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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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Mighty God, Everlasting Father |
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Isaiah 9:6-7 Third
Sunday of Advent December 16, 2007 It is no surprise that the Great God who created and preserves this world should visit this planet. The love that caused Him to create us to be the recipients of His love, and to enjoy the wonder and glory that is God, would naturally lead Him to visit us, no matter how fallen or detestable we have become in our ever quickening rush into sin. He would be entirely justified if He were to leave us to perish in our own wickedness. He would be entirely justified if He were to consume us in His wrath. Any thinking person would agree with me on this, when considering the blood-stained history of our race, the misery we have heaped upon one another and ourselves by our greed and hate and ignorance, and by our willful rejection of the way we know to be the way of peace and justice and goodness. Any thinking person is forced to reject the common myth that man is basically good and suffers only from bad influences and a bad moral environment. Any thinking person is forced to the conclusion that we have created the bad influences and moral environment by our own volition, and that each one of us has contributed to it and increased it, by our own sin. And yet, the Divine Love will not, cannot let us go. He must come to us. He must let His Light shine in our darkness. He must call to us, and warn us of the dangerous state of this world and our own souls. He must confirm to us again that His way is The Way, the Only Way of life and peace and hope. His Love constrains Him to do this. So we are not surprised to read in the Bible that He walked in the garden and called unto fallen Adam and Eve. We are not surprised to read that He appeared to Moses in the burning bush, or that He came to the people of Israel on Mt. Sinai with thunder and lightning and earthquakes. We are not surprised to find that He called to Noah in an audible voice, or that He spoke through prophets and signs and wonders. We are not surprised to read that He will one day appear in a way that is visible to all people in all places, coming with legions of angels in a great revelation of His glory and power. These are exactly the things we expect of God. These are the ways we expect Him to act. Far from being surprised at these actions, we are surprised at the scarcity of them. We would expect more of them rather than less. So our surprise is not that God visits the world, but that He chose to come to us as a tiny, helpless child. I remember a reading I did at our school Christmas pageant back in the days when we still had such events in our public life and in the public schools. The reading expressed the surprise of the Wise Men at finding Christ in a barn and a manger. They were looking for a king, and they expected a palace and pomp. They found instead a peasant child, devoid of all the outward signs of royalty and greatness. Could this be the king they had traveled so far to see? Is this the God of all Creation? Is this the way God visits His world? It seems impossible, or, at least, incredible. And yet, “unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given…and his name shall be called…The mighty God, The everlasting Father.” Nothing could be more clear than that this child is God come to us. What Godly contrasts we see here from the One who’s foolishness is wiser than the wisdom of man. The greatest city on earth at the time of the birth of Christ, was mighty Rome. Rome was all things. It was the center of power, of religion, of commerce, of education, of style, of fashion. In a grand palace in that great city, sat the emperor, Caesar Augustus, master of the world. Armies marched at his command. Nations rose and fell at his will. Wealth beyond imagination was his to enjoy, and privilege to do as he alone wished belonged to him. Jerusalem was the main center of Roman power in a tiny outpost of the Empire called Judea. It had once been the capitol city of a nation, now it was just the home of a Roman garrison and governor. It was poor, weak, hungry, dirty, and lived out its life under the heel of Roman oppression. Not far from this insignificant town, lay an even more insignificant village named Bethlehem. Not a golden city of beautiful people, no resort filled with grand houses, Bethlehem was a humble town of run down huts and dirty streets. It was, we might say, a slum. And it was not even in the humblest of these houses that the Child was born, but in the barn, crowded with livestock, that a peasant girl brought forth her first-born. Yet, here lies the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father. I am reminded of the experience of Elijah in 1 Kings 19. You may remember that Elijah was depressed and afraid and living in a cave when the word of the Lord came to him to go out of the cave and stand on a mountain. So Elijah went out of the cave to the top of the mountain and there he saw; “a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice,” (1 Kings 19:11-12). The Lord was not in the wind, the quake, the fire, He was not in the massive and great, and powerful things. He was “in” that is, He showed Himself in and worked through, the still small voice. He uses the small and weak things to accomplish His will. He was not in Caesar or Rome. He was not in armies or power or money or any of the things man views as great and worthy. He was in the run-down village, in the barn, in the manger, in the Child. There was The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father. Let us pray, Almighty and Everlasting God, who came to us as the Child in a manger, grant us grace to listen to Thy still small voice. In the name of Thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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