[Deuteronomy 18:15-19 / Philippians 4:4-7 / John 1:19-28]
The more things change, the more they remain the same. So in the days of St. John the Baptist, the great forerunner of the Lord announces that the Coming One is among the people and they don’t even realize He’s there. John had, in fact, been sent on the mission to prepare the people to meet the Coming One when He arrived, to point Him out and to help them greet Him in repentance and faith. So John’s big calling in life was to be the voice and the finger. The voice that Isaiah said would cry out in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. The finger that would unerringly point the crowds to the unremarkable Man who stood among them, looking so much like an ordinary Joe, but who was in fact the divinely appointed Lamb of God who had come into the flesh to take away the sin of the world. John witnesses to what is not apparent to our sight.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. How blind we may be at times to the presence of the Coming One among us. We gather week by week and listen to words from a book. We stand and sing to One whom no one can see, and we confess thereby that He is speaking and among us. We cry out to Him, glory to thee, O Lord and praise to thee, O Christ. We offer our petitions and bring the needs of those we love and know and of those we love and don’t know, and lay them all down before the feet of the One no one sees. And then He takes to His use bread and wine, speaks His words of promise over them, and reaches them back to us as His own body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. But all you see is a bit of unlikely bread and entirely too sweet wine. And yet He is there, the Coming One who is in the midst of us. Do you dare say to yourself: “Oh, it’s just communion.” As though communion were a THING and not a WHO, not the body and blood of Him who came among us as Mary’s little boy, larking about the streets of Nazareth, and one day taking off his sandals and clothes to stand before John in the flowing waters of Jordan, clothed only in His unblemished “yes” to the will of His Father,. Then going in the strength of that will to free those held captive by Satan, to heal those ravaged by disease, to raise those devoured by death, and finally in His “yes” to His Father’s will, taking off His sandals that we are not worthy to untie, and being fixed to a tree and raised upon it to die.
If you think He is hidden among us as Mary’s little baby boy, how much more is the Coming One who makes all things new, hidden in the dead body, strung up like a piece of meat upon Golgotha’s tree?
We may be blind, but creation wasn’t. It shook. It trembled before what it saw. The curtain of the temple torn right from top to bottom. For creation knew that in the death of that Man, who is also God, death itself has been undone, sins forgiven, the cherubim sheathing their swords, as at long last the Children of Adam and Eve are welcomed back to the home from which they had been in exile for all the centuries since the fall.
Creation confesses what we cannot see: that the Coming One – the One will appear in the clouds of glory on the Last Day – truly came among us in the flesh assumed from His holy Mother that in that flesh He might suffer and die and be raised in incorruption to be your everlasting salvation.
And so He had to teach them about being the Coming One and so hidden among them, even after He had defeated death and been raised in incorruption. So He sneaks along with the two Emmaus disciples and leads them through a joyous hunting through the Scriptures so that they might come to understand that the Christ HAD to suffer and die and be raised from the dead so that repentance and forgiveness could be given to all in His name. And with hearts strangely warmed by His words, unpacking for them the familiar Scriptures and showing them all to be about Him, He proceeds to take bread, bless it, break it and suddenly they see. The Coming One is among them – and they didn’t even realize it. The more things change, the more they remain the same. He was there all along in Word and in Meal. It begins to click.
And out of nowhere He appears to the disciples gathered in the upper room. Asks for some food. Speaks His peace, sends them forth with words of forgiveness and thus reminds them that He is with them always, yes, to the end of the Age.
The Coming One, right in the midst of their existence, and they can’t even see that He’s there, but He promises: “I will be with you always” and they know now that He never lies.
It was in that glad confidence that they marched out into all the world and those after them and those who came after them, all the way down to today. So you’ve got a preacher up here, jawing away about the Coming One and telling you: Don’t surprised, but He’s here. He’s among you. Yes, we eagerly await the Day of His appearing, but it will be that – an apocalypse, an unveiling. Suddenly He will reveal the truth that He has always been here with us, and we’ll see and know and give Him glory and praise forever.
Moses gave the big hint: the prophet would be like us, he’d come from among the brethren. Raised up to do a bigger job that poor Moses could ever accomplish. This One will speak words that bring us everlasting life, and He will be revealed right in our midst. One of us.
So Paul in today’s Epistle tells you to rejoice always, and let your moderation, your gentleness be known to all. Why? Because the Lord is at hand. At hand doesn’t mean, about to come. It means HERE. And here to receive all our prayers – so no anxiety needed in our lives when we remember that among us is the One to whom we can turn in prayer at anytime - the Defeater of Death and Lover of Mankind. The Coming One – He STILL stands in our midst and still speaks His word of Peace – a peace that passes understanding.
Christmas is almost here. It is the feast of God’s hidden presence, right smack dab in our midst – may the Holy Spirit open the eyes of our hearts to see and rejoice with St. John the Baptist in the Coming One’s presence. Not just future. But here. Now. And forever.
O come, O come, Emmanuel – and He does and He will. AMEN!
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