Advent Sunday

Media vita in morte sumus.
(In the midst of life, we are in death.)
 
Our opening quotation comes from a Medieval Gregorian Chant. It is an antiphon for sinners who habituate themselves to spiritual death. 10th century Swiss soldiers used it as a battle cry until nervous bishops banned it. Today it forms our introduction to the penitential season of Advent. Advent means coming. In Advent, we prepare for Christ’s coming at Christmas. The Sundays of Advent are all about Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, or The Four Last Things. On this First Sunday of Advent, we focus on spiritual death.
        
Living as we do in a world that is materially minded, spiritual death strikes us as an odd and alien concept. The only kind of death that we post-moderns tend to think about is the extinction of the body. Because our god is chiefly creaturely comfort, death to us is its cessation. Because we fear only earthly death, we are addicted to doctors, drugs, and diets, hoping to postpone its inevitable arrival. But no matter how hard we try to delay and avoid it, sooner or later, earthly death will get the better of us. And for as long as we are consumed with trying to beat it, another truth emerges. Carelessly, we have neglected the condition of our souls. What if the Bible is correct and life goes on? What if we shall be judged for our choices, good for Heaven and evil for Hell? Then, shouldn’t we be more concerned about the character of our souls, in relation to God at best, or at least in relation to other men? And if we aim to be good in relation to God and man, shouldn’t we be more focused on dying to sin and vice and coming alive to virtue and goodness?
          
We cannot presume upon God’s Grace and take it for granted. Superficial faith presumes that we have no role in our salvation. Superficial faith never even begins to work out sin and work in righteousness. Superficial faith assumes that because God in Jesus Christ has done all the dirty work, bloodied His hands, and laid down His life for us, there is nothing for us to do. But the problem with this view of salvation is that it doesn’t involve us in any way, doesn’t redeem our fallen natures, and seems to save us magically despite ourselves. It makes a mockery of our created integrity. It would seem to suggest that we are so far gone, so sinful, that we can only be saved like mad dogs being pulled from the fire, in which case we are dogs and not men.

Of course, this lets us off too easily. It undermines our calling to discover the good and to love it. It misunderstands our fallen natures and the nature of sin. Sin is a choice for division from God and confusion, in place of unity and understanding.  Christ Himself says to us,
Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. (St. Matthew vii. 21)
 
And St. Paul reminds us that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling. (Phil. ii. 12) And in his vision of the Second Coming, St. John the Divine hears the words of Christ again.
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. (Rev. iii. 20,21)
 
Christ and His spokesman, St. Paul, hold us up to a standard. Christ implies that having found God, we will be saved only by doing the will of the Father. St. Paul insists also that having discovered God in Jesus Christ, we must work with Him. Again, Christ says that if we open the door of our hearts to Him for spiritual strength, we shall overcome evil. In each case, we have a role to play in our relationship with Christ. Christians believe that salvation has been won for us by the death of God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, and that we are invited to embrace Him through the Spirit. The work of salvation that is offered to man involves willingness, obedience, fear of the Lord, and labor that overcomes vice with virtue through suffering and spiritual death.

Death for the Christian is not essentially the termination of life in the body. Death for the Christian has been made new by Jesus Christ. Because Christ has conquered sin, death now has a new meaning. O death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory? (1 Cor. xv. 55) Christ went to the Cross for us to wage the final battle against sin, death, and Satan, and He conquered them all. For the Christian, death now becomes a spiritual work to be undertaken for salvation. The Christian is called to die to sin and come alive to righteousness. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Cor. xv. 22) Adam willed death to God. Christ willed death to sin. We can choose either Adam or Christ. In Christ, we can obey God once again, willingly embrace His Grace, fear Him, and labor daily to die to sin.
             
In today’s Gospel, we study Christ’s labor for us as He enters into Jerusalem to embrace His death upon the Cross. Advent begins as a journey with Jesus up to death. Today, we are encouraged to find in Christ’s death a pattern for our own spiritual deaths. We read that Christ travels up to His death, meek and sitting upon an ass. (St. Matthew xxi. 5) Christ’s meekness, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, moderates anger. Meekness is a virtue that calms us in the face of evil and gives us courage to battle with sin spiritually. We must face spiritual death with meekness and courage. Too easily we become exasperated, resentful, and angry with our calling die a spiritual death. But Christ gives us a pattern for victory. If we would remember that He has conquered death and forbidden it to keep Him down, we might begin to see spiritual death as that virtue that is key to new life and salvation.
             
But too often we want to find a shortcut to Heaven that ignores Christ’s sacrifice in spiritual death to sin and His expectation of ours also. Notice what we read in our Gospel as Jesus entered Jerusalem.
And the multitudes that went before and that followed cried, Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord; Hosanna in the Highest. (ibid, 9)
 
We are fine with the Christ who rides meekly upon an ass into Jerusalem. We love to praise Christ and sing hosannas in the highest. But Christ insists that our joy and gladness must be tempered with suffering and death. As a precursor to the kind of death we must die, we read that Christ went into the Temple at Jerusalem and cast out those that bought and sold, overturning the tables of the money changers, and exclaiming, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. (ibid, 13) Christ, the Son of God, who comes down from Heaven to save us, insists that prayer and not money-making will save us. We must wage war on sin and die to it, be it the false commerce of pseudo-religion in the temples of Jesus’ time or the lukewarm and superficial Christianity of our own. If we would follow Christ, we must be willing to go into battle and to die spiritually to all that stands between us and salvation.
             
In this morning’s Epistle, St. Paul likens the lives we have lived to sleep. Sleep is a state likened to death to God. Thus, he says that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. (Romans xiii. 11) We must awaken or come alive not because we were baptized and saved long ago, but because their worth must be tested for salvation or damnation every day! The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armour of light. (ibid, 12) We are called to the daily, heavy labor of casting off sin!  Let us walk honestly, as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. (ibid, 13) Any creature comfort pursued to excess threatens to damn us! But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. (ibid, 14) We must choose to be clothed with Christ and His goodness now if we hope to be saved, taming the flesh and its passions.
             
Today, you and I are called to move into a season that will be crowned with Christ’s birth at Christmas. To receive it truly, we must embrace His Death as the pattern of true human life. We must cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armour of light. (Collect, Advent Sunday) Spiritual death is a hard work that must become the habit of our lives if Christ would move us through His goodness to the Kingdom. To welcome the Christ child into our souls at Christmas, we must remember that Christ was born to suffer and die. And we too are born to suffer and die, not in an earthy sense, which is death to God, but in a spiritual sense that is life to Him, beginning now, and forever.

Amen.
©wjsmartin