We pray for the coming of Jesus into our lives and the world, and in the love of Jesus we are re-made for lives of grace and service, alert not only to Jesus’ coming but also to the needs we are sent to serve.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, First Sunday of Advent, year C; texts: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-10; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

“O come, O come, Emmanuel.”  So we pray each Advent, so we sing today.  “Come, God-with-us.  Come and save us.”  We pray that prayer a lot in our Advent worship.  Hymn after hymn invites the coming of Christ into the world, into our lives.  The Prayers of the Day each week invite our Lord to be stirred up and to come and be with us.  Our readings for each of these four weeks all speak of the coming of Jesus in one way or another.  And so we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.”  “O come, O come, Emmanuel.  God-with-us.”

We should be careful what we pray for.  We just might get it.

Emmanuel is a name which means “God-with-us.”  This is a name Matthew tells us Jesus will receive.  But in Matthew’s Gospel that promise, that Jesus is God-with-us, isn’t really fulfilled until the ascension, after Jesus has risen from the dead.  Then he says, “Look, I will be with you always, to the end of the age.”  It’s a wonderful promise.  And so we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.”  “O come, O come, Emmanuel.  God-with-us.”

We should be careful what we pray for.  We just might get it.

Because we might not really be thinking about what is promised in the coming of Jesus, God-with-us, into the world.  Jeremiah speaks of the righteous Branch coming to “execute justice and righteousness in the land.”  That sounds like a really good thing.  Unless you’re the one implicit in the injustice, the one who’s not working for righteousness.  Jesus gives warnings in today’s reading from Luke, warnings of what will happen at the time of his return.  The coming of the Son of Man will result in the end of time, the end of all things, unexpectedly springing forth, like a trap.  He calls us, his followers, to be alert and always ready for his coming.  And so now, do we want to pray, “Come, Lord Jesus”?  “O come, O come, Emmanuel”?

We should be careful what we pray for, after all.  We just might get it.

Advent’s a funny season.

It’s become a season with fewer fans among Lutheran congregations these days.  Many churches take all of December to celebrate Christmas, trying to go along with the cultural beat in the society and in the stores.  There are pastors who argue for moving Advent to November and just realizing that saving Christmas music until December 24 isn’t working in the world.

But that belies an odd understanding, a limited view of what Advent truly is as a season.  The point of Advent is not just preparing for our Christmas song and celebration, and the music and readings of Advent certainly are very different from that focus.

The gift of actually celebrating Advent as we do here and as the Church has long done is that we are able to hear things we normally wouldn’t, and we are given the opportunity to see the fullness of what this season proclaims.  And it’s a little frightening, to tell the truth.

It is true that in part the coming we think we’re praying for and singing about is our yearly celebration of the birth of Jesus.  Advent helps us prepare for our Christmas celebration.

But it has been so much more for the Church in the hundreds of years it’s been observed.  Advent is really about three preparations: preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Incarnation of God in the world.  And preparing for the coming of our Lord at the end of time.  And as important, preparing for the coming of our Lord into our hearts and lives right now.

Those who would treat these four weeks as simply a warm-up to the Christmas celebration avoid the really terrifying thing about Advent.  The part we may seem to want to avoid: that we believe, and Advent reminds, that our Lord, having come and lived and died and risen from death, will come again.  And the other part we may seem to want to avoid: that we believe, and Advent reminds, that the same crucified and risen Lord has promised to come and be with us now.

These two comings are inextricably linked.  And they have serious implications for our lives.  We should be careful what we pray for.  We just might get it.

It’s possible that most of us don’t really want what we sing and pray for each Advent to really happen.  And it’s not just because we’re frightened about judgment when Jesus returns, though we certainly can be a little wary of that.

It’s more because if we look at what these readings and hymns and prayers are all saying, it is that when the Triune God comes to be with us, we change.  The world changes.  Our hearts change.  Our lives change.  If we just take December to sing our Christmas song we’ll be prepared for our Christmas celebration, if a little tired of the music perhaps.  But we won’t be prepared for the rest of Jesus’ coming.

These other themes of Advent have always been there, and the idea of Christ Jesus coming into our lives now, and preparing us for his coming at the end of the ages has been seen as a good thing by the Church.

We just don’t often see a lot of modern Christianity really talking about or looking forward to or hoping for changes of any kind associated with the coming of God-with-us.  “Come, Lord Jesus, comfort me when I’m blue, when I need you, when I struggle.”  That we hear a lot.  “Help me when I’m in pain.”

