Empty Saviors and the True Savior

Here's an excerpt from my sermon this past Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent.

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Jeremiah gives Israel a glimpse of the hope
that awaits them. The hope that could possibly come at any moment. The promise of a descendant from David’s lineage who would rescue them, who would save them, who would be their messiah. The problem was that many of the Israelites interpreted God sending the messiah as something that would be political-that the messiah would be a great conqueror and military leader. They longed to be released from the clutches of Rome who occupied the Mediterranean world and the Ancient Near East.

They anticipated the arrival of the Messiah
they way I anticipate getting that 1st slice of warm pound cake my wife bakes when I’m good. They had listened to the prophets for so long that they waited and rehearsed every year the coming of the promised one. The coming of the one who will do what is just and right and who will save them. You see everything that had happened before and it would all happen again…
…God had acted for Israel before…and he would act for them again.
…God had rescued his people before…and he would save them again.
History would repeat itself. Israel’s story, God’s story would repeat itself. But in the mean time they took matters into their own hands and put their hope and trust in empty saviors!

How often do we do that? How often do we
pin our hope to job security, financial security, education, wealth, status, relationships. We’ve all done it before and we will probably all do it again but what God wants is for us to turn to him and look to him alone as our savior, specifically the baby born so many years ago in a lowly manger filled with smelly animals, crude conditions and rude sounds. Because after all what happened that night had happened before and would happen again, a baby(wrinkled, red, crying) makes it’s way into the world, nothing new or special, nothing different than how other babies come into the world. And yet it was completely different than any other birth, for that little baby boy was “Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father” as the Nicene Creed states. Finally the promise of the prophets has been fulfilled.

We don’t have an empty savior, a political
messiah, an empty promise of redemption, a story that has no plot and no meaning. Paul writes in Colossians 1:19-20. We have a savior and a story that we need to tell people about this Christmas! The cross is our hope, it is what the prophets looked forward to-because it is the cross that God used to reconcile the world to himself, to bring hope, peace, and love. The same is true when we take the Lord’s Supper or Communion. We find in the elements of juice and bread symbols that point us to the body and blood of our Lord the way Christmas trees point us to presents, lights, and decorations. In gathering for Communion we join our lives together, we join our hearts and minds together, we acknowledge that we not only need God but we need each other to make it each day, to live out our faith so that we too can point others to the Messiah. So that we can find our place in the story of Life, the only story truly worth repeating.

Communion is a leveling act for the body of
Christ. We all come as broken sinners to the table to find healing, wholeness, peace, and of course grace. Communion is not about a bunch of hocus pocus or about something magical it is a symbol that points us to the grand story of redemption of renewal. As we receive the cup and the bread this morning may we be ever mindful of the baby whose body was broken for you and for me, the baby whom we are preparing to celebrate his arrival. Just like the Advent season and all the rituals and traditions that we do in our families and will continue to do we gather this morning in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to experience something that we have all experienced before and we will all experience again. May we be forever changed this morning.