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O Clavis David — “O Key of David”
The Fourth Sunday Of Advent
We beseech thee, Almighty God, to purify our consciences by thy daily visitation, that when thy Son Jesus Christ cometh he may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The Fourth Sunday Of Advent
O Clavis David -- “O Key of David”
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A Sermon by
Fr. Daniels
✛
The Fullness of Time
The season of Advent, which we have been observing the last several weeks, continues for a few more days still. These last few weeks of worship have been marked by a clear tone of anticipation: a waiting for the second coming of the Lord on the last day; the return of Jesus Christ in glory. In our Sunday worship during this season, we have maintained that persistent focus on the last days.
It is only with this, the fourth and last Sunday of Advent, that our scripture readings turn to that first Christmas itself, the event of the nativity two thousand years ago. As our last reading from Saint Matthew concluded, Mary “brought forth her firstborn son” and his name was Jesus. It is only on the fourth Sunday of Advent, today, that we begin to look backward in time, also, instead of only forward. For several weeks we have lived in the present and looked forward to the future; in these last few days before Christmas, we now look to the past.
Now, I must confess that all of this can get confusing. We will say, “Advent is a period of waiting,” and that makes an intuitive sense: yes, it is waiting—for Christmas. And that is absolutely true. During Advent we wait and prepare for the Christmas Day that is coming soon, and we also put ourselves in the imaginative place of people 2,000 years ago who were waiting for the coming of the Messiah. Imaginatively thinking and feeling what they must have been thinking and feeling, as shown in our reading from the prophet Micah today.
So you can see why it gets confusing. All at one time we’re trying to talk about memories of the ancient past (a Hebrew prophet; a family in Bethlehem); the concrete demands of the present day; and the coming cosmic future. They are all happening, at one and the same time, which is right now. Past, present, and future here in our midst.
It can even be a little disorienting, this looking forward and backward at the same time. But that is as it should be, because this very chronological ambivalence and ambiguity is part of the story of the Christ child himself. That is because one of the things that it means for God to become a human being in Jesus Christ is that the God who exists outside of time physically joined us, creatures, to live within time. This is one of the things that the Word made flesh means: God’s physical entrance into time as well as space, in order to be with his people.
So far, so good, I hope. But, as you and I know, to be part of time, like we are, is necessarily to be limited by it. We do not only live within time, it governs our lives. We are subject to it, and subjection to time is inevitably tied up with loss. “Had we but World enough and Time,” said the poet to his beloved: but we don’t. In a world of finitude, there is neither world enough, nor time enough. In this world of not enough time, there are therefore tears and there is loss.
It is the radical claim of the Church that on Christmas Day, in a backwater town of the Roman Empire, the eternal God entered into that place of loss. On Christmas Day, the eternal king of kings put himself under the subjection of the passage of time.
This may sound hopelessly abstract, the kind of thing best left to dusty seminar rooms and boozy pubs, but the real-life consequences of this are enormous. It is an ancient insight that to be able to tell a story requires the movement of time: one thing happens, and then another thing happens, and so on. There are beginnings, and middles, and, yes, there are ends.
God’s entrance into time means that a story can be told about him and us, a common story in which we play a part, a story in which we have a personal relationship with the eternal God through his incarnate son, Jesus Christ. With this birth to Mary, the timeless enters time. The infinite takes on finitude. The inaccessible becomes accessible. The invulnerable becomes vulnerable. Jesus of Nazareth becomes Emmanuel: God with us.
So if we ever feel far away from God, we see in the coming few days not our ascent to God, but God’s willing descent to us. If we feel far away from God, we see, at every celebration of the Holy Eucharist, God’s drawing close to us in word and sacrament, present even in his absence. If we feel far away from God, we see during Advent how God Incarnate will be this story’s end: joining us, in the flesh, again. This reconciliation with God through Christ is the common story that links together every human being and is a part of every human life; this incarnation that is expressive of the divine love that is the very being of God.
But, of course, this expression of divine love comes at a cost—a great cost—to him. And this is the minor key that sounds within our jubilant Christmas celebration: for God freely to choose to enter the world is for God freely to choose to become vulnerable to a world of sin. And thus the child born in love would become the man killed by hate and indifference. To be subject to the passage of time is to accept limitation and finitude, vulnerability and death.
But for this incarnate Jesus, these limitations would not be the final word. Being vulnerable to death, he would confront it, accept it, and destroy it. In his death and resurrection, his ascension and mediation, he enables mortality to take on immortality; finitude to pass into infinitude; humanity to be transfigured into divinity; creator and creature to meet, one day, face to face.
This week we tell the story of the birth of the incarnate Christ, the story of our relationship with the one who was, and who is, and who is to come, again. The Alpha and the Omega. The beginning, the middle, and the end.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