But “Come, Lord, and execute justice and righteousness in the land, as you promised in Jeremiah”?  This we don’t hear as often, at least in places like ours where Christians rightly suspect we might be part of the injustice ourselves.

But if we’re afraid of Jesus coming and changing us or the Church, we’re also missing the very center of the joy of the Good News that in Jesus, God is with us.

It is a truth worth noting that if our relationship of faith to the Triune God through the living, risen Lord of life doesn’t affect our hearts and lives enough to radically change us, then it logically doesn’t affect us at all.

In my life the most significant relationships I’ve had or have are the ones with people who deeply affect my heart, my life, my thinking, my reality.  People who don’t have an impact on me don’t have an impact on me.  It’s very simple.

And so it is with faith in Jesus.  If we long for the coming of Jesus into this broken world, the coming of God-with-us to heal the pain that we see and feel, we must recognize that if Jesus is going to do that, things are going to change.

Like an alcoholic who finally has to decide – is the pain of continuing as I am worse than the pain that will come if I try to be healed and find a new way – like that, we each need to decide the same thing.

Is the brokenness and pain of an empty life without God’s daily transforming presence, a life where I search for things that ultimately have no meaning, a life where I focus on myself and perhaps a few close by but not on the good I could do to the world around me, a life where I judge others rather than look into my own heart – is this empty life more painful than the pain and discomfort that will come if God changes my heart and I see things and live things differently?

Are the things I fear to confess to God worth keeping, if the pain they cause and the distance they make between me and God continues, or can I be open to God’s transforming power if the Son of God comes into my heart and life?  These are the kinds of questions we have.

If we spend time with our sisters and brothers in faith who have witnessed for 2,000 years to this new life, we would find they would say there’s no other way we’d really want to live, once we know it.  Life lived in the love of Jesus, they would say – though often complicated and confusing and difficult – is the only life that truly is life.  It’s the secret to the joy of Christian life: life lived in faith, in relationship to the Triune God through our Lord Jesus, is the only life worth living.

I’ve been saying we should be careful what we pray for.  But not if we know what we’re asking.

Our psalmist today is truly our guide to such open and willing prayer for such life with God.  Like the hymn, “O come, Emmanuel,” the psalmist also asks that God’s ways and paths be shown to us.  There is a willingness, a desire for change by God, for direction and guidance.  But there’s also a recognition of our fears: while asking for God’s guidance, the psalmist also asks God three things: remember that you are loving and compassionate, O Lord, don’t think of my sins when you remember me, and lastly, think of your love when you remember me.

It is our sinfulness, our lack of justice, our selfish disregard for the wrongs of this world, it is all the things that Jesus will need to forgive, remove, smooth away that give us the most fear.  We’re afraid that if Jesus comes, he will see us as unprepared, sinful, unready, unworthy.  The psalmist helps us know how to pray with that fear.

And Paul then gives us the answer of almighty God: Jesus will come to us, and yes, change us, but in so doing make us people prepared for his coming at the end of time.  The Lord, Paul says, will make us increase and abound in love for one another (inside our community) and for all (to the rest of the world.)  And even more, he will strengthen our hearts in holiness, Paul says, so that we in fact are blameless when our Lord returns at the end of time.  There will be nothing to fear, for he will make us ready.

And so to that end, with the prayers of the psalmist and Paul in mind, we can now hear Jesus’ encouragement: be alert, and pray.  We’re not staying watchful and alert because we’re afraid of punishment if Jesus returns.  We’re staying watchful because the world is broken and cracked and in need of God’s healing love.  And we want to be ready for our chances to bring that love.

We’re not praying because we selfishly want God to fix all our inconveniences or even all our difficult things.  We’re praying “Come, Lord Jesus” because we want to know in our hearts the joy of God’s love that only Jesus can bring – the joy we know in being forgiven, the peace we know in eating at this altar and leaving filled, the grace we know when God’s love calls us.  And we pray “Come, Lord Jesus” because we want everyone to know that love.

Like ointment on chapped legs on a below-zero day, God’s healing love stings us as it heals us.  It stings like crazy sometimes.  But it always heals us.  And changed by that love, we become the servants of God Jesus hopes for, the alert, watchful ones, who are looking for any chance we can find to bring that healing love to the brokenness of this world.

And so we do pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.  Come, Emmanuel, God-with-us.”

