Advent 4 2024

There is four major themes for Advent that can be attached to the four weeks.

Death, Judgement, Heaven, Hell.

Psalm 113: Helps us to understand themes that Jesus fulfills in the manger that are praiseworthy.

The Text: Psalms are Poetry, they are music and they are Prayer.

Verse 1: Today’s Psalm begins with a command. To praise God. In Hebrew, Hallelujah.

Then the command is repeated more specifically, praise God oh servants and praise his name.

Does servants refer to the priests? or all people who are God’s? Does not matter to us Protestants as we believe in a priesthood of all believers, that is we are all called to be connected an to connect other to God with our gifts. Our gifting is there to serve God and in that work we praise God.

We also praise his name. LORD or in Hebrew YHWH. The God who is, this God, under this name makes a covenant with his people.

Ancient people associate the Name of the God with the power of that God. So invoking a name of a God, especially a secret name ment to sent that named power out into the world. In this Psalm they are using God’s most important name. The God who is.

Verse 2: Now there is an invoking of God’s name for use in a benediction or a beatitude, blessed be the Lord this time for evermore. Hoe much of time is wrapped up in now and for ever more… all the time. Gods names is to be praised always and ever.

Both the tradition of western and eastern Christianity have monks who praise God 5-7 times a day. They see themselves as the portion of the church assigned to fulfill this command.

As Anglicans we also see ourselves as a semi monastic community. the Rhythms of morning and evening prayer and the church calendar keep us connected to our monastic roots, in that way we see our selves as fulfilling the command to worship God in all time and places.

Verse 3: this is not a command or a beatitude but an observation that all in all the places that the sun touches, God is praised.

So verse 2 in all times God is praised, and in all places God is praised.

Verse 4: gives us a Characteristic of God that is to be praised, he is uniquely transcendent. This is another way to say that God is Holy. Holiness is the adjective reminding us that God is Uniquely Good. He is so God, being that he is the source of all Goodness that our best is like a dirty rag in comparison. So to have communion with God means to come and experience this unique goodness. To touch the Glory of that uniqueness is beyond anything we can compare it to in this world.

Verse 5 reiterates that God is unique, asking who could even compare, and yet God so Holy so transcendent comes to be among our experience.

So if you ever take a theology class we say that God is Imminent in creation and yet separate from it. God is everywhere. He is Lord of everywhere, and yet there are places that wicked and destructive things happen. Since God is present but not in it, he is not diminished or compromised by it.

When a pagan worships and thanks a tree for its life giving energy and its place in the earth, you can diminish his experience of that by cutting and burning the tree. For us we can thank God that the tree display God’s Glory, but if it is Gone only the display is diminished not the glory.

So verse 5 celebrates that God gets down into our mess with us.

Verse 6: Not only does God come into creation to display himself, he goes to those who are at the bottom of humanities chain, the poor, the invisible. And cares for their plight. He lifts them out.

Verse 7: In God’s eyes the poor have a new status, the status of being with princes.

Verse 8: Another pitiable group, barren women have their experience turned around. They become joyful mothers.

This one I will say, Why being barren was so hard in this day (Care in aged, and sin of bareness)

The harsh reality of infant loss in our day (isolation)

the reversal for the poor and barren may came, but it may be in the new heavens and earth.

Psalm 113: Helps us to understand themes that Jesus fulfills in the manger that are praiseworthy.

Applications and considerations.

The praise of God who is in all times and all places is the most important duty of the church. "Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever."

Its disruptive to our schedules to get up on a Sunday and get here, or on Christmas, or Ash Wednesday…But it is the thing we are created to do.

Missions aside: We must do this to fulfill the other thing. Please do not use our Anglican way to give up on missions.

God gives special care to forgotten people. In our modern era, when the poor cluster in certain spaces, where families with special needs children are too exhausted to go out, where we hold fewer funerals so the mourners have les comfort, where the average parent is not interesting enough to be a social media influencer. God is close to them. If you are experiencing a lack of God’s presence in your life, maybe its time to find yourself among the least and the forgotten, weather you partner with us on our mission to the Village Green. Or go work the soup kitchen at Grace Resurrection…or, or, or. There is so much that can be done.

Finally, God is near to you. God is everywhere in creation but unchanged by it.

God inhabits his word, that same word we read here today and the word that is read al over morning and evening prayer. God inhabits the elements of the sacrament, water, bread, wine. God inhabits the hearts of his people. Make that you 2025 resolution, to continue in God’s word even when it is hard, to commune at the table, to be with God’s people.

If you fall off the wagon for a month or 4 get back on. Let us be near to God who draws near to us.

Psalm 113: Helps us to understand themes that Jesus fulfills in the manger that are praiseworthy.

This Tuesday/Wednesday we are going to celebrate God entering unto creation by uniting to it. Here is the Mystery. By uniting the Son of God to a human Body there is a part of God that becomes limited by his humanity, and yet the God part of him is not limited.

And now human we celebrate that God knows our struggle. An in knowing our struggle Jesus takes that struggle onto his shoulders. Jesus does not punt our hardships into an abyss never to be seen again, he goes through our hardship and takes it for us. Your sin and disobedience now on Christ as he is one of us and dies for them. Your sadness, grief. On him. Death both the first and the second death conquered forever on the cross. And it all starts at the Nativity. Where Jesus begins this journey to being broken like bread for our survival,

Come o come let us adore him.