First Week of Advent: 2016 - 11/27/2016

WARNING PREACHY…

The symbolism of Advent is a time of expectation for us.  It is the time of year, leading up to Christmas Day when we expectantly await the celebration of Christ’s birth.  For the four Sundays leading up to Christmas Day we light a candle on the Advent wreath and focus on a particular aspect of the meaning of the Messiah who was born.

Hope…

The first candle of the wreath to be lit is a purple one and it represents Hope.  For the Jewish person of Mary’s day, there was a great expectant hope in the coming of Messiah, the Messiah was to be the restoration of the Nation of Israel.  The Messiah was going to be the rightful King of Israel from the direct line of King David of old.  The hope was that the king would free the people from Roman rule and establish the new reign and kingdom of Israel.  

Of course, that was not the case for Jesus and so he was executed on the Cross as a blasphemer.  Today, the Christian has the gift of hind sight, and we recognize that the Cross was the fulfillment of the Law and the beginning of the new Kingdom of Heaven.

However, today we do share in Israel’s story as we too are wondering in this dark world without hope.  The message of the gospel is that we humans need to escape the coming judgement of God, the great and terrible Day when God will judge the living and the dead according to sin.  But that the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus shows us that the consequences of sin has been destroyed, and all who repent and trust in Jesus by faith are given the grace of deliverance and eternal life.

This is the hope that we celebrate today, that the child, who is born in the manger on Christmas morning, is God’s life boat to us as people who were without hope.  But in faith, we may claim his Cross as our salvation and celebrate His coming into our dark world.

Our hope is in faith in the Christ of God and we begin the celebration of hope with the promise of the birth of the Christ child.

Luke 1:29-33

²⁹ Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰ But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. ³¹ You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

Matthew 1:20-21

²⁰ But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,^[f] because he will save his people from their sins.”
²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ²³ “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).