We pray knowing we’re hoping to get what we pray for.  Hoping for God to say, “OK, I’m here.  I’m going to need to remodel you a little, refit you so you can be a loving, gracefilled representative of mine in the world.”  We pray, hoping to hear that, knowing the remodeling might hurt a bit.  Maybe a lot.  But in the long run, it will make us like Jesus.

And then we become God’s answer ourselves, when others pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.”  God says: “you go.  It’s what I made you for.”

And so we pray.  Because, miracle of miracles, God promises to answer our prayer.  Come, Lord Jesus.  Come, God-with-us.  Come, Emmanuel.  Come to us and save us.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Jesus, the Son of God and King of all creation, rules and saves very differently from the way of the world.  As his disciples we are called to learn from how he uses (or doesn’t use) power, and so follow him with our lives.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Christ the King, Sunday 34, year B; text: John 18:33-37

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

There’s a powerful scene in the middle of Shakespeare’s Henry V where, on the eve of battle, King Henry disguises himself and walks amongst his troops, campfire to campfire, trying to sense what they are feeling and thinking.  This play shows Henry a man of the people, a king who shares himself with the commoner.  One could love such a king.

Except in the play and in history, there was a battle the next day, at Agincourt.  And this king waged brutal war to assert his claims of kingship.  He had control of England; he believed France was his by divine right and mandate, and was willing to sacrifice everything to regain authority over those lands.  Regardless of his feeling for the commoner, this king is a king like all others.  Ultimately his rule is defined and supported and extended and upheld by force and violence and threat.

There’s another great scene in history, though Shakespeare never set it.  It involves a minor governor in a vast empire, overseeing a scrap of land at the far eastern reaches of that empire.  And this minor governor is confronting an even more insignificant character, an itinerant preacher and healer who barely owns more than the robes on his back.  Except that this rabbi’s followers are calling him king, and his enemies have arrested him and condemned him to death.  And now the governor, as is his right by his own decree, must decide whether to issue the sentence of death to this so-called king.

As John the Gospel writer tells the story, Pilate, the governor, cannot understand this teacher, Jesus.  When asked if he is a king, Jesus answers “My kingdom is not from this world.  If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over.  But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

To Pilate, this is gibberish.  As it would be to any of us if someone started telling us that they were a ruler but their kingdom was not in or of or from this world.  Where, pray tell, would it be?  If Pilate could have heard an exchange between this insignificant man and his followers earlier that evening, at the time of his arrest, he’d have been even more convinced of the man’s delusions.  When one of his followers tried to resist arrest by swinging his sword, this Jesus told him to stop.  “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”  Then he added, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me twelve legions of angels?”  (Mt. 26:52-53)  Pilate would have known immediately that the sanity of this one was questionable.  72,000 angels at his beck and call?  With that kind of power, if it even existed, why would he look so bedraggled?  And why would he let these events, this trial and this imminent execution, happen to him?

Indeed, that is a good question.  We know who this Jesus was and is.  We know he was killed, and yet rose again from the dead.  We confess – that is, we say we believe – that this Jesus is Lord and King of the universe.  Son of the Most High God.  But if we do not come to grips with Pilate’s question, and indeed, the world’s question – what kind of king is this? – if we, like so many, believe when we call Christ King and Lord we mean a king and lord like the world is accustomed to know, like Henry V and all the rest, if we hold that view, we deny everything our King and Lord stands for and calls from us.  And we stand the risk of rejecting the salvation he so dearly bought for us.

Finally there is only one thing about this question that is true: there can be no way to look at the lordship of Jesus other than his way.

And his way is clear: he will rule by giving up his life for the sake of his beloved people.  He will set aside power to show us the way of the universe as it really is intended to be.

To follow Jesus in this way isn’t to deny that the Triune God has omnipotent power.  It’s simply taking seriously Jesus’ consistent message to us about how God chooses to deal with the pain of this world, how God chooses to reestablish rule over this disobedient planet.  Luther reminded us that of course we believe and know God is omnipotent and ruler of the universe.  But, he said, we can never know God in that way.  We can only know God in the way God chooses to be revealed to us; we are not capable of more.

And God chooses to be revealed to us in that scruffy rabbi being led to the cross.  That’s God’s self revelation.  To Pilate the governor.  To the Jewish leadership.  To the world.  Regardless of the Triune God’s power, this is God’s answer to the disobedience and wickedness and hate in the world.  To let all that disobedience and hate and wickedness do its worst.  To stand quietly in love and be killed.

