[AI translation] We are in the middle of the Advent season. Advent is the time when we talk about the coming of Jesus, the coming of the Lord. The word Advent itself means this and it is a time when the church is preparing to receive the Lord. But this coming of the Lord is not like when we talk about the coming of spring in the winter, for example: we wait for spring to come, but it is not spring yet, it is winter. We often imagine the coming of Christ in the same way, incorrectly! That is, that he will come one day, but he is not here now. Well, what I would like to talk about is that the one whose coming the world was waiting for has already arrived, the Saviour Christ has already been here for a long time - Advent is therefore a preparation for the realisation in us and among us of all that His coming to us was all about. It would be a great pity if we were to hear the news of Christ's coming and at the same time forget that He is already here! And if for years, for decades, we keep on saying that He is coming, we get used to it, like the servant in the parable who, knowing that "My Lord is delaying His coming", imagined himself master of the house, mistreated the servants, ate, drank, and had fun.Well, then, the coming of Jesus Christ also means that Jesus Christ is here! The time to which this promise refers has already begun: 'Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age'. And the point is precisely not to see Jesus Christ as someone who is on the way, far away somewhere, and whom one therefore thinks one recognises only as a small dot on the horizon, but to reckon with His full reality and presence. God is here among us. Jesus Christ is among us! Just as real and personal as you or me! Our Word testifies to this: coming among his own. So he has come, he has come among his own.
Let us pause for a moment on the question: who is he who has come? A few verses below we read: the Word became flesh. So Jesus Christ is the Word of the living God in human flesh. Let me try to illustrate this strange expression with an analogy. I once wondered to myself what concept or idea the ants crawling on the ground might have of me, the human being walking among them. They might notice my footsteps, if they are conscious at all, hear a thunderous sound when I speak, but they would have no idea who I am or what my intentions are - they could only infer from certain signs that some higher being lives above them.
Well, let us suppose that I love them so much that I want to let them know it. Suppose that I am able to carry out the following plan: I would have a piece of my heart, my soul, my senses, my will, put into the body of an ant that walks on the earth.
I would be born as an ant among the ants, live an ant life among them, and tell them who the man is who walks above them, so that the ants would not fear him, that mighty man who does not want to crush them, who loves them, who is their ally, who takes care of them - I would tell you everything that can be said about a man in ant language and ant terms. Of course, this metaphor does not even come close to the miracle that God has done in the person of Jesus Christ, that the Word became flesh, the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us! God has poured His holiness, His purity, His love, into an ordinary human vessel, so that, seeing this God made flesh and blood man, we might have some idea of who God is and what God wants for us!
Well, this Someone, this Only-begotten Son of God, this Word of God made flesh, Word, love, holiness: Jesus Christ: He stands face to face with you and me today, He is the One who has come among us! He is the one with whom we have to do today and who has to do with us today!
And in the heavenly message it is said that this Jesus is "coming among them"! This applies not only to then, 2000 years ago, but also to now. It means, in other words, that the Christ who is present immediately declares that we are His as we are: His own. So you and you and me: we are His! This is Jesus' supreme and, in fact, only claim on man, because this is man's greatest claim on himself: that he wants to be his own master! This is also the original sin: the breaking away from the rule of God, the separation of man from God. Since then, these are the most characteristic slogans of man: 'I am my own master. I do with myself what I will. I will not be ruled by myself!" It could almost be said that this conflict is the turning point of our whole human life: who is my master, who commands me, who do I obey? And this question must be decided not only once in a lifetime, but again and again. The practice of the Christian life begins always, again, by acknowledging and putting into practice the claim of Jesus, that is, that I am his!
And this message is precisely about the fact that he came among his own, among those who by divine right should be his, but who did not need him, who did not accept him. The very people who should have come to him with great rejoicing did not acknowledge him! He should have been given a great, joyous, celebratory welcome and instead he received a cold, harsh rejection. Anyone who did not receive Jesus as Lord was essentially rejecting and rejecting Him! Imagine what a tragic thing it is when someone comes with the best of intentions, wants to help and is misunderstood. When one comes home, to one's own home, and finds the door locked, one is told that there is nothing to be found here! And what a tragedy it is when the same thing happens to someone who has come in the name of the Lord God! One of the saddest statements in the Bible is this verse, "He came among His own, and His own received Him not!"
