Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church; December 10, 2023
Readings: Isaiah 9:2, 6, 7 (children’s talk); Luke 1:67-79; Mark 14:55-64; True Christian Religion §205
Our topic today is waiting for the advent of the Lord. Before He was born there were so many people who longed for His arrival. Yet when at last He did make His advent, so many people were disappointed. There were people who believed in Him—who recognized Him for who He was. But there were others who felt that He wasn’t what they’d been waiting for. So what we’re really talking about today is expectations. Many of us, in one way or another, are waiting to feel the presence of God. But how often do we end up waiting for the wrong thing—for a Savior that we’ve invented, instead of the one who is actually coming to us? Maybe sometimes we long for the Lord to come to us, even though He is already here.
Our next reading is the prophecy that Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, delivers after his son is born. This prophecy is all about the recognition that the moment has come: the promises are being kept. The Messiah is about to be born. We read: [Luke 1:67:79].
Clearly, Zacharias gets it. He says that the Lord has “visited and redeemed His people” (Luke 1:68); he says that the Lord has “raised up a horn of salvation in the house of His servant David” (v. 69). That horn of salvation means Jesus Christ—the Savior, who came to deliver His people from the hand of their enemies (v. 74). And Zacharias says that the Lord is doing as He has spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets, who have been since the world began (v. 70). Zacharias recognizes that thousands of years of prophecies are now being fulfilled. The Lord is doing what He said He would do. This is the moment.
This prophecy gives us a picture of the way that the world was meant to receive the Lord. Zacharias’s words are full of joy and hope, and that’s what everyone should have felt. Of course, Zacharias wasn’t the only one who “got it.” His wife Elizabeth got it. The wise men who crossed desserts to find the Lord got it. So did the shepherds and Simeon and Anna. And obviously Mary and Joseph knew that a miracle had happened. But that list might be it; as far as we know, the rest of the world had no idea that anything special had happened.
When Jesus was born, His mother laid Him in a manger, “because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7). In the internal sense of the Word, an inn symbolizes a place of instruction; so it symbolizes the church (AE §706.12; De Verbo §7.5). When the Lord was born, there was no room for Him in the church.
And the fact that the church that had longed for Him also wasn’t ready to receive Him only became clearer after He began His public ministry. There were people who believed in Him. But others complained that His teachings were too hard (John 6:60). For the most part, even those who did recognize something good in Him weren’t quite sure who He was; they scratched their heads and said, “Could this be the Son of David?” (Matt. 12:23). On Palm Sunday a crowd sang and shouted for the Lord, and all of Jerusalem was stirred up (Matt. 21:9-11; John 12:12, 13). But a short while later the crowd turned against Him, and the people of Jerusalem shouted out that He should be crucified (Matt. 27:20-22; Mark 15:11-14; Luke 23:18-23; John 19:13-15)
And the fact that the Lord was crucified is the final proof that the church He was born into didn’t to receive Him as its God. The movement to get Him crucified was spearheaded by the leaders of that church. Our next reading is part of Mark’s account of the Lord’s trial before those leaders. The thing to bear in mind, as you listen to this, is that these people trying the Lord knew all of the prophecies. They’d heard the reports of Jesus’ mighty works. They’d been given every opportunity to know that the Man before them was the One whose coming had been foretold. We read: [Mark 14:55-64].
The moment described here is tragic. Jesus, standing before the high priest, is asked a direct question: “Are you the Christ?” (Mark 14:61). And He answers, “I am” (v. 62). In just two words He tells those men that the One they’ve been waiting for is standing in front of them. Everything has been fulfilled; the Son of God is before their eyes. And they don’t just fail to recognize Him: they decide that He has told a blasphemous lie, and is deserving of death (v. 64).
How did these people miss the mark so completely? The Gospel paints a pretty clear picture of their mentality, so it isn’t too hard to figure out where they went wrong. But here’s a clear, succinct statement from the teachings of the New Church, from the book True Christian Religion. This is describing the general state of the people of the church at the time the Lord was born. [Read §205].
The Lord’s people missed Him, when He came to them, because they were waiting for someone who would lead them to worldly glory, not someone who would lead them to heaven. They wanted a Messiah who would exalt them above all the nations of the world (TCR §205)—and the key word there is “wanted.” They missed the truth, not because they were incapable of seeing it because they had set their heart on something different. To be fair, many of the prophecies of the advent are hard to understand, and many of them do seem to speak of the Messiah establishing a glorious kingdom. So it’s hard to blame the people—especially the common, uneducated people—for having some misguided expectations. The real problem was that so many of them refused to adjust their expectations after the Lord came to them, and showed them who the Christ really was. And of course, Zacharias and other learned people, like the wise men, were able to recognize that Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of those prophecies. So people like the chief priests and the Pharisees, who were also learned, could have understood a little better. But they didn’t want to.
