Sermon for Sunday Next Before Advent, 2020

“Christ our Righteousness and Sustenance” 

Sunday Next Before Advent, 2020 

Rev. Dcn. Kyle Hughes 

Do you ever have that problem in your household where you all just can’t agree on what to read or watch together? In my family, for instance, Karisa and I have found a lot of books and shows that we both enjoy, and yet I can’t get her to appreciate the intricate world-building and feats of imagination found in science-fiction the way that I do. For her part, she has yet to convince me of what are apparently the simple pleasures of what I find to be a particularly confusing genre of television--cooking shows. In particular, I do not understand the appeal of one of her current favorites, “The Great British Baking Show.” Why on earth someone would enjoy eating, much less watching someone else eat, some of the dishes featured on this program is beyond me. Towards the top of my list of such foods would surely be Christmas pudding, also referred to by the Brits as “figgy pudding”--familiar to us Americans from songs like “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Making figgy pudding apparently involves mixing together ingredients like dried fruit, prunes, dates, and suet--more like “yucky pudding,” I’d say. I bring up this particular dish because this Sunday we arrive at the end of the church year; next Sunday is, incredibly, the first week of Advent. And it turns out, I have discovered, that this last Sunday before Advent is known in some Anglican churches as “Stir-Up Sunday,” as the words of this Sunday’s Collect, beseeching the Lord to stir up our wills to do good works, have somehow inspired families for generations to gather on this day to prepare (think: stir-up) the traditional figgy pudding. On Christmas Day, the pudding is reheated, topped with holly, doused in alcohol, set on fire, and then consumed. As eager as I am to embrace and enjoy the traditions of our Anglican heritage, I think in this case I am going to have to take a hard pass.    

So: Stir-Up Sunday. Before considering the Collect itself, let’s observe how our texts for this morning, from Jeremiah 23 and John 6, are paired in such a way that we are to interpret them through the lens of promise and fulfillment. Let’s quickly break down how these passages connect. Let’s start with Jeremiah. The prophet Jeremiah’s ministry spanned the last decades of the kingdom of Judah and the immediate aftermath of its fall. Much of Jeremiah’s preaching focused on calling out the sins of the people of Judah and warning them of their impending doom, a prophecy which would be vindicated when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem in 586 B.C. Even so, Jeremiah did not leave God’s people without hope. In the passage we read earlier in this morning’s service, Jeremiah records God’s promise that God would one day restore the remnant of his people from exile. Immediately before these verses that we read this morning, in verses 3 and 4 of chapter 23, Jeremiah records the Lord’s promise to one day gather the remnant of his flock from exile, to care for them and feed them so that they may be fruitful and multiply. Specifically, in verse 6 the Lord promises a “righteous Branch,” a King who would be a descendant of David and who would bring justice and security to the land. In fact, the days are coming, the Lord goes on to promise: days when he would act in a mighty way to lead his people back from exile with such power that it would make the great Exodus from Egypt look trivial by comparison. As we know, these prophecies were fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ, which brings us to our Gospel reading for this morning, the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, as recorded in John 6. Jesus, this story wants to understand, is the promised Good Shepherd who re-gathers God’s people around himself, symbolized in the collection of the twelve baskets, corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel. Unlike the wicked kings of Judah in the time of Jeremiah, Jesus feeds his people abundantly and leads them out of captivity to sin and death into new life. In these two passages, then, we have promise and fulfillment.  

Very interesting, you may say, but how is this good news for me, for us, for our world, on this final Sunday of the liturgical calendar in the Year of our Lord 2020, a year that has seen no shortage of surprises, disappointments, and hardships? Last Sunday, Father Tony briefly mentioned some of the burdens being carried by the people in this room: death or sickness of a loved one, unemployment or financial stress, marital or family conflict, loneliness, isolation, and depression. Last Sunday, Father Tony reminded us that God works in the mess, and that in our suffering we become more like Jesus. In the readings that the Prayer Book assigns for this morning’s service, I believe God has something important to tell us about his character, and that it is precisely this good news that, like last week’s message, will enable us to live in joy, strength, and confidence even in times like these. This morning we will look at two truths about God and his heart for his people: first, that he is our righteousness, and, second, that he is our sustenance. 