Let us not think that this complaint of the Word refers to the cold reception that Jesus received in Judea 2000 years ago by the Jews! That too! But beyond that, it is about His own in general. Let me give you an example of what it looks like in practice, that His people did not receive Him! In one of my Bible studies I talked about how at the World Council of Churches General Assembly in Evanston last year, Pastor Niles of Ceylon, the World Council of Churches' Secretary for Mission and Evangelism, gave a sad, and unfortunately typical, example: he had recently had an encounter with a large group of Asian students at Sidney University. At the same time, an equally large group of Australian students were present. In the course of the conversation, Niles asked the Australians, "Have any of the Asian students talked to you about their own religion, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam or something else?" The answer was. "Oh, yes, all of them!" The answer was, "No, none!" Well, you see: how is it today that His own have not received Him? The Buddhists have received Buddha more, the followers of Islam have embraced Mohammed more, and I could go on to the most modern schools of thought, than the Christians have received Jesus, than theirs have received Him!
The gospel record knows of others who, though few in number, have received Him! And in doing so, it makes it clear what Jesus expects of us: that we receive Him! But there are very different ways of welcoming someone. I can welcome someone into my home and receive them as a kind guest, courteously, attentively and yet with a measured, reserved welcome. Or I can welcome someone for a night or two as a guest in a hostel, a friend passing through. Or even further, as a lodger who takes a room in my apartment. Well: all these possibilities are out of the question with Jesus. Jesus cannot be satisfied with a spare room or a rented apartment! He came to his own. He wants the whole apartment delivered. He wants you to give him all the keys! He wants you to have nothing that is not at His disposal. To take Him in is to make Him master of me. Who are those who have "received Him"? Those who accept that He, Jesus Christ, is Lord of their time, their family, their money, their tongue, their physical strength, their occupation, their work and leisure, their joys and worries. Those who give him their doubts, their unbelief, even their sins!
Our Word goes on to say that those who receive Jesus in this way are given the power to become sons of God! You see, what depends on whether one receives Jesus or not: our filial relationship with God. Being a child of God is a good thing, the best thing in the world. To call the great God Father, to relate to him as a sweet child: this is the greatest thing in the world. But to do that, you need authority, you need justification. I can't just be somebody's child without anything else. Jesus alone has the authority to bring someone into the family of God. The one whom the Son leads by the hand, the one whom the Son vouches for, is recognized by the Father, is adopted by God! But the Son can lead to the Father only those who abandon themselves, who entrust themselves entirely to him. The Son can only do good to him who has given himself completely to Him! Our Word says: "And as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name" (John 1:11-12).
This is what this third Sunday is about, that is, whether we really want to receive Jesus, not only as a passenger, a guest passing through, but as the Lord of our lives, the Lord of our daily life, whether we really want to become children of God! Are we ready to immediately and fully draw the consequences of this filial relationship with God? That is, on the one hand, to live carefree, confident, joyful, life-affirming lives before our heavenly Father, in the happy knowledge that our Father is a rich, all-powerful and forgiving God; - and on the other hand, to live in total obedience, in humility, under God's guidance and direction? So it is nothing less than a whole new quality of life. It is about what we were talking about last Sunday: whether we want to live a truly Christian life, a Christian life, a Christian life? Do we really want that? Do we want the Word of God made flesh in Jesus Christ to remain for us just a piece of printed paper, stuck between two covers, something that we take out once a week or once a day and read, and then go back to the covers again, or do we really want this Word to come alive among us, to become flesh and blood in us, to become incarnate in us, to become a reality that we can also imagine and live? Or, to put it another way: should Christ remain in our churches, where we visit Him on Sundays, or should He come out with us and in us into practical life, into our families, into our everyday lives, into our desks and computers, into the streets and shops - into everything? Yes: that is the question!
We were talking the other day in a small company about the need for early Christianity to show the saving power of Jesus Christ to a world that had not seen any Christianity before, and when it did, saw only good. Now we have to speak and live the name of Jesus in a world that has seen, and often still sees, almost nothing but a corrupt Christianity. Let us not be surprised if the gospel has been greatly discredited in the eyes of the people of today! And he believes only what he sees of our faith.
Well, that's exactly what it is: Jesus is ready to be seen today, the Word is ready to be embodied in us and by us today, if only we are ready and obedient to receive and see the Word! We are the ones whom the Word says: among His own! Feel the awesome responsibility of this word! He came among them! But what are His own doing with Him? Do they accept him? Do they really receive him? Would that this song were a real, true supplication on our lips:
My Saviour, you cannot deny me one request:
That I may carry you in my heart, I hope,
And be thy cradle and thy shelter;
Come, then, and fill me
With thee: with great joy!
(Canto 329, verse 5)
Amen.
Date: 11 December 1955.
Lesson
Lk 20,9-18