Matthew 21:10
First Sunday in Advent
2 December 2007
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Last Friday, I spent the day and the weekend up at my cabin. Friday was a cold day. Like down here it was very windy. It was downright miserable to be outside for any more than a few minutes. About 5:00 p.m., I headed down to Lake Arrowhead Village for the annual tree lighting ceremony. It’s always a pleasant evening. The merchants are all open, some with some pretty good prices. Dickens carolers stroll around. A band on the center stage plays all the familiar Christmas songs. The highlight of the evening is when Santa Claus rides into the village on a fire truck – lights flashing and sirens sounding – and lights the Christmas tree.
That event was advertised for 6:30 p.m., but something happened this year. Santa was literally late. People – some with some very small children – were getting agitated because of the weather. A little after 7:00 p.m., even after two cups of hot chocolate, I was ready to call it quits. I know you never thought you’d hear ME say this, but I was cold. The evening was miserable and Santa was late. I had just made the decision that I couldn’t take any more – and tree lighting or no tree lighting it was time for me to go – when I saw the familiar sight of flashing emergency lights so I stuck it out for another five minutes and saw Santa drive by me and saw the Christmas tree come alive with thousands of lights. In the end, the cold and the waiting was worth it – I had seen what I wanted to see.
The despair and disappointment that I experienced last Friday night could not be that different from the despair and disappointment that was present in this world some 2,000 years ago. Seven hundred years before Christ was born, the prophet Isaiah was carried along by the Holy Spirit to write some wonderful prophecies about the Messiah promised of old. One of those prophecies was read this morning, that prophecy about the coming of the Messiah when the weapons of war would be beat into tools of peace.
After that prophecy – and others like it – was written and proclaimed by Isaiah, people started to wait. They started to constantly watch. They began to pass on that prophecy from one generation to another. “When will Messiah come?” was the question asked by every child to his or her father. “When will Messiah come?” “Soon. Very soon” was always the answer given. “Be patient, my child. The Messiah will come. God will keep His promise. God will be faithful. The Messiah will come.”
I grew disappointed after two hours, especially after waiting 30 minutes longer that I thought I would have to wait. Can you imagine waiting 700 years for something? How about 1,400 years? It’s believed that the Book of Genesis was written about 1,400 years before Christ, the first written prophecy of the coming Messiah, that interaction in the Garden of Eden between God and Adam and Eve, where He promised them a Messiah, a Savior Who would crush the head of the devil.
No small wonder, then, that when Jesus Christ, the long-promised, long-anticipated, long-expected Messiah rode into Jerusalem on that donkey on what we today call “Palm Sunday,” there was much commotion in the city. Some people, filled to overflowing with 700 years of anticipation, shouted out “Hosanna!” The hopes of all the years were met in Him. All their waiting had come to an end. Other people, filled with 700 years of frustration and waiting asked the question, “Who is this?” They had waited so long that they had perhaps even forgotten for whom they were waiting. Their hopes had been built up so many times that they could have figured that Jesus was just one more person claiming to be the Messiah.
“Who is this?” What a sad question that is. It’s sadly a question that is asked a lot today. It’s a question that shows the state of people’s minds. It’s a question that shows the state of our world. “Who is this?”
Let me tell you about 12-year-old Marianette Amper. Exactly one month ago today, on November 2, 2007, the day after All Saints’ Day, Marianette committed suicide. What would drive a 12-year-old to commit suicide? She left behind a note. The resident of Davao City in The Philippines had been driven to despair by abject poverty. Before she committed suicide she wrote to a reality TV show expressing her desire to have a pair of shoes, a dress and a bicycle.
Think about that for a second. How many pairs of shoes do you have? I am not a fanatic about shoes but I probably have 12 pairs of shoes scattered around the bottom of my closet. How about clothes? Are your closets like mine, filled to overflowing with clothes, many of which we don’t even wear? How about a bicycle? I right now have a bicycle hanging from the rafters in my garage. In high school, I think my family must have had 10 bicycles entangled together along the side of the garage.
Do you see what I am getting at? This little girl committed suicide not over a seemingly unsolvable problem like world peace, but over items that we all have in overabundance. Her death was senseless. Useless. But she’s not alone.
Hearing about and reading about her suicide really made me stop and think. How many people are despairing all around us right now, not over problems that can’t be solved, but over issues that are extremely solvable? How many people around us have lost hope? How many people around us have walked away from faith or have never even been brought into faith? If Jesus Christ were today to keep His 2000-year-old promise and come back to this earth today, how many people would ask, “Who is this?”
I have no way to supply a numerical answer to that question, but I can tell there would be way too many people in today’s world joining their voices to the people of Jerusalem long ago, asking “Who is this?” I have no way to supply a numerical answer to that question, but I can tell you that if even one person asks that question when Jesus returns, it’s way too many. I can also tell you that if even one person asks that question we as the faithful followers of Jesus Christ have failed to do what He asked us to do, namely being His witnesses.
Maybe we, too, have grown tired and frustrated and disappointed in waiting. Maybe we figure Jesus’ promise to be all hype, something unreliable. Maybe the belief in Jesus Christ has even among us become an “opiate for the masses,” as predicted by Karl Marx.
This Season of Advent is meant to prepare us once again for the reality of the birth of Jesus Christ. Two thousand years ago, God clothed Himself in human flesh and kept His promise that He would come and save the world. That He did in Bethlehem. That He did on Calvary. Those are both proven facts, testified to on the pages of history.
Jesus has promised to come again into this world of tears, this world of disappointment, this world of despair. Until that time, whether it’s today to tomorrow or 2,000 years from now, He has sent His ambassadors into His world. That’s you and me. We’re the ones charged with maintaining hope, with fighting despair, with answering the question in the world around us, “Who is this?” We have the answer: “This is Jesus, the Savior!”
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena