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sadvent404
Oh, Come, Emmanuel
Text:
Matthew 1:18-25
Date: The Fourth Sunday in Advent
12/19/04 serie nero6.0 6.3.1.15
Christian
Preaching takes time. It is the dissecting of a Biblical text and
explaining what the words mean in their context, what they meant
to the original hearers, and what they mean to the hearers of each
age with application to their particular time and circumstance and
situation in life. Christian Preaching is the proclamation of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ in the hopes and with the aim that the Holy
Spirit, working through the sermon “when and where he wills,” will
produce the gift of repentance and faith through the ears and in
the hearts of its hearers. Christian Preaching takes time to speak,
to hear, to think, to understand and, finally, to believe.
I
begin with this little definition of Christian Preaching because
of what we are about to celebrate in the Christmas season. It is
in a number of ways parallel to the worship of the Holy Church throughout
the world in Holy Week, and specifically, in this sense: in the
Great and Holy Week of Passion/Palm Sunday, through the Triduum
of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday leading to Easter
Sunday, the Church ritually, liturgically and ceremonially “relives,”
if you will, all the events of the last days of our Lord's earthly
journey in “real time,” imitating the actual amount of time of the
original events. Because of this, there is so much happening, so
much action (from the triumphant entry to the Passover meal in the
upper room, the agony and betrayal in the garden, to the trials,
the crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus) that there is little
time for talking about it, explaining or interpreting what's going
on: preaching! The liturgy, the readings, the ceremony are all in
themselves a sermon to be heard, observed and taken in. Well, in
a similar way (but maybe for different reasons) the Christmas Gospel
is such a huge event that time for preaching it is at a premium.
I mean, on Christmas Eve especially, the liturgy itself and the
involvement of the children and of choirs and special musical groups
is a sermon in itself. The facts of the story are, at once, well
known and yet ever new.
At
the end of Advent I used to feel like I needed to remind the congregation
when we have Saint Matthew's account of the birth of Jesus on the
Fourth Sunday that it is not Christmas yet. But then, whereas Holy
Week and Easter is commemorated at the precise time of the year
that our Lord's passion, death and resurrection occurred (that is,
around the first full moon after the spring equinox!), as for Christmas,
Jesus was most probably not born on our 25 th December. Indeed,
regardless of the time of year, we teach of the incarnation and
birth of our Lord to our catechumens, youth and adult, whenever
we treat the second article of the creed in their catechesis. So,
given that Preaching takes time, maybe it is a blessing that we
can talk about, preach and proclaim the nativity of the Son of God
on the Sunday before we celebrate it in hopes that the spiritual
and theological significance can be more clearly perceived, heard
and believed.
We
would know nothing of our Lord's nativity if we had only the Gospels
of John or Mark. It is only from Luke and Matthew that we are told
of “the genesis,” the genealogy and the events of the incarnation
and birth of our Lord by the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary.
We will hear Luke who gives us many details and especially the music
of the original Christmas on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. But
we have before us today the Gospel of Matthew.
Matthew
is writing specifically for Jewish ears, and those Hebrew ears that
have been bathed in the Torah and the hope of the Old Testament.
For instance, in the first chapters of his Gospel Matthew chooses
seven (7) (the number of perfect completion) among the many Messianic
prophecies of the Old Testament to indicate that this Jesus of Nazareth,
born of the Virgin Mary, is truly the perfect fulfillment of everything
written about the Savior in the Hebrew Scriptures. The main fulfillment
we hear in today's text is what was read in today's Old Testament
reading, from Isaiah 7:14, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and
bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” This, Matthew says,
found its perfect fulfillment in the child Joshua or Jesus of Nazareth.
As
the main theme of our text, therefore, we are proclaiming with the
Holy Spirit through the Evangelist Saint Matthew, that the Savior,
Jesus, is none other than God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity
and, furthermore, the good news that in Jesus we discover that God
is for us and with us which is the meaning of the Hebrew name Immanuel,
the “with us” God. In Jesus, God dwells graciously in the midst
of his people.
The
details are such: After his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph,
before they had come together she was found having in womb of the
Holy Spirit. Matthew allows no sordid or base speculation as to
the cause of Mary's expectant condition! This is “of the Holy Spirit.”
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