Homily for the 1st Sunday in Advent, 2022
Homily for Advent 1, 2022
Christ the King Anglican
Fr. Tony Melton
Welcome to the 1st Sunday in Advent! Happy New Year’s Day in the Church. Today we launch into a new year of ministry as a Church. This is why we present our pledges and reprise our commitments on this Sunday. This is why I released my annual Vicar’s Report this week. On this day, we come together as the covenant people of God at Christ the King, and we take up that covenant in our mouths, and we rehearse that covenant in our ears, we pledge that covenant with our pens, we mark ourselves with that Covenant with our hands. We are God’s covenant people, and we are launching into a new year of covenant living.
This idea of being a covenant people is significant in the Propers on Advent 1. All four of the passages have to do with God coming to His covenant people. In our Psalm, OT Lesson, and Gospel, God visits His covenant people and has two very different reactions. To those covenant members who are hypocrites, he is a swift witness, an unabidable judge, a consuming fire. For these folks, this is the Great and Terrible Day of Lord. And to those covenant members that keep the Covenant aright, St. Paul likens that day to the dawn of a new day.
[Illustration about unknown expectations]
Our Propers this morning are crystal clear about what God expects from His covenant people. There should never again be any doubt as to what Jesus will look for when He comes again. It is well summarized in the primary text for this day, the last verse of our Psalm. “Whoso offereth me thanks and praise, he honoureth me; * and to him that ordereth his way aright, will I show the salvation of God.” This is what God expects of His covenant keepers. Let’s take each phrase in turn. First, “Whoso offereth me thanks and praise.” Don’t miss the obvious. God will be looking at whether His covenant members are actually making an offering. What is an offering of praise and thanks? Look over at verses 8-14. God is not merely looking for the sacrifices commanded in the Law. He is not merely looking for blood of the bulls and goats. In fact, in verse 13, God pokes fun of the whole sacrificial system. “Thinkest thou that I will eat bulls’ flesh, and drink the blood of goats?” He is ridiculing the very common idea among His covenant people that all they have to do is offer the prescribed sacrifices in the prescribed way at the prescribed time, and God will be satisfied when He visits them. No. Verse 14 interrupts the diatribe: “Offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay thy vows unto the Most Highest.”
There are two big contrasts between what God commands us to offer in verse 14 and what God ridicules in verse 13. Thanksgiving and Vow Paying are very personal, even individual. This is easy for us to understand. How easy is it to sit in your pew and watch me offer thanksgiving for the whole congregation, but not offer thanksgiving in your own heart? How easy is it to imbibe the Eucharist, the vitamin of Gratitude, and then to go and lust after what we do not possess? When Jesus comes back, He will be looking for His covenant keepers that offer Eucharist at their parish altar and offer Eucharist on the altar of their own heart. “Offer unto God thanksgiving.”
And what does the 2nd half of verse 14 say? “Pay thy vows unto the Most Highest.” Notice I said that both the commands in verse 14 are deeply personal and individual, but I did not say interior. It is common to hear people talk about this psalm and think that it is criticizing external action in favor of an interior piety. Not in the least. The Bible does not divide our Faith from our Actions like that. Not only are we to offer Thanksgiving upon the Altar of our Heart, but we are also to fulfill the actions that constitute that Thanksgiving. We are to pay our vows unto the Most Highest. What does this mean? The obvious reference is our tithe. This is the exterior offering that most clearly represents the interior oblation of Thanksgiving. Take another look at verse 14. Can a person offer praise and thanksgiving without paying their vows to the Most Highest? The two are inextricably linked. In fact, today’s lesson from Malachi 3 ends at verse 6. Malachi is talking about the covenant people offering a pure sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Look to where His attention goes just two verses later? Malachi says in verse 8, “8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. 10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”
So to summarize, when Jesus returns, He expects to find in His covenant people Thanksgiving, offered both interiorly and exteriorly, both on the altar of their own heart, and tangibly with their own tithe on the altar of His Church. This is a good summary of the first and greatest commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.”
But if we return to the last verse of our Psalm this morning, there are two things that God says to His covenant people who await His return. “To him that ordereth his way aright, will I show the salvation of God.” To him that orders his way rightly… What does that mean? Just like verse 14 explained what “offer me thanks and praise”, verse 16-20 will explain “orders his way rightly…” Starting in verse 16, God is speaking to those who have taken His covenant in their mouth, BUT they hate to be reformed, and cast God Word behind them. [All of our former Presbyterians are like, “I love this verse! The ungodly hate to be reformed. Well, I love being reformed. I can’t wait for Jesus to come back!”] No, interestingly, all four of the passages have a very similar definition for what it means to “order his way aright.” They all have to do with how you treat your neighbor. And each passage moves from what are often called “grave sins”, i.e. big sins, down to the little sins.
Don’t get a paper cut. I’m going to be asking you to do some flipping. Stay on this page for now, and look at verse 18-20 of our psalm on page 6. It moves from those who steal, those who commit adultery, those who deceive others, those that lie about their brother.
Turn to page 8. How does Malachi describe those covenant members who have not ordered their way aright? Starting in verse 5. “5 And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts.” It is a very similar list to the psalm. It starts at the big stuff and ends at the little stuff. Raise your hand when one of these applies to you, starting at verse 5 again… Sorcerers. Adult.. I’m just joking. But, by the end of this list, we get to those that refuse hospitality to strangers. So you see, when Jesus visits His covenant people, He will be looking for two things: do you love God and do you love your neighbor. The way our Psalm clarifies that is: do you offer thanksgiving by paying your vows to the Lord, and do you order your way aright, do you treat your neighbor justly, kindly?
Our Epistle, on page 11, speaks the same way. In rehearsing the 2nd table of the Law, St. Paul starts off big and ends small. Verse 9, adultery, murder, stealing, slandering, and then down to the seemingly insignificant act of coveting. What is the message here? Like a microscope that starts big but zooms in to see the smallest and most hidden things, so too will the Son of Man look for the sorcerers and the adulterers, but also those who don’t take in strangers, or who don’t pay their employees fairly, or who speak hurtful things about their brothers and sisters in the Lord.
These are the things that God will look for when He returns. Wasn’t this what He looked for in His first advent? Our Gospel tells us that Jesus came into the temple and upset the tables of the money changers. What was wrong about what the Jews were doing? They were selling animals for a convenient sacrifice and they were selling them at a premium. God’s covenant people were not offering God thanks and praise, and they weren’t ordering their way aright. For those that purchased a fast and ready offering at the Temple, were they really offering Thanksgiving upon the Altar of their heart? Paying your vows to God will never be convenient. It must not be easy because it must not be flippant. For those that sold a fast and ready offering at the Temple, were they treating their neighbors justly? In the same moment, God’s covenant people failed to obey both of the Great Commandments, and so God came against them like a refiner’s fire and a fuller’s soap.
This Advent, we prepare for the 2nd coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We listen to the warnings from Psalm 50 and Malachi 3. We think about our promises, so we rehearsed them today. We think about our tithe, so we pledge them this week. We think about our interior life, our Rule of Prayer, so Clergy Check-In calls begin this week. We think about how we treat others, so today on page 18, I bid you to self-examination by reading the Exhortation. We ask ourselves if we are treating our neighbor and the poor justly, so we give alms with our cell group. These are the things this season is for, because the Lord will appear in Zion, in perfect beauty, and we long for the day when He will look upon us, His covenant people, “Rise, well done, my good and faithful servants. Come to my banquet, Beloved, all has been made ready.”