Church of the Holy City

O Come Immanuel

O Come Emmanuel
Rev Dr. David J. Fekete
November 27, 2011

Isaiah 64:1-9 Mark 13:24-37 Psalm 80

This Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent. There are four weeks of Advent during which we look forward to Christmas and Jesus’ birth into the world. Both of our Bible readings for this morning treat different approaches to the coming of the Lord. Our reading from Isaiah begins with a plea for the Lord to come down to earth. “O that you would rend the heavens and come down” (1:1). Our reading from Mark is about the second coming of the Lord, when the Son of Man will come in the clouds and in great power and glory. And in both readings we find a statement about how we are to receive the Lord when He comes. In Isaiah there is a consciousness of sin, and an appeal to God to forgive. In Mark there is the warning that no one knows when the Lord will appear. We are told to watch and be ever ready.
Our reading from Isaiah comes from the time of the Babylonian captivity. Scholars call this section of Isaiah “Second Isaiah.” They hold that this part of Isaiah was written by students of the prophet at a later date than when Isaiah actually lived. Throughout Second Isaiah is the idea of the coming of the Lord. This is also called the Day of the Lord. These passages look forward to a great and awesome day when the Lord Himself would come down to earth and set things right.
When these prophesies were written, things were terrible for the Israelites. The Northern kingdom of Israel had been erased by Assyria. The Israelites had been dispersed and the northern kingdom had been colonized by Assyrians. The southern kingdom of Judah had been conquered by Babylon and the Israelites had been taken captive and deported to Babylon. You could say that the nation of Israel had ceased to exist. The land promised to Abraham way back in Israel’s beginnings had been taken away and given to foreigners. Things looked so hopeless that the prophets thought no human power could ever make things right. They thought that only the Lord Himself had sufficient power to right the terrible wrong that had happened to the Israelite nation.
This hope for the Lord to come and right things in the world was part of the Christian belief system. The prophesies in Second Isaiah about the coming of the Lord were incorporated into Christ’s birth in the world. The early Christians made sense of Christ’s birth and life on earth in terms of these Isaiah prophesies. They saw Christ’s birth as the fulfillment of these hopes. They saw Christ’s birth as the fulfillment of those hopes that the Lord would come into the world and make things right. As the fulfillment of these Isaiah prophesies, Jesus is called God. The birth of Jesus is that coming of the Lord into the world.
But a problem arose about this understanding of the prophesies. While Christians see Jesus as God incarnate, Jesus didn’t set things right in the world as the prophesies said the Lord would. Thus arose the doctrine that there would be a second coming of the Lord, when Jesus would come back and do just what the prophets said He was supposed to do. The passage we read from Mark, in fact, begins with a quotation from Isaiah that is all about the dreadful day of the Lord. The day when the Lord would come and judge the world. The Isaiah passage is as follows:
See, the day of the LORD is coming
–a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger–
to make the land desolate
and destroy the sinners within it.
The stars of heaven and their constellations
will not show their light.
The rising sun will be darkened
and the moon will not give its light (Isaiah 13:9-10)
So the great and dreadful day of the Lord was postponed from Jesus’ birth and life on earth into a time in the future when He would come back to earth and fulfill completely the Isaiah prophesies.
Both our readings this morning speak to our relationship with God and His coming. In Isaiah, we find a consciousness of sin. And in our reading from Mark, we are told to be ready for the Lord’s coming. Jesus says, “Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.” He compares the second coming to a homeowner who goes away and sets a guard at his front door. Jesus is the homeowner and we are the guards at the front door. So Jesus tells us,
Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back–whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: “Watch” (Mark 13:35-37).
What Jesus is telling us is to be ready spiritually for the time when we will see Him face to face.
The Israelites at the time of our reading from Isaiah, as I have said, were in captivity in Babylon. They saw the destruction of Judah and their captivity as the consequences of their sin. The prophet says,
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are as filthy rags . . . No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins (Isaiah 64:6,7).