Of course, when you kill the Lord of the universe, who created life, death itself is reversed and everything changes.  And this rabbi is now seen as the very Son of God, risen from death, in love.  But even in resurrection, his way, which is now called to be our way, doesn’t change.  Risen from death, Jesus continues to show us that God’s way is not the way of power and domination, but of love, invitation to follow, forgiveness, restoration, and grace.

This is a way that is counter to all our intuition, all our sense of how the world works.  It isn’t merely idle talk that Jesus says his kingdom, his rule, is “not from here.”  His way is as foreign to us as the most remote language or culture we could imagine on this planet.

And it is a matter of life and death that we begin to understand God actually means this.  This is the truth Jesus came to show, the truth he talks about to Pilate.  The true way to life and grace in this world.  “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice,” Jesus said.

So, how about we all start listening?  Wouldn’t that be a very good idea, considering what we claim about Jesus?

There are two areas we want to consider as we look at Jesus, listen to Jesus, understand Jesus.

First, our reality as members of a free society.  Regardless of which political solutions we prefer – and we can disagree about various possibilities – as followers of this different King, we are committed to peace, justice, and non-violence, with no exceptions.  If the God of the universe rejects violence as a way to achieve the desired end – a just, loving, obedient world – we can do no less.  And if the God of the universe, incarnate among us, rejected power as a means to an end, we can do no less.

We have just completed an election cycle which continued a trend of recent years where the deceit and hateful words have increased to the point of intolerability.  It is time that we who belong to such a king as Jesus hereby resolve that at least each of us will be and act differently toward our fellow citizens and leaders.  We cannot change others, nor is that asked of us.

But as followers of the true King, who rules our hearts with his death-defeating love, at least we can commit that we will not participate in hateful speech toward anyone, and we will not speak lies as far as we are able to speak truth, and we will work toward a culture which cares more about the poor and those on the fringes than one which only cares about who is in power and who won’t be pushed around by whom.

And we must remember that we belong to a free society, but one which has been deeply shaped and built by violence.  We have a national persona that the only way we can accomplish what we hope for on the global stage is by using might and force.  If national politicians even hint that they have a different understanding or approach these days, they find it very difficult to be returned to office.

So as Christians, followers of the true King, we are called to work and pray for ways to solve the world’s problems that involve diplomacy, generosity, and justice, and to be insistent that we not become a terrorist nation ourselves by imposing our will on others destructively and violently while we cloak it in the name of freedom.

This way, by the way, does not dishonor those who serve us in the military.  They are there to defend us in an increasingly dangerous and hate-filled world.  But we make their jobs infinitely harder when we play the aggressor and in fact raise the tensions and contribute to the hate.

The second area is our own personal way of living.  The truth Jesus reveals about God – that God’s way is self-giving love, a way that refuses to dominate or use violence but seeks to transform by invitation to new life, by resurrection from the way of death – this truth is what defines us.

So we become people who refuse to dominate, to manipulate, to achieve what we hope to see in life.  We become people who do not see life as something to be won, but to be lived, to be loved.  As servants of the servant King, we seek a life from Christ that is Christ, a life like his, a love like his.

Too often even Christians have disdained this as too unrealistic.  To that we can only say, maybe so.  But it is the way our Lord has set for us.  It is not for us to decide how realistic it is.  It is the only way, the only truth, Jesus shows us.  Those who live by the sword, Jesus said, will die by it.

And when we consider these two areas, our public life and our private life, we must always remember how different a king Jesus is.  In fact, Jesus is so committed to this way, he will not force us to live by it.  Unlike Henry and all the rest, unlike most of the world, he is willing to risk losing us all, having us all disobey and walk away, for the sake of having even one of us willingly follow and live in the way of justice and peace.  Remembering that Jesus has enough power to dismantle even any modern government, not just ancient Rome, we stand in awe when we realize he still will only rule over us by our choice, by our willingness to follow.

This is our King, the true King of the Universe, and there is no other way than his way.

Risen from death, he calls us to die to the ways of power and rise with him to the way of love.  We may be as confused as Pilate.  We may be tempted to think as people always have that we would use power in ways that wouldn’t end up destructive.  That’s the way the world works, we think, we know.

But that is not the way of life, according to the crucified and risen Lord of Life.  No matter how tempted or confused we might be, we know that much.  Our King rules in a kingdom, a reign, that is not from here.  But it is a rule of life for all people.  And the grace of our King is that we have the love of our King to lead us, invite us, and transform us.  May we all follow his call, and so transform the world with this new way, God’s way.  It’s how our King lived and acted; it’s now what the King has asked of us.  God help us do so.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen