Second Wednesday of Advent
Reflection: Wednesday, Day 11 of Advent
[Moses said] “You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.
“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.” (Exodus 18:13-19, ESV)
This prophecy of the Messiah seems to have been one of the best-known during Jesus’ day—just before Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptist has to explicitly deny being this “Prophet.” Usually, it is quoted from “The Lord your God will raise” onward, but we thought the context of God (through Moses) talking about the other nations, and their tendency to seek out diviners and fortune-tellers was interesting—both because we’ve been talking about what makes God’s people distinct, and because there is a contrast here between the exotic, magical guidance the other nations seek out and the “prophet like me from among your brothers,” which seems less than glamorous.
And, of course, when Jesus does come, this is one of the main arguments his opponents give against his validity. In fact, his “own brothers did not believe in him,” and when he came to Nazareth, his neighbors said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” He wasn’t able to do many miracles there because of their unbelief; this is where he coined the saying, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country.”
Lest we should be confused in what sense this “Prophet” is “like” Moses, he clarifies. The Prophet, he says, will come between God and his people, just as Moses came between them so that they wouldn’t die. It is interesting here (for all our modern talk about intimacy with God) that God says the Israelites did well not to want to continue to see or hear him—to ask Moses to act as intermediary. I don’t think this is at all because God didn’t want to have a relationship with his people—I think rather it’s because he knew that, sinful as they were, direct experience of God would destroy them. This Prophet, then, would intercede in the same way Moses did—but, it turns out, with a twist: for the Prophet, who speaks the words and performs the acts of God, is also the Son of God, also God himself.
“We must be attuned not only to the extravagance of this time of year, intoxicating as it can be—but also the seemingly mundane, to our own struggling and unglamorous brothers and sisters, to whom and through whom the Holy Spirit reveals the Father and Son. ”
For the miracle of the Incarnation is this: that God himself became one of the Israelites’ ”brothers,” that he came between the Israelites and God—but in order, paradoxically, to invite them to know the unknowable God, who no longer appears as terrifying voice and fire, but as a man, who pours forth wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God even as he breaks bread and speaks in a human voice—and who has paid the price for this intimacy in his own flesh.
We, too, want magic at Christmas—certainly before Christmas, we want spectacle and beauty and romance. Yet let us not be too distracted by visiting foreign kings and visiting foreign angels, for Advent is when God prepares to come to his people in the ordinary moments. We must be attuned not only to the extravagance of this time of year, intoxicating as it can be—but also the seemingly mundane, to our own struggling and unglamorous brothers and sisters, to whom and through whom the Holy Spirit reveals the Father and Son.
Advent
Activities
Activity: If you are in the tiny minority of Americans who haven’t done so, set up your Christmas tree. But more importantly, take a minute to read Douglas McKelvey’s “A Liturgy for Setting up a Christmas Tree” from Every Moment Holy.
After reading the liturgy, take five minutes to consider the symbolic meaning of a bright pine tree within your home. Other than it being an object of visual delight, are there other ways it reminds you of your faith?
Taken from the daily office
Daily Scripture & Prayer
First Lesson: Exodus 18:13-19 (ESV)
Second Lesson: Hebrews 12: 18-24
A Liturgy for Setting Up a Christmas Tree
LEADER: O Immanuel, we would find in our traditions
these reminders of the wonders of your love:
First, let this fragrant tree, cut down
and then raised beneath our roof,
remind us how once upon a time,
the High King of Heaven consented to
be cut off from the glories that were his birthright,
and descended instead to
dwell with us in a broken world,
beset by harm and evil.
PEOPLE: Praise to you, Immanuel!
Next, let the hard wood of the trunk
and the outstretched branches remind
us how that same Heavenly King who
had entered our world on that distant
night, would soon act to redeem his
creation and his people in it,
though it would require the stretching out of his
arms upon a cross of wood—
his death for our life.
Praise to you, Immanuel!
Then, let these evergreen boughs
be a reminder of his mighty triumph
over death and hell, of his resurrection
unto a life eternal which will never fade—
an eternal life which he has also secured
for us. There is no greater gift!
Praise to you, Immanuel!
Finally, as we drape the branches of
this Christmas tree in glittering finery
and sparkling lights, let us imagine
Christ our King, seated upon his heavenly throne,
arrayed in the royal raiments of
his glory. And when at last we set the
star atop the tree, let us imagine Christ crowned
in his splendor, and all creatures
in heaven and on earth bowing before
him, crying “Holy! Holy! Holy!”
Glory to you, Immanuel!
Worthy are you, O Lamb of God,
to receive all glory, honor, and praise!
Glory to you, Lord Christ!
Copyright © 2017
Douglas McKelvey
Literature
From “Absalom and Achitophel,” by John Dryden
(Interestingly, these are the words of Achitophel, a dishonest priest, to Absalom, whom he is trying to flatter so that Absalom will seize the throne of his father, the rightful king David. The words do properly apply to Jesus, but also stand as a warning to those who seek worldly power that belongs to Christ alone.)
“Auspicious Prince! at whose nativity
Some royal planet rul’d the southern sky;
Thy longing country’s darling and desire;
Their cloudy pillar, and their guardian fire:
Their second Moses, whose extended wand
Divides the seas, and shows the promis’d land:
Whose dawning day, in very distant age,
Has exercis’d the sacred prophet’s rage:
The people’s pray’r, the glad diviner’s theme,
The young men’s vision, and the old men’s dream!
Thee, Saviour, thee, the nation’s vows confess;
And, never satisfi’d with seeing, bless:
Swift, unbespoken pomps, thy steps proclaim,
And stammering babes are taught to lisp thy name.
Song
Waterdeep, “Go”
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