This Reflection is taken from the Sunday Devotion written by this blogger for Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, SD on November 29, 2020
THE FIRST LESSON
Malachi 3:1-5
“I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.
“So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 Used by permission.
CANTICLE
Veni, veni, Emmanuel
O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!
O come, Desire of nations, bind in one the hearts of all mankind,
bid thou our sad divisions cease, and be thyself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!
THE SECOND LESSON
Mark 13:26-27, 32-37
Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”
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New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.
REFLECTION
+Come Desire of nations, come+
I like watching documentaries about the universe. I’m no scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but I am always struck by how much theoretical physics and theology compliment each other. This should not come as a surprise because both theory and theology share the same root word, “theo,” the Greek word for God. Both theory and theology are, in a very literal sense, rooted in God. Both are garnered from our experiences, observations, and revelations (discoveries) that help us understand our being; albeit from different perspectives and expressed in different ways.
What fascinates me most are the scientific theories that attempt to explain the origins of our universe, generalized as the Big Bang; when everything that is and will be was ignited into existence some 14 billion years ago. If I were to describe this event, using the language of scripture, the word that comes to mind to describe what ignited the “Big Bang” is desire; as in, the desire to be.
The desire to be was expressed in the first words uttered by God recorded in our scriptures, “Let there be light,” at which point there was a big bang that lit everything up and from which everything proceeded and continues to proceed. That original burst of light and utterance can be seen as a detectable back-glow at the furtherest edges of the known universe and heard as radio waves via the technologies used in space exploration. In other words, the desire to be is still resonating and being played out in the universe.
Desire is an essential component to being in love. Love doesn’t exist without desire. Love proceeds from desire, and love seeks to be desired and loved in return. If God is Love, then desire is an essential component of God, that being in which we live and move and have our being. [Acts 17:28] In the language of astrophysics, we can say desire serves as the back-glow to all of God’s loving and kenotic (outpouring) creativity.
Had God wanted a universe to act like a clock ticking time away or create a set of tinker toys to play with, we wouldn’t be here. God could have simply avoided the messes we make by not making us who we are. That we are here today says something about God’s desire for a cognitive and willful response to the love that was released at the start of our universe. We are the result of that desire and that love.
One of the attributes we acquired when God our Father made us in his image is that we were imbued with a desire to be known and to be loved for who we are so that we can desire to know and love God as our Father. In this sense, the fall of humankind, as recorded in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, appears to be a test more than a fall from grace. Taking the bait of temptation gave proof of our ability to desire, to be willful, and to be knowing. The outcome of the “Fall” permitted us to fall in love with God willfully, knowingly, and to acquire a desire to know God and to know what it is to be loved and known by God in return.
Like any parent, God would get frustrated with us precisely because we are willful and have a tendency to stray off on our own; forgetting who we are and whose we are. There were days, scripture tells us, when God thought, “What did I get myself into by making these children? Do I start over or do I just keep on loving them? And if I keep loving them, how will they know that I love them?”
Instead of getting rid of the headaches that we are at times, God’s desire to be known and loved by us led God to demonstrate, through one of us, that God truly loves us, truly knows us, and is truly with us in every step we take in this life’s journey. For Christians, this desire of God to be with us - to be Emmanuel - is theologically explained in the first chapter of the Gospel of John where the story of creation in Genesis is retold in the light of Christ:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life…. (And that )Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us..” [ John 1:1-4, 14*]
Musing on desire brought to mind today’s first lesson from the prophet Malachi. It also brought to mind a verse from the prophet Haggai on which our Canticle this morning is based, “ I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord Almighty.” [Haggai 2:7*] Malachi and Haggai were prophets during the time the second Temple was being constructed; the Temple that Jesus was having a conversation about the end times with his disciples, as recorded in last Sunday’s Gospel of Matthew and this morning’s Gospel of Mark.
Both Malachi’s and Haggai’s prophesies mention a desire for the one coming into our lives who would shake us up, refine us, and make us shine. Malachi casts this messenger as a judge and asks, “Who can stand the day of his coming?”
What catches one’s attention in this Old Testament reading is its last statement, “‘but do not fear me,’ says the Lord Almighty” What an unexpected thought, after saying this messenger will judge. Given Malachi’s description of this judge, why wouldn’t one be fearful?
That odd statement not to fear God, heard in the Christian ear, resonates with what we know. Jesus, the Son of Man and our brother, who is our judge gave his verdict on the cross: “Forgiven!” As such, there is no need to fear the righteous one who was judged unrighteous; the one who was executed because of his innocence, and the one who experienced our every weakness on the cross and still desired to forgive and to heal all with his dying breath.
God, our Father, granted our brother Jesus’ dying desire in that indescribable light of the risen Christ Jesus, who emerged from the chaos of a tomb to be the first-fruit (the start) of a new creation.
That redeeming/recreating event brings us to where we are today as members of Christ’s rising body on a journey into being the children God desires us to be.
As we begin a new Church Year, Advent calls us to examine ourselves as the willful, knowing, desirous, and, at times, rebellious children we are and awakens us to whose we are.
Advent calls us to examine the life of our brother Jesus so that we may know and follow the one who is the desire of nations and the hope of the world.
Come desire of nations, come! Come to us and abide with us, O Lord, Emmanuel! Amen.
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