It might seem like we’re picking on a specific group of people who lived a long time ago. But this problem isn’t unique to a specific group of people—this is a human phenomenon. Not the part about hating the Lord, per se, but the part about false expectations. Surely all of us have, at one point or another, been disappointed by a good thing, because we were expecting something different. This can happen in small ways and in big ways. Children are sometimes disappointed with their Christmas presents, if they don’t get what they wished for. Maybe this happens to adults too—though if we step back and think about it, it’s absolutely outrageous to be disappointed with a gift. Expectations are also notably problematic when it comes to relationships, such as marriages. It’s easy for people to form unreasonable expectations for their partners, or to expect their partners to be someone other than who they are. It’s not that all expectations are bad: there are things that we should expect of the people who are close to us. It’s just that we human beings are good at taking what we want—what we wish for—and turning it into an expectation.
And we certainly can do this to the Lord. He made His advent two thousand years ago, but on another level His advent is ongoing. He is constantly reaching out, pressing and urging to be received; and when we receive Him, it’s as though He comes to earth all over again (TCR §766, see §774). Just on a smaller scale. From time to time, in varying ways and to varying degrees, we recognize that we need Him. We feel like we’re out of answers, and we long for light. We feel tired, or grief-stricken, or just plain overwhelmed, and we long for comfort. We celebrate Christmas, and we long for that special feeling—that warmth that let’s us know He’s here.
Sometimes we get what we want. Other times we wait and wonder. God alone knows what we really need, and He alone knows the plan for getting it to us. Maybe sometimes we just need to wait a little longer. But it’s perfectly possible that God is already here—that what we need is knocking at the door—and that we’ve been missing it, because we’ve been looking for the wrong thing. We’ve been waiting for the Savior we want, the Savior that we’ve fashioned in our heads, instead of the Savior who is actually coming to us.
There are lots of different ways that we might do this. We might be waiting for a Messiah who will dazzle us with holy feelings—a Savior who will hurl out the old and usher in the new with spiritual thunder and lightning. When yet God might be speaking to us not with thunder, but with a still small voice (cf. 1 Kings 19:12). Or it could be the other way around: we could be waiting for a quiet God, a God who will pat us on the back and say that everything is okay, when in fact God is here, but what He’s saying is, “You need to take up your bed and walk; there’s something you need to do, before your heart can be at peace again” (cf. John 5:8). We could be waiting for God to show up and fix everybody else, and be completely tuning Him out because He’s trying to tell us that our energy and attention need to be directed within. We could be waiting for a God who cares just as much about worldly things as we do, or a God who is all about our cause—who sees the world through the lens of the political campaign or social crusade or even the religious mission that we’re invested in. When yet God might be saying, “This cause is worthy, but there are good things beyond this, and My kingdom is not of this world. The place where you will meet Me face-to-face is deeper within” (cf. John 18:36).
The list could go on. We could invent a thousand different saviors; but there is only one Lord. If we’re waiting for the wrong thing—if we’re being blinded by our expectations—how do we recognize that? How do we penetrate that fog? The answer, for good or for ill, is that it’s a process. Zacharias, John the Baptist’s father, recognized that the prophecies were being fulfilled and that the Lord was about to be born. But before that happened he was punished for being unwilling to believe the angel Gabriel: for nine months he was unable to speak (Luke 1:20) In that time he must have learned some humility, because when at last he spoke, he spoke out in praise of God (v. 64). People tend not to learn much without hitting some bumps in the road. That’s part of the process; we go through our trials and tribulations. There is no silver bullet. As we keep trying, the Lord leads us into clearer light.
But trying means doing. We won’t “get” the Lord just by sitting around and pondering Him. If we want to recognize Him when we find Him, we need to live as He teaches. The life that fills the teachings of the Word is the Lord Himself; when we’re in that life, we know the Lord. One thing to bear in mind is that the life He calls us to live certainly does involve serving our neighbors, but it also involves giving Him some of our time. We need to do good things; but we also need to stop, and hush the voices of the world, and listen to Him. We need to practice setting our stuff aside, so that we can simply receive what is. This is exactly what church is for: church services are meant to be moments in which the Lord speaks more clearly than we do. This is why it’s so important to spend time reading the Word, and talking to God. You can’t get to know someone without putting some effort into getting to know them.
Mercifully, the Lord has no desire to remain hidden. He is reaching out to us; and if we reach out to Him, and stay the course, we will meet Him. In a prophecy of His advent from the book of Isaiah we read: “And it will be said in that day: Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation” (25:9).
Amen.