Christology

Talk about paradox, talk about surprises and unexpectedness, talk about unobtrusiveness.... It happens every year, and each time it takes you by the throat.

You’ll remember, I trust...I HOPE you remember that the overall theme we’re following during this Advent season has to do with paradoxes. A paradox, of course, is a truth which may seem at first to be contradictory, to be at cross purposes with itself, to contain two elements which sound like they would cancel each other out, but which, may, in fact, find resolution when lifted to a higher level.

The theme for today, this 2nd Sunday in Advent is HUMILITY. It’s a good theme for any time of the year, for any season, but maybe especially for this season of Advent, as we try to get ourselves ready for the surprising, unexpected, and still, even after 2000 years of familiarity, STUNNING modesty of the ambiance in which the Savior of the world was born. What a paradox!

For some reason, I keep coming back to that donkey, that little, humble beast of burden that carried Jesus into town that day. At the center of the parade that marked His entrance into Jerusalem for the final week of His life, and at the center of our liturgical worship now 2000 years later on this day we call Palm Sunday, is that little donkey. Somehow, I keep coming back to that.

My stars, what kind of ending do we have here? Is this any way to wind up a Gospel? Is this any way to close an account of the most transcendent, revolutionary event in the history of the human race? What’s going on here, anyway? If Gospel means “good news”, what kind of good news is this? “And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

There may just be an Advent theme here, lurking around, if we can break it loose, and polish it up. I grant it’s not the usual emphasis we think of when we think of an Advent theme--- it’s not the traditional emphasis---STILL, it’s part of the picture, and maybe, in a way, the foundation for all the rest.

I wish I could have met that Matthew fellow.....maybe some day I’ll get to. No complete picture of him emerges from the sources we have to work with.... The information about him at our disposal is sketchy. Was the author of the first Gospel the disciple Matthew? We don’t know. Tradition says that, and it may be so.

The Thursday coming up, the 9th of May, will be the 40th day after Easter, and in the Christian calendar, that’s Ascension Day, the day in between Easter and Pentecost when the resurrected Christ, in the words of the Creed, “ascended into heaven”, to sit at the right hand of the Father.  

Jesus talked about it, Paul talked about it, In the early Church it was a central, pivotal issue....Augustine wrestled with it almost daily for the first 36 years of his life, both lured and repelled by its insidious power. It almost drove Luther crazy until he found reconciliation...the first time he served communion he was so aware of it that he literally fainted.