Sermon

In the traditional church calendar, each of the four Sundays of Advent has a particular theme. The first focuses on prophecies of the Advent, the second on John the Baptist, the third on the Annunciation, and the fourth on the birth itself. It is not the only schedule possible, but it is a thoughtful and a useful one, and I should like to follow it this year.

There are prophecies in abundance that we might look at, some vary familiar and some quite obscure. They grow out of a particular context, that of the defeat and exile of Israel to some extent, but especially of Judah. This latter marked the apparent failure of two divine promises, the promise to Abram that his descendants would be a great nation, which had held true for some sixteen hundred years, and the promise to David that his dynasty would last forever, which had held true for more than six centuries. Great empires had come and gone, but this one little corner of the world seemed exempt from change. It would be just about impossible not to believe that some very special divine protection was involved.

When the prophets began to foretell the end of all this, then, it must have sounded incredible. Even when it actually happened, it was almost impossible to take in. The second book of Kings ends with Jerusalem and the temple in ruins, with the people in exile and king Jehoiachin in captivity—but then adds that the king of Babylon spoke kindly to Jehoiachin and “set his throne above the throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon.” We are never told of his death, of the death of the last of the kings of the “eternal dynasty.”

What we do find, though, is that the same prophets who bore the incredible message of doom also saw beyond that disaster to a restoration. The disaster had come not because of any change in the divine intent but because the nation had transgressed. As the hardships of the wilderness had purged the Israelites of the faithless and prepared them for the conquest, so the exile would purge Judah of transgressors and prepare the way for a return.

When we read the prophecies of that restoration in the light of the Gospels, we are not likely to realize how radically they are being reinterpreted. It is a huge leap from the kingdom of Israel to the kingdom of heaven. It challenges fundamental assumptions about what really matters, and requires a total rethinking of the basics of religious devotion and life. Let us look, then, at the prophecies with this in mind.

The prophecies fall into two basic categories, which we may label “Messianic” and “cosmic.” Our Old Testament reading is one of the most familiar example of the first. The word “Messiah” means “the anointed one,” and refers to the fact that kings were in fact anointed to their office. When Samuel anointed Saul, Saul became the nation’s first Messiah. Isaiah’s prophecy of “a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a Branch . . . out of his roots” is a reference to the fact that David was the son of Jesse. Most of the chapter goes on to deal with how this future king will rule. He will be righteous, he will bring justice to the poor, he will gather the outcasts of Israel and Judah, and with divine help he will rule over Edom and Moab and Ammon.

Our responsive reading is an example of the second category, of the “cosmic” prophecies. The desert will rejoice and blossom, the blind and deaf and lame and dumb will be healed. The heavens will be rolled up like a scroll, and all the stars will fall to the earth. Other passages tell of a more violent process, of the melting of mountains, of the wicked being burned up in an instant, like chaff. That is, they describe a direct visitation of the omnipotent Divine, doing things no earthly king, no descendant of David, could possibly do. We need only look at the literalist expectations of the end of the world in our own time to appreciate how potent such prophecies can be when they are taken literally.

We have, then, these two kinds of prophecies. It is virtually a truism to say that the Gospels present Jesus as the Messiah. The Greek word for Messiah is “Christ,” the title given Jesus in all four Gospels. This was the issue that was of concern to the Romans. Pilate asked whether he was a king. The inscription on the cross identified him as “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” presumably in order to let people know what happened to people who claimed that office.

If we argue back from Jesus’s response to Pilate, we can see not only how the Messianic prophecies were reinterpreted, but how pervasive a theme this is. The statement is clear: “My kingdom is not of this world.” This carries us right back to the message with which his ministry started that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This and all the parables of the kingdom point toward the human role of Jesus. In terms of the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, he would in his own way gather the outcasts of Israel and Judah, judge the poor with righteousness and “reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.” He would call followers and give them tasks to do and rules to live by. The big difference would be that his goals would not be political or military.

It is perhaps less clear that the Gospels claim the fulfillment of the cosmic prophecies as well. Our New Testament reading was chosen as one illustration of this. At the transfiguration, Peter, James, and John saw Jesus as a divine figure, first accompanied by Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets, and then alone. Their question, “They why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” is a revealing one.

The reference is to the closing verses of Malachi, which are worth quoting at some length.

For behold, the day is coming that will burn like an oven, and all the proud, all that do wickedly, will be stubble, and the day that is coming will burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you who fear my name the Sun of righteousness will arise with healing in his wings . . . . remember the law of Moses my servant . . . . Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

That is, when those disciples witnessed the transfiguration, they understood it as a fulfillment of this prophecy. Jesus’s response was that John the Baptist was the Elijah of this prophecy. He himself, then, was the Sun of righteousness. In the words of one of the most familiar of Isaiah’s prophecies, in the transfiguration the “glory of the Lord” was revealed.

Just as in the case of the Messianic prophecies, then, the cosmic prophecies need to be reinterpreted, shifted to a whole new level. Obviously, streams are not breaking forth in the desert, and the wicked are not being burned up like chaff. The heavens are still there, and the stars have not fallen. Again, we might call to mind those groups who have believed they knew the date of the end of the world. The day after that date calls for a lot of rethinking, and normally the outcome is a complete loss of credibility.

There are two corollaries of this that I would like to end with, one more on the theological side and one more on the personal side. The theological one has to do with finding in the literal sense of Scripture support for the central affirmation of our church, the affirmation of the Divine Human. Quite simply put, the argument would be that in the prophets there are these two different sets of predictions, one of the coming of a very human Messiah, a descendant of David, and one of a direct divine visitation. Neither of these is fulfilled in the way a literalist would expect, but the Gospels clearly claim that both are in fact fulfilled. Jesus is the Christ, the human Messiah. He is also God visiting the earth, the Sun of righteousness. The disciples were witnessing “the great and dreadful day of the Lord.”

The personal corollary has to do with our own expectations of personal salvation. Sometimes, it seems, we know that it is up to us to haul up our socks and do the work of repentance and reformation of life. This is imaged by the human agency of the Messiah, the king who will come and use human means to set things straight. At other times, we realize the ultimacy of our own inadequacy and know that only the Lord can deliver us. Sometimes this takes lovely and affirmative forms, when the beauty of heavenly life seems absolutely irresistible. At other times, the focus is more on the evils that stand in the way, and the dream is of their utter and instantaneous abolition.

As in the Gospels, both visions point to the truth of the matter. To put it in Christmas terms, the Lord must be born in us. This is something we cannot do, but it is something we can prevent. Swedenborg’s favorite way of summarizing the paradox involved is that we are to shun evils as if of ourselves, but are to acknowledge that it is in fact the Lord who is at work within us.

This is not a uniquely Swedenborgian doctrine. We find it in the maxim, “Work as though it were all up to you; pray as though it were all up to God.” The history of Christian doctrine records a tension between “law and grace,” and there is probably no version of Christian theology in which both are not present. What we have that is very special, I would suggest, is the intimate connection between these two corollaries—between the doctrine of the Divine Human and the role of the divine and the human in our own lives. Heaven and Hell makes it quite clear: “the Lord’s love is a love of sharing everything it has with everyone” (n. 399). The Divine would be as fully present in each of us as in the Christ. Both kinds of prophecy are addressed to us.

Amen.