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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Tonight is our fourth Midweek Vespers service this Advent, and so we have come to the fourth of the so-called “O Antiphons” that we have been considering during these services. You may recall that these “O Antiphons” are liturgical pieces addressed to Jesus, that have been used for centuries, before and after Mary’s Song, in Advent Vespers services close to Christmas. (The “O Antiphons” were themselves the basis for the song from which we sang the corresponding stanza as our Office Hymn.) So far this Advent, we have considered Jesus as “Wisdom from on high”, “Key of David”, and “Dayspring”, and tonight we consider Jesus as “Desire of nations”. Last week I mentioned that the roots of our calling Jesus “Dayspring” were less deep and less clear than those of our calling Jesus “Wisdom from on High” or “Key of David”. Well, the roots of our calling Jesus “Desire of nations” are even less deep and clear, though the Biblical basis for the whole of this week’s “O Antiphon” is still relatively firm. Tonight’s readings hopefully show that relatively-firm Biblical basis for the whole antiphon, even though there is again a difference with the translation of the English Standard Version. Locate tonight’s antiphon, either on the outside front cover of your service folder or inside at the bottom of the first page, and let us pray it the way we will sing it in a bit, with the congregation taking the indented portion.
O King of nations, the ruler they long for, the cornerstone uniting all people:
Come and save us all, whom You formed out of clay.
Of the versions of tonight’s First Reading that I checked, really only the King James Version and the New International Version translate so that “the Desire of all nations”, or the Messiah, Jesus, is doing the coming. Most of the other versions all translate so that, as with the English Standard Version, “the treasures of all nations”, or the nations with the things they value, do the coming. Either translation arguably can be said to fit the immediate context of Haggai’s prophecy, where the people of Israel who returned from exile in Babylon are being encouraged to continue rebuilding the temple. Apparently, some among the people, who remembered the glory of the temple before it was destroyed by the Babylonians, doubted that the rebuilt temple would ever be that glorious. God through Haggai says either the Messiah will come and bring glory to the rebuilt temple or the nations will come with their treasures and give glory to the rebuilt temple. Regardless, the context of Haggai’s prophecy and either translation of the specific verse that gives us “Desire of nations” raise the issue of “desire”.
Monday on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition”, I heard a news story about how many people crave more food in the winter. The story ended with a statement from a University of Toronto researcher to the effect that we should not completely deprive ourselves of the foods we love (or desire). What do you and I desire? Not just in winter and not just when it comes to foods we love, but what do we really want to have or want to do? Who are what are the objects of our desires? In and of itself, desire, is not wrong, but the objects or the extent of our desire can be wrong. In the Bible, we find good and bad desires; for example, God desired Jerusalem in a good way, but bad desire played a role in Eve’s giving in to temptation. We can also think specifically of the Ninth and Tenth Commandments against coveting—that is, against inordinate, ungoverned, and selfish desiring—of our neighbor’s house, spouse, or possessions. Who of us does not have such sinful desires? Who of us does not also sin in countless other ways?
Tonight’s “O Antiphon” reminds us that we were formed out of clay, essentially wet dust. “Dust” is the word the Genesis accounts of our creation and fall use, and there God says not only that we are dust but also that, on account of our sin, we will return to dust. So, dust has long been associated with repentance—like ashes and sackcloth, signs of grief and mourning, of humiliation and self-denigration, of admitting both our dependence on God and our insignificance apart from Him. Tonight and always God calls us to repent, and there are consequences to whether or not we repent, for we will not return to and then remain dust forever. But, when Jesus comes again, our bodies will be resurrected from dust—resurrected either to eternal bliss or to eternal torment. So, from our sins related to bad desires, as from all of our sin, we turn in sorrow and believe in God’s forgiveness. When we so repent, God has already created in us, if not in all the nations, the good desire for our Savior, Jesus Christ.
The Iowa presidential caucuses are less than two weeks away now, and, as some polls suggest, the national election again is not about whom the nation desires the most but about he whom it does not desire the least. We know that, prior to Haggai’s prophecy in tonight’s First Reading, the people of Israel never desired King Jehoram, and they, at one point anyway, genuinely desired King Saul. Saul was surpassed by David, and David was surpassed by Solomon, but Jesus Christ, despite having no beauty to make us desire Him, surpassed them all. God’s steadfast love (or mercy), of which we read in tonight’s Psalm, sent Jesus to be born, suffer, die, and rise again to save us from our sins. As our Second Reading put it, we are brought near by the blood of Christ and reconciled to God through the cross. When we plea, as we do in the antiphon, for the Desire of Nations to come and save us, He does just that: He comes and saves us. He Himself is, as we plea in the hymn stanza based on the antiphon for Him to be, our King of Peace. Peace is the angels’ good news: peace between God and us.
God in specific ways gives us that peace the angels declared. As God first breathed into man the breath of physical life, so now Holy Baptism gives us new spiritual life. At the Font, the Holy Spirit, Who in the beginning hovered over water, now, through water and the Word, works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe. There is one Spirit and one baptism, one Lord and one faith, and one body, but some sinners in that one body with their false teachings break away from it into different factions. Such factional lines are truly “sad divisions” that we pray, as we did in the Office Hymn, would cease. But, until those divisions do cease, we must watch out for those who cause the divisions and avoid them, especially when it comes to our and their receiving forgiveness, life, and salvation with bread that is Jesus’s body and wine that is His blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. Jesus Himself says: this is My body; this is My blood. Those who do not believe Jesus’s words are like the Jewish leaders in our Third Reading, like the builders who reject the Cornerstone, Christ Jesus Himself, and, instead of being united in the holy Temple of Christ’s body, as the antiphon prays, they are instead broken to pieces and crushed. Those who do so believe Jesus’s words, as do we here in this place, are built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
I have been here at Pilgrim, Kilgore, long enough to have both read about and heard some of you talk about the congregation’s glory days: the oil boom, the then-new building, the full-time pastors, and more people—more people in the Sunday School classes, in the Sanctuary, and at the communion rail. Like the people to whom Haggai prophesied, we can get hung up on glory in the past in such a way that we might miss greater glory in the present and, maybe, even still greater glory in the future. Missing greater the glory, in such a way, is understandable to some extent, and it is certainly forgivable. From a worldly point of view, the glory of the exiles’ rebuilt temple did not really surpass the glory of Solomon’s temple, and, arguably, neither did the glory of Herod’s temple later, even though he apparently thought he had made the temple glorious enough to keep Haggai’s prophecy from being fulfilled. The temple that surpassed all temples in glory was the temple of the flesh that came from the womb of Mary. God in the flesh, Jesus, is in some sense the cornerstone, temple, and capstone; with Him in us, through Word and Sacrament, the whole structure is joined together. His death and resurrection may not have appeared glorious, but their real glory will be undeniable when He comes again in glory. In yet a little while, the Desire of all nations will so come, and He will reveal the true glory of His death and resurrection, the true glory of the temple in its various physical states, and the true glory of His past, present, and future spiritual work in this place—glory not measured by the newness of the building, the pastors’ status, or the number of people but glory measured by faithfulness to God. Until that coming, as the church has for centuries, we pray tonight’s O Antiphon as we do again responsively now.
O King of nations, the ruler they long for, the cornerstone uniting all people:
Come and save us all, whom You formed out of clay.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +