and ever. Amen. That’s the reading. But then he puts a bunch of stuff in the middle explaining who God is and three ways in which God strengthens us.
First, he says, according to my Gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ. So, the first way in which God strengthens us is by looking at the cross—by declaring that Christ suffered and died for us, but that death did not keep Him bound. He rose again from the dead conquering the enemies of humanity, the great enemies of sin and death. Gospel is a term in the ancient world that was actually a very specific thing; it was used to describe the Emperor sending messengers out to declare a great military victory. So, Saint Paul says, to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus is to proclaim His victory over sin and death, and the proclamation of that victory gives us strength. It is the foundation of our faith, and it is the primary source of our strength.
The third way that Saint Paul says that God can strengthen us is: according to the command of the eternal God, made known to all nations to bring about the obedience of faith to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ. This is the law of God, the scriptures, and especially the Old Testament. They are very taken with the wisdom of God; they are very taken with the law of God. Unlike modern Americans, who are really invested in personal liberty, law was seen as a gift given to humanity by the Lord because it told people how to live a good and fulfilling life. If you follow the laws of God and the Psalms, preach this. The Book of Wisdom unsurprisingly preaches this: if you follow the laws of God, your life gets better. You find that you are happier. You are more fulfilled. Your humanity clicks in some really important way. And so, God strengthens us through His laws. He strengthens us by helping us know how we were created and the source of our happiness. He gives us patterns to follow that help us be more like His Son, Jesus Christ.
So, He strengthens us through the proclamation of the victory of Jesus over death. He strengthens us by teaching us about our humanity and how to live. And then that middle way that Saint Paul mentions, He strengthens us according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret for long ages and now manifested through the prophetic writings. He strengthens us by showing us that He has loved us from the beginning—2,000 years before Jesus comes, God is already enacting His plan. About 1,600 years, I think, is when Abraham happened; in 1,600 BC, God is calling Abraham into faith. He is raising up a people who will eventually become the Jewish people. He is working with these people over the course of millennia. He forms a people who will be able to finally receive Himself, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The prophecy given to David is given about a thousand years before Jesus is born. God says that He is going to build up a house for David, not a house of brick and mortar like David was proposing to build, but a house of inheritance, a kingdom, a kingship, a throne is given to David. And so, when that promise is made to David, I suppose David imagines this is a secular kingship of this world where David is a king, his sons will be kings, their sons will be kings, and so forth. Forever they will sit on the same throne in the same city; they will run the same kingdom. He’s imagining it likely through worldly terms. God is working with David, and God fulfills the promises to David and to the Jewish people. He fulfills every promise that He made for 2,000 years, in a way that is so much more elevated than we could ever have imagined. He was preparing for 2,000 years for the coming of His Son. He was making promises that we could not understand, just to fulfill them in a way that we would rejoice in.
He comes to Mary and fulfills that promise. The angel Gabriel tells her He will be great and will be called son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of David his father. At this point, the Davidic kingship had been gone for 500 years, the 500 years since the Babylonian captivity. Mary is receiving something that the Jews at that point thought was impossible, that the throne of David would be restored: and the Lord God will give Him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end. That promise made to David that seemed impossible at the time—how can a kingdom last forever? A promise reinvigorated, renewed when made to Mary, and then fulfilled in a way where it finally makes sense. This is how we can have a forever King, because God Himself is the King. This is how the Davidic kingship can continue, because God Himself sits on the throne. God’s people had been waiting for this moment for 2,000 years before it is revealed to Mary. And we today—2,000 years after that, and 4,000 years after God began His plan—we continue to wait, but we wait knowing that the promises have been fulfilled. We wait already seeing the victory that has been promised to us, already seeing the wisdom of God that has been given to us, knowing that that waiting is not in vain. It is not a promise that we have questions about. Instead, it is the annual renewal of a promise made to us over the course of millennia. God strengthens us by showing us His fidelity. He makes promises to us, and He fulfills them—meaning that our strength comes from knowing that God will always be faithful to us. God will always fulfill His promises. That promise is always fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Lord who has come and who is to come. The Lord that we continue to await with great anxiety, knowing how beautiful it is when God fulfills His promises as He always does, and waiting once again to see and to celebrate that fulfillment.
Fr. Moore 