“WHILE WE WAIT, HE ALWAYS ARRIVES”
Saint Matthew 21: 1-9
Ad Te Levavi: 1 December Anno Domini 2019
Father Jay Watson SSP
Happy New Year. Today starts the beginning of a brand-new Church Year. While acknowledging the good and not-so-good things that you and our loved ones experienced last year, you nonetheless give nothing but thanks that The Lord has brought you through this past night, forgiven you all our sins, and gathered you together once again. Viva Anno Domini.
Many of you, many pastors, absolutely love the Season of Advent. In fact, in many ways both the Seasons of Advent and Lent are favorite times in the Lord’s cycle of Scripture care and nourishment. Don’t you spend most of your time eagerly waiting—waiting for Our Lord’s imminent return in glory at the end of time? And do you not wait, ADVENT, while under the cross, bearing your burdens, resisting temptations, battling sin, the world, Satan, and your own “old-Adams?” Your entire lives are lived in these Lenten Lands while Adventing—waiting. “Maranatha.” “Come Lord Jesus.”
Yes, you do wait. Waiting is not easy or even enjoyable most of the time. People chafe at waiting for their server at the restaurant, and then the meal, to arrive. You get impatient over waiting for just about anything. And today it seems as if attention spans are shorter then the eyelash of a mosquito.
The Holy Season of Advent does prepare you in prayerful waiting for the yearly celebration of your Lord’s Nativity. But even more so, Advent is a cyclical reminder that you all are really waiting for Christ’s return in glory. You are waiting for your loved ones (and maybe yourselves depending on timing) to rise again from the dead with glorified bodies. You are waiting to see Jesus, no longer through a glass, darkly, but as He is and as He sees you, transformed and made perfect by His righteousness.
Jesus does come, He does arrive. God comes for all. He, The Word, Jesus before His incarnation, came from The Godhead to make all things. He came to give life to Adam. He came to rescue the first man and the first woman after their self-destruction in the garden. He forgave them and gave them the promise of The Gospel. After 400 years of bondage in Egypt He came, He arrived to Moses at the burning bush. He delivered His people out of captivity. He continued to arrive in His theophanies during the Exodus and thereafter. His people waited patiently, and not so patiently, during the 70 year-long Babylonian exile, but The Lord arrived. He came and brought His sheep back to the pastures of His Holy Hill Zion, His hill, His temple, His Presence abiding in Jerusalem.
It is good, right, and salutary that you should hear the Gospel lection from Saint Matthew chapter 21 twice a year. You hear this good news both on Palmarum and today, Ad Te Levavi. “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.” [Ps. 27.14]
And you are always waiting. Sinners are always waiting. The good that you would do, you do not; the evil you would refrain from doing, you do. Who will save you? Who will deliver you? Who will take you from both your Lenten desert trek and from your seemingly unendurable waiting under the shadow of the cross? “And when they, [When Jesus] drew nigh unto Jerusalem…” Jesus is always “drawing nigh,” always coming to Jerusalem for your sakes. No longer does the God/Man ride into what was once King David’s city in Judea, Judah, Palestine, He does something better.
The Holy Spirit has called you this morning by The Good News that was given you at + The Font. He has gathered you to the New Jerusalem, The Church. You were anointed with the olive oil of Water and Blood and are now in the house of eating. The Lord’s two disciples, of Law and Gospel, have loosed you, untied you, from sin’s consequences of being an ass, a wayward, doomed, and lost devil-donkey. You’ve been brought as Lambs into the sheepfold. And while you wait, and it does seem like you’re always waiting, always being “Advented,” He arrives. He always arrives. The Gospel is what occurred 2,000 years ago on Calvary, to be sure, but the Gospel “FOR YOU” is that He arrives in His actual, true, and real Presence at this Altar, this pulpit, and this font. You are continually loosed from sin, world, and Satan. Better than strawing the way for Him, better than lining the way with your own garments, Jesus lays down His robes and makes His Way to you. He IS The Way, The Truth, and The Life, and He comes to you.
There are no Christians—none of you—without first there being The Advent of The King in the waters + of life. The waiting for adoption there came to an end and you were given a new Name and an eternal family. There is no Peace, no Jerusalem, without Bethlehem, the “house of bread,” wherein God Himself, in Jesus, takes on actual body and blood in the Incarnation and becomes a literal “House of Bread”—House of Body! You are always waiting for the weekly feast, The Lords Day. But now, this day, your weekly Advent is over. He arrives with Peace in His own flesh and blood. You have prayed: “stir up, we beseech Thee, Thy power, O Lord, and come, that by Thy protection we may be rescued from the threatening perils of our sins and saved by Thy mighty deliverance.” Prayer answered. He comes! Now! Hosanna to The Son of David. Hosanna in the highest.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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