The Third Midweek Service in Advent With Angels and Archangels and All the Company of Heaven
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Two weeks ago, John’s mother Elizabeth helped us to prepare for Holy Communion by teaching us to ask her amazed question, “Why is this granted to me?” (Luke 1:43) Last week, the prophetess Anna (Luke 2:36-38) did more than remind us that “fasting… is indeed fine, outward training” (Sm. Cat.). Anna showed us that the “bodily preparations” of aging and grief also do a fine job of making us hungry for the Body and Blood of our Lord. In tonight’s reading from Hebrews, we learn Communion preparation from every Christian who has gone before us, both Old Testament and New. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. Dear Christian friends, It would be good and beneficial for you to separate in your mind the idea of a HOLIDAY and the idea of a HOLY DAY. Yes, many people will tell you that HOLIDAY and HOLY DAY mean the same thing. Yes, the word HOLIDAY was made by pushing the two words, HOLY and DAY, together into one word. Still, it would be good for you to separate HOLIDAY from HOLY DAY in your mind. First, this distinction between HOLIDAY and HOLY DAY will help you cope with the negative feelings that so many people experience this time of year. Even more than that, this distinction between HOLIDAY and HOLY DAY will help you immensely as you prepare for your every-Sunday communion. Here is my suggestion to you: use the word HOLIDAY to describe celebrations and happy things that occur outside these walls; use the word HOLY DAY to describe our life here in this sanctuary, where Holy Communion is served. Here is why I suggest this distinction to you: 1. As you know, a death in the family tends to ruin HOLIDAYS, because everything is emptier now. Yet that same death in that same family will make a HOLY DAY only sweeter and dearer. After all, we celebrate Holy Communion on the HOLY DAYS, and in Communion we sing praise “with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven” (Preface). “The company of heaven” includes those who have died in the faith (thus ruining our HOLIDAYS). As you heard in the reading, “We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.” That is to say, all those who died in the faith before us now surround us like a cheering crowd in a football stadium. They crash the field, so to speak, at Holy Communion. We cannot see, hear, or touch our dead loved ones when we commune. Praise be to God, they likewise cannot see, hear, or touch us and thus become aware of our misery. But they are there. They are always with Jesus, and Jesus draws near to us to serve us His body and blood in Holy Communion. (Personally, Holy Communion grows more central to my life each time I bury someone I love.) 2. HOLIDAYS give people a chance dredge up the past, and usually the past is better left buried in the muck of history—family history or otherwise. Jesus forgives all sins, but mothers-in-law might not. God the Father has cast your sins as far as the East is from the West, but your resentful children or your estranged wife might be out collecting them up again. By contrast, HOLY DAYS might be rooted in the past—such as the Christmas Incarnation or the Easter Resurrection—but HOLY DAYS intend to direct our eyes toward the future. Rich with forgiveness and brimming with promise, God gives us HOLY DAYS so that we are able to “lay aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely,” as you heard in tonight’s reading. 3. HOLIDAYS easily disappoint. (For example, perhaps you have felt the pinch of not being able to do as much for your loved ones this Christmas as you would like.) The HOLY DAYS assure you that the best gifts are yet to come, but for you and your fellow Christians in your house. Stated another way, HOLY DAYS help us to wait, as our fellow saints waited before us: These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. … Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city. 4. HOLIDAYS come once per year, and that is more than enough. HOLY DAYS arrive every week, and sometimes more than once. As our fathers confessed, “In our churches [the liturgy of Holy Communion] is celebrated every Sunday and on other [HOLY DAYS]” (AP XIVV.1). HOLY DAYS are good news for you, because they assure you that your Lord Jesus is never in short supply for you. HOLY DAYS mean that Jesus comes to you and lives with you in the weekly grind of you life, and not merely on the mountaintops of annual HOLIDAY celebrations. HOLY DAYS feed faith into you, and as you heard tonight, “By [faith] the people of old received their commendation.” Now here is how you can use this distinction between HOLIDAY and HOLY DAY in your weekly preparation for Holy Communion: · First, prepare yourself by doing what tonight’s reading encourages you to do: “Lay aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely.” That is to say, examine your life, admit your guilt, and resolve to do better. Such preparation is not easy: Your sin will surely make you feel ashamed. Thankfully, and on account of Jesus’ death for your sin, “God is not ashamed to be called [your] God.” · Second, prepare yourself by remembering that you are surrounded by “a great cloud of witnesses,” all of whom ran your race before you. By God’s mercy, they survived. By God’s same mercy, you will survive, too. · Third, take comfort that, when you commune, you raise your voice with saints and angels in praise to God—even those saints whom you sorely miss. “Therefore with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven we laud and magnify Your glorious name, evermore praising You,” O Lord! · Fourth, prepare for Holy Communion by coming with insistent faith, that is, with “the assurance of things hoped for, [and] the conviction of things not seen.” Stated another way, prepare to commune by reminding yourself that the best is yet to come for you; just as the best was yet to come for those before you who “died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar.” · Finally, prepare by remembering that communion never depends upon how you feel. Stated another way, the circumstances of your life can never ruin the HOLY DAY. On HOLY DAYS we receive “Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” Having “endured the cross” for us, His forgiveness now makes it possible for us to endure. _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
