Homily for the Sunday Next Before Advent
We have completed another Church Year - one full of grace and mercy. Today is called Stir Up Sunday as it takes its name from the first couple of words in our collect where we pray “STIR up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people” Many of us know the phrase “stirring the pot” - to add fuel to the fire of a dispute; to agitate, to push the buttons of another. Stirring up in that sense is uncharitable and manipulative. It leverages the frailties and tendencies of others for a certain response. Here, we pray for God to tailor circumstance, in this case our wills, fine tune them so we might grow in grace and faith in Jesus Christ. That we might be faithful to him from beginning to end - plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works and then be plenteously rewarded through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is God’s good will to create in us that which leads to blessedness.
Our Epistle is taken from the Prophet Jeremiah. The prophet foretells a time when the exiled people of God will receive a new king. He will be a descendant of David. God’s people will prosper under his reign of justice and he will bring about a new exodus, a new deliverance that will make Israel’s deliverance out of Egypt pale in comparison to what this second David will do. I want us to focus on the name that God discloses for this second and greater David and Moses. Jeremiah tells us “this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” In the ancient world, a name communicates the power and attributes of the one named. It reveals character. The Lord’s name is rendered in ALL CAPS indicating it is a title that the Lord claims for Himself. In this title he connects His Lordship - his power - with what he accomplishes for His People. This greater David will be the first and only of His kind. He will be THE LORD. This human will be called the LORD. The exclusive name that God keeps for Himself. No one other than God may use it. In Jeremiah there is a declaration that second David will be God himself. The Lord is promising to unite himself in some mystical fashion to the pinnacle of His creation. He will become a man. In his title, God becomes man in order to be the righteousness for his people - OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. For God’s people are far gone from original righteousness. St. Paul says “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We are completely devoid, in ourselves, of the righteousness, the perfection that the holiness of God requires. We need divine intervention - to provide what God’s holiness demands and what mankind can never offer by his own works, his own effort.
Jeremiah’s audience would have looked back to the history of Israel, the patriarchs, and even Adam as they contemplated the need for righteousness.
Consider the wickedness of Adam’s sin when he traded all he had ever known - fellowship with God, a life unburdened by the weight of sin, the hope of becoming more like God. He traded all of this for sin - that which is contrary to God’s nature. He tried to provide for his new awareness of nakedness by making coverings of his own. Yet, God clothed Adam and Eve in the sacrificial life of another. God provided a path for fellowship through the death of another. Later, Abraham, the friend of God, the one who is the father of all the faithful, was instructed to sacrifice his son on Mount Moriah. The words of Isaac, the willing sacrifice, asked the honest question - here is the wood of the sacrifice, here is the fire, where is the sacrifice. Abraham said “My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.” God himself would make atonement, a substitution, a sacrifice that satisfied the requirement of perfection, the first and best. Centuries later, God redeemed Israel out of Egypt. He did so through the Passover - where he looked upon the blood of the paschal lamb and the angel of death passed over.
God’s righteousness required the life of the lamb. In the human heart, we have a sense of alienation from our God and the inability on our own to make amends. God prescribed ways in the Old Covenant which people could be reconciled to Him. When they offered the sacrifices with a heart of faith, they were received by him. In some fashion, they prefigured what Christ would offer as the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. All along there was foreshadowing of God providing by Himself and for Himself the proper offering to bring full atonement - renewed fellowship with God.
Centuries after the Exodus, Jeremiah is prophesying of a day which God Himself will be the means for the Righteousness, the perfection, the sinlessness that he requires. God’s people are confronted with the consequences of generations of sin. They will be judged, they will go into exile.
But all is not lost for God is faithful to his covenant and will bring about a greater deliverance than Israel had known in its illustrious past. Recall how Israel looked back longingly to the rule of David. Solomon represented the opulence of God’s blessing which was established in the faithfulness of David, the one who was a man after his own heart. Jeremiah promises one in the line of David - who is more than a king after God’s own heart. He is in the line of David, a human king, who embodies, incarnates God’s righteousness. In fact, He is The Lord Our Righteousness. He is not satisfied to be the Lord of Perfect Righteousness but God promises greater blessing by becoming the Righteousness of God in human flesh.
Our Gospel presents unto us the actions of the Messiah. The Lord Our Righteousness appears in the fullness of time and to his people. Jesus the greater Moses feeds the multitudes in the Wilderness. He takes human frailty and limitations of the created order, the disorder present in the world and offers them to God in his perfection.
His people are poor and hungry - needy of food for body and soul. He feeds them with the Word of God that flows constantly from his lips. He blesses the descendants of those that returned from the exile and these folks see the acts of God in their midst. This man has authority greater than Moses, this man has complete control over creation. This man speaks as one who has authority. He is the Messiah and his works identify him. They tell the people that God is doing a new work - a new type of creation. Greater than the Exodus from physical bondage. This King is the righteousness that His people lack. He performs God’s law perfectly in human flesh. His flesh will be pierced for our transgressions, his blood shed for our atonement. He is the LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. God coming down to redeem his fallen creation.
Let us hear and understand. More importantly, let us believe and turn to Jesus Christ, the truly righteous one, the one who ever lives to make atonement for our sins, who makes perfect intercession at the right hand of the father. Receiving from him the Righteousness of God that is only attainable by other humans by faith in Christ. From beginning to end, from Advent back around to this Sunday, we proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The truly good news that mankind has been redeemed from sin and death by Jesus Christ. Once again, or for the first time, let us look upon Jesus Christ and see in Him the holiness, the perfection, the righteousness that we lack. Jesus Christ is truly the LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS and salvation is found in no other. Amen.