Yet in all this despair there is hope. The prophet calls on God to come and redeem His people.
Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD; do not remember our sins forever. O look upon us, we pray, for we are all your people (64:9).
These passages from Mark and from Isaiah talk to each one of us and our relationship to God. They suggest to me Swedenborg’s three stages of spiritual growth. In this and in the next two talks, I will discuss these three stages. The three stages Swedenborg talks about are repentance, reformation, and regeneration. In Catholicism these three steps are called contrition, confession, and satisfaction. These are three doorways we walk through in preparing to be ready to meet Jesus face to face. Through these three portals, we will be ready and not asleep when the owner of the house comes home.
Today I will talk about the first doorway. That is repentance. Repentance is the beginning of our progress to new life from God. It is a death to sin and it leads to a rebirth into new life. Paul talks about this stage as a death to the flesh and to new life of the Spirit.
Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. . . . For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live (Romans 8: 5-6, 13).
Swedenborg is right in accord with Paul’s clear statement, “If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” Swedenborg teaches that, “Acts of repentance are all such as cause one not to will and hence not to do evils which are sins against God” (TCR 510). Swedenborg gives us simple instructions as to the repentance process:
How ought a person repent? The reply is, Actually; and this is, for one to examine himself, know and acknowledge his sins, make supplication to the Lord, and begin a new life (TCR 530).
This means that it is incumbent on us to learn what sin is. Some people I have talked to say that conscience is an inborn thing, and that everyone can feel whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad. That may be true. Some also say that God gives us a feeling of love and goodness and that we can feel when we are straying from that intuitive feeling. I think that there is merit in this too. I also think that some form of moral education is needed–whether it be from upbringing, religious instruction, philosophy, or social formation. Acts of repentance are all based on what we think is evil or sin. Swedenborg tells us that, “if a person, according to his knowledge of what sin is, examines himself, finds something in himself, and says to himself, ‘this is a sin,’ and abstains from it” then he or she has repented truly (TCR 525). Notice Swedenborg’s wording, “according to his knowledge of what sin is.” Repentance is a very individual thing. And it all depends on what we think evil is.
Our understanding of what evil is grows, deepens and changes over time. Our conscience is continually forming and expanding as we understand more and more about God’s kingdom, and as we acquire new truths. As our conscience expands, we become more responsible for our actions. We have a better grasp on God’s kingdom and we know more keenly when we are straying from it.
But repentance is not to be seen as a terrible and overly difficult process. We have the power to do it from God. And our main task is to align our lives with what we understand to be good–even as we turn away from what we understand to be bad. Sin is not something that we blunder into. It is a deliberate and purposeful act. Swedenborg writes,
he who from purpose and determination acts contrary to one precept [of the Decalogue], acts contrary to the rest; because to act from purpose and determination is wholly to deny that it is a sin . . . and he who denies and rejects sin in this way, thinks nothing of all that is called sin (TCR 523).
The other side of this coin is that if we, from purpose and determination, try to act according to what we know to be good, then we are on the heaven-bound path. Again on this point, Swedenborg writes,
they who by repentance have removed some evils that are sins come into the purpose of believing in the Lord and loving the neighbor; these . . . are kept by the Lord in the purpose to abstain from other evils; therefore, if they commit sin from ignorance or some overpowering lust, this is not imputed to them, because they did not intend it (TCR 523).
Well, this has been a lot of talk about sin–a subject no one likes to hear about. But I think it appropriate when we are preparing for Christmas, the time of Jesus’ birth in the world. I think that this is what Jesus means when He tells us to be ready and to keep watch. We don’t want to be caught sleeping when we see Jesus face to face. And as Paul says so plainly, ” but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” Repentance is like a maintenance program. It keeps us honest. It keeps us humble. It reminds us that human potential is limitless. Repentance keeps us in the intention to do good, to love our neighbor, and to love God above all else.