Come Thou Long Expected Jesus
THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT
"Come, thou long-expected Jesus, Born to set thy people free; From our fears and sins release us; Let us find our rest in Thee:"
What a beautiful verse from today's processional hymn. It gives words to the very cry of the heart, the song of every expectant soul. Come, Thou long-expected Jesus. Advent is but a divine beckoning of the soul to align our desires with a holy longing: a deep yearning for the Eternal Son to come into the world, aching within the soul for God himself to be born into the human experience, to dwell with us. Jesus, who gladly became as we are and forever joined to humanity, not only entered into the world of men but became a man that he might heal Eden's wound and bind the broken-hearted.
Jesus is the long-awaited Savior of old: promised to the prophets to visit his people Israel, "cause the captivity of Judah and the captivity of Israel to return, and [to] build them, as at the first... to "cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me."
Israel longed for the day when the Almighty God would again visit and comfort his people by pardoning their sins and ushering in peace. Then, as promised in the prophet Jeremiah "The voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the LORD of hosts: for the LORD is good; for his mercy endureth forever." Justice. Peace. Comfort. Israel's yearning was a holy longing for God to come and be in their midst.
Is this not the very longing which the prayers, hymns, and scriptures of Advent aim to stir within our hearts? Is this not the desire of our soul, a desire that must eclipse all lesser desires? A yearning to satiate our hunger for God to be born into the very fabric of reality: born today in our very hearts.
With St. Paul, we sing, "Rejoice in the Lord alway; and again I say, rejoice!" For Jesus is our joy, and therefore, we gladly rejoice in him! And, today, on this last Sunday in Advent, we are again awakened to the One we are waiting for: "Make straight the way of the Lord" You see, the Baptist wants to be very clear, to make sure we recognize who this Jesus is. He is Messiah, whom we have been preparing for: John is not the promised One of Israel.
And though John has baptized Jesus, he knows Him to be a far greater man than he, saying, "I baptize with water; [but] there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is to come after me - the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to unfasten." But when the Lord Jesus arrives at Jordan’s' bank, John knows exactly who has come: "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" (Jn 1:23).
"Behold the Lamb of God." In his Gospel, St. John the Divine tells us that the Lamb of God to which John the Baptist points is the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Jesus is the One born to die. From eternity the Divine economy lovingly purposed for the Son to be sacrificed for sins of the world.
Oh, the wonder and mystery of so great an exchange! God in Christ bore the full penalty of our sins to make right the result of our willful disobedience. In time, the Lord Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, lowly and in obscurity, to offer himself an acceptable and perfect sacrifice to satisfy the penalty for our sins.
To this merciful and wonderful truth, the psalmist testifies that Jesus was born into the world "to restore that which he did not steal!" (Ps 69:4) Beloved, hear the glory of the Gospel and plant it deep into your souls: Jesus Christ was born to die so that thieves like us might be live.
You see, it has always been the eternal purpose of the Father to restore fallen humanity to himself, an incredible eternal fact which the Advent of Jesus reveals and makes known. "For our sake," says St. Paul, "he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor 5:21). We long for the Just God, the compassionate God, and the Great Physician who attends to and meets our needs. What we need is the self-sacrificing God of Mercy: the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Jesus, the Lamb of God, prefigured in the skin of slaughtered animals to cover Adam and Eve's shame. He was the acceptable sacrifice offered by the shepherd Able. He was Issacs’s substitute caught in the thicket and offered in place of Abraham's Son. Jesus is the unblemished male Lamb, whose precious blood shelters captive Israel from death on the night of that first fateful Passover.
Friends "He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter." The Lamb of God was born in time to die for the life of the world. Jesus Christ, the perfect, sinless offering- the True Paschal sacrifice- achieved what a multitude of temple sacrifices could not: the destruction of death's stronghold, the forgiveness of sins, peace with God, and eternal life to all who believe.
Jesus said, "No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again" (Jn 10:18). This is beyond comprehension. Not only did Jesus choose to die at the hands of the unjust but did so willingly and joyfully! Is this not what the writer of Hebrews tells us? Jesus, "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God" (Heb 12:1-2).
And why? Why would the second person of the Godhead leave the majesty of heaven and come to his creation: to take away the sins of the world. The whole world has transgressed the decrees and laws of its Creator. From the first man to the last, everyone single person has fallen short of the glory of the God who lovingly breathed life into the soul of every man, woman, and child.
And what have we given in return? Nothing. We have loved lesser things, desired the unholy, squandered our inheritance in the "far country" (Lk 15:13). St. Peter, quoting the prophet Isaiah puts it this way, "all like sheep have gone astray" (1 Pt 2:25). Sin brought death into the human experience whose grip we cannot escape.
But behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! Jesus offered himself, upon the altar of the cross, to break the shackles of death and cleanse us from the stain of sin. The Lamb of God is also the Good Shepherd who willingly lays down his life for his sheep (Jn 10:18). And in the Advent of God, grace moves from heaven to earth and back again, catching us up in the incomprehensible wake of Divine salvation.
Beloved, the One for whom we wait, whom we long to visit us, Who is our Advent desire, is magnificent, beautiful, and more lovely than our wildest hopes and dreams, but we must never forget that Jesus Christ is "the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."
The truth of the matter is this: We cannot exalt Jesus on Christmas unless we remember the blood of his passion, the thorns of his crown and the gall of his crucifixion, for these are the high costs of the eternal love of God manifested and worshiped in that tiny babe in Bethlehem.
At Bethlehem, by the miracle of the incarnation, God worked in time to carry out his eternal loving purpose of taking mankind into himself and sharing his goodness with us forever. For my friends, God has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Ephesians 1.4). The eternal purpose of God is for you and me to enjoy his infinite love and goodness forever because he has first loved us with an everlasting love.
And because he loves us, we find the feasts which this world offers to be lacking and incapable, in the end, to satisfy our hunger and quench our thirst. Therefore, we seek true bread, true drink, the bread that comes from heaven, the Son of God born in Bethlehem: the love and goodness of the Father given in the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ: his birth on Christmas Day.
But the love we enjoy has come at a great cost. The child to be born in Bethlehem must be raised upon a cross. For, as Jesus proclaimed, "when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself" (Jn 12:32). Friends, He who lovingly came down had to be raised up.
"Lo it is written in the Book, I come to do thy will O God" (Heb 10:7; 9). The man at whom John the Baptist points is none other than the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world, born to set us free.
Thomas Aquinas says that true joy flows from love, from being in the presence of the beloved, and so the natural response to love is to rejoice. Whether it be Advent, Christmas, or whatever day we find ourselves with breath in our lungs and light in our eyes, may we so long for him as to welcome him always, and welcoming him, may we rejoice! Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice!
Therefore, prepare your hearts to enter into the presence of the Lamb. Do not tarry, nor delay. Rather, come. Come to the feast and enter into the joy of the Lord, who is drawing near. "Come, thou long-expected Jesus, Born to set thy people free; From our fears and sins release us; Let us find our rest in Thee." Amen+