First: Christ is our righteousness. In Jeremiah 23:5, it is prophesied that the coming king will be called “The Lord our Righteousness.” This, I propose, is good news for us; it is, in fact, at the very heart of the Gospel. The Collect for this week beseeches God to so act on our wills that we would be empowered to produce the fruit of good deeds in our lives. And we are right to pray earnestly for this: by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, our lives are to be characterized by transformation into Christ’s likeness, being set free from the power of sin to lead a godly life that blesses all those around us. After all, as James reminds us, faith without deeds is dead. But we must always remember that it is not our own good works, our own righteousness, that saves us, and thanks be to God for that, because, as Paul tells us in Romans 3, “none is righteous, no, not one”; “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Rather, Paul says, we “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forth as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” Through the history of the church, many have gotten this wrong: on the one hand, some have held to a form of what might be called works-righteousness, where if only they could be good enough and do enough good deeds, they might be saved; on the other, some have believed in a “cheap grace” that neglects God’s total demands on the life of the believer. Instead, what the Bible and our Anglican heritage call us to is a recognition that Christ alone is our righteousness, that we have been saved apart from any of our own works, even as we are saved for the purpose of bringing forth those good works that flow as a grateful response to God’s glorious grace. And thus, on this final Sunday of a church year that has been so extraordinarily difficult for so many of us, let me proclaim to you anew with the prophet Jeremiah that the Lord is our righteousness. His grace is sufficient for you. And as we stand in awe of this glorious gospel, may the Spirit indeed “stir up” our wills to produce ever-more abundant fruit in this coming year, that our friends, families, and neighbors may see Christ in us. Before we leave this year behind, though, we may wish to pause and ask: What fruit have our lives brought forth this past year? Do we really trust that the “plenteous rewards” of which the Collect speaks are worth the sacrifices that are invariably a part of these good works? Where do we need to hear the God’s message of grace spoken into our lives?   

Second, these passages help us see that not only is Christ our righteousness but he is also our sustenance. In John 6, Jesus is teaching a crowd that, if it included 5,000 men, may have included upwards of 20,000 people in total. As we know, in this famous miracle Jesus takes one boy’s five barley loaves and two fishes--clearly not enough to meet the need at hand--and makes it enough to feed all the people gathered there. Note carefully the details that John provides: the people ate as much as they wanted, and they were filled. When God feeds us, he doesn’t give us the bare minimum needed to sustain our lives, rather, he gives us such an abundance that there are, as the story tells us, twelve baskets of fragments left over from the meal. Note that even these fragments are not wasted; Jesus insists that his disciples gather up the leftover fragments, so that nothing may be lost, and that, following Jewish customs of the time, these leftovers could be given to the poor and needy. With this image in mind, then, I want us to consider all the ways that Jesus has fed us this year. For one thing, we have fed on his body and blood each week at Holy Communion; as Jesus himself says later in this same chapter, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Thanks be to God: each week, regardless of what pain, suffering, and trials we are facing, we can come forward to receive this living bread, by which we can be assured of our eternal destiny, the “plenteous reward” of which the Collect speaks. As Jesus says towards the end of this same chapter, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” Consider also, though, the “fragments,” the scraps of God’s provision in our lives that we may be tempted to miss, especially in a year like this one. Even beyond Holy Communion, think of all the ways that God has provided for you this past year. To take just one example that encompasses nearly everyone in this room: one year ago, almost all of us, myself included, were not a part of this community, Christ the King Anglican Church, where we have all grown in our love of God and our love of neighbor, leaning ever deeper into the life of discipleship at the core of our Anglican Way. Yes, if we really think about it, I suspect that we will find that God has provided for us in more ways than we can even fully process. New relationships, new opportunities, new mercies from God every single day--the Lord’s hand sustains us through every hour of every day. Out of this abundance, then, we have the sacred opportunity to radiate the truth, goodness, and beauty of King Jesus in our surrounding community. And so again, as we close out this year, we pause and reflect: What “fragments” of God’s provision for you this year are you tempted to overlook amidst the hardships? How could you bless others out of this abundance that you have been given? 

Looking back on this past year, then, and looking forward to the year ahead, we can cling to these gospel truths: that Christ is our righteousness and our sustenance. We stand now on the brink of Advent. We place ourselves in the shoes of God’s people during the time of Jeremiah’s prophecies and the subsequent centuries, amidst desolation and disappointment eagerly awaiting the future coming of the King. And, in our own time, amidst all of our present desolation and disappointment, we long for his second Advent, the return of this King in glory. Let us take comfort this season from the words of the Apostle Paul, that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.” May these weeks of Advent, leading into the great celebration of Christmas, be full of hope, love, joy, and peace. But please: hold the figgy pudding. Amen.