Advent 4C – Merciful Judgement

Sermons – St. Brendan's Anglican Church

Visitation by Mariotto Albertinelli (1503)

Advent 4C
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Micah 5:2-5a, Luke 1:39–56

Be strong, fear not, your God is coming with judgment, coming with judgment to save you. – Church of England, Common Worship, Canticle “A Song in the Wilderness,” verse 5

In the name of the Living God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the 1991 Lawrence Kasden film Grand Canyon, Kevin Klein plays Mack, an immigration attorney who breaks out of a traffic jam leaving an LA Lakers game and tries to drive around it. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he begins to notice that each street seems darker and more deserted than the last. Turns out he’s wound up in South Central LA. And then there’s a problem. His fancy sports car stalls. He manages to call for a tow truck, but before it arrives, five local thugs, surround his car and threaten him. Before things get out of control, the tow truck shows up and it’s driver Simon, played by Danny Glover, walks right through the gang and begins to hook up the sports car. The young men protest: the driver is interrupting their crime. So, Simon takes the group leader aside and gives him a five sentence introduction to sin:

Man, the world ain’t supposed to work like this. Maybe you don’t know that, but this ain’t the way it’s supposed to be. I’m supposed to be able to do my job without asking you if I can. And that dude is supposed to be able to wait with his car without you ripping him off. Everything supposed to be different than what it is here.

The soliloquy, which continues from here, is successful. Simon hooks up Mack’s car and he’s able to drive off safely. I like the whole movie, but it’s this scene that still sticks in my mind even after all these years. Because as it progresses, as Simon keeps talking, what becomes clear is that the young men really don’t know it’s not supposed to be like this. They are trapped in their world just as much as Simon and Mack will turn out to be trapped in theirs. The carjacking, to these kids, makes a certain kind of sense. Throughout the movie, the line between perpetrator and victim is blurred over and over again. Victims are perpetrators. Perpetrators are victims. Everyone is trapped in their own world. And it’s not supposed to be like this.

Our gospel story today has a cinematic quality as well. A young mother-to-be is hurrying through the Judean countryside, to share the good news of her pregnancy with her elder relative, who is surprisingly also pregnant late in life. The miracle is even more profound than it first seems: It is, if fact, a virgin womb that is greeting a barren one. God is at work. Mary and Elizabeth also live in a world where things are not the way they are supposed to be. They live under Roman occupation, ruled by collaborating Jews and a corrupt Temple elite. The dream of the prophets has been for a just society, and for Israel to be the light of the nations. It has not turned out that way. And yet strange and wondrous things are afoot: the older woman’s son leaps for joy at the voice of his cousin‘s mother, and inspired by the spirit of her infant son, the younger woman sings of the coming judgment and mercy of God. The world they are trapped in is about to be broken wide open. Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls her song the first Advent hymn. He writes:

There is none of the sweet, wistful, or even playful tone of many of our Christmas carols, but instead a hard, strong, relentless hymn about the toppling of the thrones and the humiliation of the lords of this world, about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind. This is the sound of the prophetic women of the Old Testament—Deborah, Judith, Miriam—coming to life in the mouth of Mary. Mary, who was seized by the power of the Holy Spirit, who humbly and obediently lets it be done unto her as the Spirit commands her, who lets the Spirit blow where it wills— she speaks, by the power of this Spirit, about God’s coming into the world, about the Advent of Jesus Christ.

We have her song in the gospel reading today: it tells of the great reversal, the upending of the established order, and the new kingdom that Mary’s boy will bring. In some ways, it reads like a work of spiritual theology, in some ways it reads as a political manifesto. What is clear in the Magnificat is that God is fulfilling his promises, God is making both a people and a kingdom for himself—with him alone on the throne. God knows it’s not supposed to be like this, and he will set it right. He alone is the only one who can free us from the world we have trapped ourselves in. Some 2000 years later, the work is still ongoing, and we talk of his Second Coming and prepare to celebrate his First. Things still are not yet the way they are supposed to be, but our annual observance of both Advent and Christmastide remind us the God is still on the move, that he has not given up on his creation—or on us.

