This fading glory

Today as we begin this advent season, we enter Egypt. Why Egypt? Well, we know that Jesus himself became an exile as a young child en fled from Bethlehem to Egypt to escape the death sentence of Herod. In everything we experience as “strangers and aliens” in this world, Jesus is well acquainted. This is especially good news in 2020. As strange and chaotic as the year has been, Jesus himself has entered that chaos and has proven that he is greater.

But let’s pause for a moment this morning and enter into what I believe is at the heart of much of our troubles. To state it simply: good things fade.

It seems reasonable to expect that things will continue as they are. Change is an interruption of continuity and often an unwelcome at that. The paths of our lives are marked by familiar people, places and experiences. Continuity and familiarity engender confidence and comfort. It is almost as if the desire for continuity was built into us, as if at some level we know that things were made to endure, that life was not meant to make me feel insecure or uncomfortable, that it wasn’t meant to be this way.

If that’s what you think, you should know, I agree with you. It is a particular problem that that which we long to endure most often does not. Change comes mercilessly. It doesn’t ask for our permission. Eventually we adjust to that change, we call it things like “the new normal”, and just when we start getting used to how things are, change comes again. It is unsettling, disheartening. Have you ever stopped to wonder, why is what I long for (continuity) so far from what I actually experience? If anything, experience should teach us that we should actually expect things to change and to change often. But I cannot escape that longing in my heart. Surely if evolutionary theory were true it would have worked that out of us by now.

Well the scriptures tell us that the short answer to that question is that this world is not the way it was supposed to be. Yes, when God made the world he intended all of His creation to endure, to continue along the path that He set it on, for its light to never fade. Our joys were made to be eternal, our dreams a reality and our loved ones to be forever close. But the other side of that truth is that this world is now broken and therefore things do not endure. We now find in ourselves desires that nothing in this world can seem to satisfy. C.S. Lewis says that the only logical explanation for this is that “we were made for another world.”

What does all of this have anything at all to do with Advent? It is quite simple. The coming of Christ to the world says to us that in the midst of all this brokenness, of all that unsettles us, in the midst of all the unwelcome interruptions to our lives, we ought also to expect God to interrupt our interruptions, to change all the changing, to unsettle that which unsettles us. We ought to expect Him to break into all the brokenness. The coming of Christ reminds us that God will have the final word.

Isaiah 64:3–5 (ESV)

3  When you did awesome things that we did not look for, 

you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 

4  From of old no one has heard 

or perceived by the ear, 

no eye has seen a God besides you, 

who acts for those who wait for him. 

5  You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, 

those who remember you in your ways. 

What a beautiful description of God’s own interrupting, doing things “that we did not look for”, awesome things, unexpected things. Yes all things change. All things fade. But He is greater than the changing and greater than the fading. In Christ, God Himself stepped onto the path of human history, bent down and with His own hands made a new way.

This means that we have hard proof that no matter how “out of control” things get, no matter how unsettled we become, no matter how great the changes are that are thrust upon us, He can change it still! Jesus himself is the evidence of that truth. We ought to expect God to break in and to fulfill all that He has promised to do. What great hope! What stability this give us in troubled times. God has the final word and the greater strength.

But we still have a problem. I wish it weren’t so but it is. The problem of this fading glory, this recurring interruption, this brokenness is not only in the world, it is also in you and me. Do you not wish that you also would be enduringly good? Do you not wish that you too would always run away from what is evil? Do you not also wish that you would remember the Lord in all of your ways? Is there not much to be desired in your own relationship with God and with others? Why is it so?

Well the scriptures give a short answer to that question as well.

Isaiah 64:6–7 (ESV)

6  We have all become like one who is unclean, 

and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. 

We all fade like a leaf, 

and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 

7  There is no one who calls upon your name, 

who rouses himself to take hold of you; 

Yes, “you meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways,” but “there is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you.”.

When John the apostle describes Jesus coming to the world he says,

John 1:9–11 (ESV)

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

Oh we long for God to break into our world and change all the changes. But if we are honest with ourselves, we also realize that we don’t deserve it. We forget Him. We would avail ourselves to His promises but our hearts too often prefer to not walk in His ways. Our desire to do good is often mastered by our desire for convenience. Our ability to love is often undermined by the inconsistency of our hearts. Our enthusiasm for God fades like a leaf in autumn and, if left to ourselves, our souls would be as dark as the cold night of winter.

But here is our hope - we have not been left to ourselves! Just as Christ is the proof that God can break in the brokenness he is also the proof that God has reached out to you and to me to save us from ourselves.

John 1:12–13 (ESV)

12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

Christ has come. This means that no matter how great the changes get, I know that He will work them all out for good. Christ has come and this means that no matter how imperfect and broken I feel, I know that if I only believe in him, he will bring me all the way home to the world for which I was made.

In the world and in my heart, Christ Jesus himself is the answer to the problem of all this fading glory.