It is God's Strength, Not Ours That We Must Rely Upon

This is the first Sunday of Advent.  Advent literally means “coming” or “arrival”.  Advent is a season of joyful expectation and celebration of Christ’s comings.  Its tone is one of anticipation, expectation, and yearning.

Tonight’s reading brings that theme to life for us.  It is from the Book of Baruch.  Baruch was the secretary of the Prophet Jeremiah.  This book describes the spirit of repentance which prompted God to bring the Babylonian exile to an end.  That exile was from 722 BC to 540 BC.

Tonight’s reading comes from chapter 5 of Baruch, but it is in chapter 4 that we get much of the background necessary to understand this passage.  In chapter 4, Israel is reminded that it went into exile because of its infidelity.  The City of Jerusalem is described as the grief-stricken mother of Israel and the exiles.

Mother Jerusalem mourns for the captivity of her sons and daughters whose sins caused them to be exiled.  Jerusalem asks herself what she can do for her children.  She acknowledges that only God can deliver them from the Exile.  She herself will pray and she calls upon her children to pray with her.  She counsels patience and pleads for repentance.

Now in chapter 5, mother Jerusalem is addressed in soaring language and told to prepare for the end of her mourning and the joyful return of her children.  She should look to the east and see her sons returning home.  

Jerusalem, which had earlier taken off her robe of peace for a robe of mourning, is now told to remove the mourning robe and put on the splendor of God.  Finally, Jerusalem is called to stand upon the heights and watch her exiled children come marching home on the road laid out in the desert and led by none other than God.

If you were such a mother watching your children come marching out of harms way led by none other than God, would not your heart be filled with anticipation, expectation, and yearning?  This passage succeeds in drawing us into this Advent Theme.

During my studies to become Deacon, we had a course on the Old Testament, taught by a Creighton professor, Nicolae Roddy.  He explained that books such as that of Baruch resulted from the work of a group of faithful priests and prophets who gathered together while in exile and set about making sense of what happened to the “people of God”. 

Israel was a confused people.  They were the chosen people of God.  A God greater than any other God, yet they were enslaved.  This singular and powerful God had let this happen to them.  How could this have happened?  Why did this happen? 

Those priests and prophets concluded that God must be the center of all you do, and Israel had not made him so.  Dr. Roddy stated that the greatest sin of the Old Testament was “individualism”.  The message of the Old Testament was: Do not rely on the strength of man made things or institutions or alliances.  Instead, place your trust and hope in God. 

This message is echoed in our reading for tonight.  After years of suffering, after years of trying to work through their problems with their own strength, Israel finally comes to the realization that it is God’s strength, not theirs that will save them.  We must eventually come to this same conclusion.  Then, we also will put on the splendor of God and see its manifestation in God’s saving actions. 

Clearly, there is opportunity to use these insights to help redirect our lives to ones of “God-centeredness”.  It is all too easy, especially in this Western culture, to approach life from a “take all you can get” and “survival of the fittest” perspective.   We need to know that God is god and that we are not.

Another and more joyful message to share coming from this reading is that God is forever faithful and He will never abandon us.  Upon that we can rely.