Since around All Saints Day and throughout this season of Advent, we have been reflecting on the judgment of God. I’ve said to you that God’s judgment always has a curative intent, but let’s be honest—it’s still judgment. We don’t like it much. And so, with some sense of relief, we may be looking forward to Wednesday, when the vestments turn to white again and we can put the Second Coming behind us for another year. Our heads may be filled with images of cherubs, rather than Ezekiel‘s crazy angels, and we are probably leaning more toward Currier & Ives, sentimental Victorian carols, or even Irving Berlin rather than the Baptist and his cousin. Standing in a world where we are acutely aware that “this ain’t the way it’s supposed to be”, tired and fearful, our hearts may desire the image of a more comfortable God at this time. As we close out these weeks of considering the judgment of God, as we long for his merciful touch at Christmas, on this Fourth Sunday of Advent we do well to understand the seeming paradox: God’s mercy is his judgment. God’s judgment is his mercy. Creche and Cross and Second Coming are all the same thing—they are all the one and the same Jesus.

In Micah today, we hear of an infant king from Bethlehem, whose birth will mark the end of Israel’s exile. Verse 5 states plainly: “He will give us peace.” MERCY. Yet this same chapter later describes the battles that must follow when the king begins to reign. The same infant king will provoke such fear among Herod that a holocaust of infants will ensue, and old Simeon reminds us that

“This child is destined to be the cause of the falling and rising of many… and to be a sign that will be rejected. Indeed, as a result of him the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. (Lk 2:34–35.)

JUDGEMENT.

Our Epistle reading today reminds us of the Cross: Of Jesus who has come to do the will of his father, with a body prepared in in Mary’s womb to replace the Temple sacrifices. Jesus, who makes us holy through his death. What’s more, looking out at the broken culture and political systems that nailed him to the tree he utters “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they do.” MERCY. Yet the same cross is more of a stumbling stone for all who seek to maintain and enforce a fallen culture consensus. The world they are trapped in will crumble as the Kingdom comes. JUDGEMENT.

If you have a stake in the way things are, if you’re committed to this life when “ this ain’t the way it’s supposed to be,” then the merciful Messiah will always come to you first as judgement. Bonhoeffer again:

“For the great and powerful of this world, there are only two places in which their courage fails them, of which they are afraid deep in their souls from which they shy away. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus.”

The King of Cradle and Cross is also such a figure for all of us. Make no mistake, the mercy is there. God loves and accepts you as you are. Deeply, truly, unconditionally. He came to be with you; He died so that we can be with him. He loves you as you are—b ut he won’t leave you as you are. In Christ, we are invited to live a grace-shaped life. A gospel-shaped life. His life in us restores the Imago Dei, and he invites us to be his brothers and sisters. However, we too are trapped in this broken world—not just the great and powerful. In fact, in some ways we are not so much trapped in it, as downright committed to it. The 2nd-century Church Father Origen comments on our predicament in this way:

“We create other images in ourselves instead of the Savior’s image. Instead of being the image of the Word, or of wisdom, justice and the rest of the virtues, we assume the form of the devil.”

It is what we do, isn’t it? Yet, God loves us so much that he will not allow that to be the final word. Wherever we are trapped by structures of sin in our lives, in our families, and in our communities, wherever we are addicted to those things that distort his image in us, he will come to us and insistently rearrange our interior landscape. He will bring down the hills of our striving and sin, raise up the valleys of our depression and desperation. He will smooth the highway to our hearts and from there onwards to our culture and our world. He is a jealous for us, and in his kindness will not allow us to have any other gods but him.

Merciful judgement. Judging mercy. This is the Christ who comes. He comes both to those who are trapped in this broken world and those who are committed to it just as it is, offering all the chance to be free in him.

– He comes to the rich and to the poor

– He comes to the chemist who makes the drug and to the addict

– He comes to the leaders of our broken culture and to those who willingly consume it

– He comes to Ukrainians and to Russians

– He comes to Islamist mosques, to those who have no faith, and even to churches who think it’s somehow a good idea to close down on Christmas day

He comes to perpetrators who started out as victims and victims who in their woundedness have learned how to hurt others

– He comes, in short, to sinners like you and me.

If we are able to humbly receive his coming—by letting go of all that draws us from the love of God and from his Kingdom—we may find that the truth is that both the mercy and the judgment are very good news. We may find ourselves singing like Mary and Elizabeth, overjoyed that Emmanuel has come and his work is still ongoing. And we may also just find ourselves standing in the midst of this broken age with our heads raised up, reminding all who have ears to hear that “it ain’t supposed to be like this” and that the help is now at hand.

Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come.