THE ADVENT OF CHRIST

This Advent sermon by Rev. Jerome F. Politzer marks the beginning of the Christian Year

Mankind is incurably religious. Just as we have built into our human bodies the need for food in order to live, we have built into our spiritual natures the requirements for the meaning of life, for guidance, and for strength to deal with adversity. All of these requirements religion supplies. We will always have expressions of the religious nature of man in every age. The important question is not whether a person is religious, but what does his religion really do for him? Is it a good religion? Is it constructive, freeing him from his fears, guiding him into righteousness and creativity, and giving him hope for the future? Or is it something that enslaves him, denies him the development of his natural capacity, and gives him a form of escape from reality rather than a power to go forward into the depths of life? A claim of Christianity is that when Christ comes into our life He is our Savior. He saves us from the entanglements of our own souls through forgiveness. He gives us a power by which to overcome adversity. He lifts us from the despair of our present existence, and promises us a marvelous future. This is the meaning of the Savior and the Advent of Christ. There are millions of people today in our country who have come up against the blank wall of materialism, finding it to be a hollow shell of emptiness.

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Many of the younger generation are now looking for God. They are turning for deliverance to Christ because He brings to them forgiveness, guidance, and hope. Some of you might question the fact that there is this hollow shell of materialism, or that there is a need for anything more than temporary personal success. The prophets of old saw this need in their own culture during the decay and decline of Israel. The psalmist said, "Man walketh in a vain shadow and disquieteth himself in vain. He heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shalt gather them." When every goal has been achieved, if it is only in a material sense, what is there? What is left is only gradual disintegration. The prophet Jeremiah saw the spiritual emptiness that set in when the Israelite people denied God and adopted desperate attempts to cover over this fact with temporary externals. He wrote his lament to the people of Jerusalem. He said, "And you, oh desolate one, what do you mean that you dress in scarlet and deck yourselves in ornaments of gold; that you enlarge your eyes with paint? In vain you beautify yourselves. Your lovers despise you; they seek your life." Because he felt their inward desolation he said, "For I heard a cry as of a woman in travail, anguish as of one bringing forth a first born child, the cry of the daughter of Zion gasping for breath, stretching out her hands saying, 'Woe is me, I am fainting before murderers.'" If we look at the picture magazines of today we see the gaudy externals of our culture. We see the beautiful models, male and female, the golden paint, the scarlet lipstick, the shining chrome, the immaculate homes. Not only American magazines, but Soviet Life, as well as French and English magazines all portray

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the shallow materialism of our age. Anyone with any sensitivity at all hears the cry of anguish from within. As the poet T.S. Eliot said: Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from God and nearer to the dust. In the midst of man's continual need for spiritual fulfillment comes the Savior. We are celebrating His coming in this period of Advent. Let us think for a moment what His coming means, and how it achieves itself. If we think that the coming of Christ involves the sanctification and the blessing of our own needs and desires, and the continuation of our weakness and faults, we are sadly mistaken. Christ comes initially, not as a deliverer who takes our egos and enlarges them, but as a judge. We cannot truly receive His power, we cannot see Him and know Him through faith unless, first of all, we see Him as a standard set up against us. The selfish power of our own egos must be shattered before we can accept His love. When John the Baptist heralded the coming of Christ into history he said, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." John Donne, the great 17th century poet and preacher, spoke of this false hypocritical Christianity when he said, "The Christ of thine has a short, fat nose like thine. The Christ of mine has a long thin nose like mine." He objected to the projection of our egos and calling it Christ. We must receive Him as a judge who is not "your Christ" or "my Christ," but the Christ of God, the standard of

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perfection who will humble all of us before Him. Every Christian religious movement, every personal religious experience needs to be held up against the standard of Christ the judge, as well as Christ the deliverer. We have today in the Gospel of St. Matthew presented to us the manner of Christ's coming again to meet the great and desperate need of humanity. Our Lord describes how He comes, "When the son of Man comes in His glory he will sit on His throne, and before Him will be gathered all the nations." This is the great Assize, the court of judgment. "Before Him will be gathered all the nations and He will separate them, one from another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats." The symbolism of this passage is from the ancient pastoral life of Israel. When the approach of winter would cause the shepherd to bring in his flocks from over the hills, they would be mixed with wild goats that had joined in with them, herded with them, and pastured with them. But when the time came to gather them into the barn, the goats had to be eliminated. They were not wanted. The shepherd would then place his sheep on the right hand and the goats on the left. Christ's flock that undergo His judgment will receive His marvelous blessing. First, comes the judgment, and second, comes these gracious words of approval: "Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." The standard of God's judgment is very different from the standard of human judgment. The usual way we judge one another and ourselves as well is through achievements in this life. It is a good thing to try to fill all the space you

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can, to make the team, to be a success, to be prosperous and happy, to become an important person. Biblical religion blesses these attempts, but they are only preliminaries. They are not the final standard of judgment. The final standard of human judgment before God is how you responded to the needs of your fellow man. That standard, based upon love, cuts through the whole realm of human life, rich or poor, Christian or non-Christian, one race or another. The final standard is, as our Lord said, "For when I was hungry you gave me food. When I was thirsty you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me." Humanitarian behavior is the basis of God's judgment. For those who will not do these things, who have hardened their hearts toward their fellow man, there is no possibility of receiving God's grace and God's blessing. Our Lord takes it one step further. He says that when you did these things, when you helped the poor, and the hungry, and the needy, and the alone, and the lost, you really did it to Him. You did it to Christ. You had an experience of the presence of the Divine in these acts of mercy and charity. This is the way to come to Christ. In acts of humble charity, He becomes revealed to you, and the great search for meaning, for religious conviction and peace is ended. Not in pouring over books, not in meditating on mountaintops, not in vain self-attempts at achieving holiness does the Christian find Christ. One finds Him through a life of humble service. You not only qualify in the face of

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the judgment by feeding your brother; you receive the great reward of knowing our Lord. From this truth comes the whole thrust into the world of true religion. This is good religion, not escapism, not the sanctification of one's own prejudices and hostilities, but the life of humble service. Some poor peon in some far away undeveloped country who helps his brother may stand higher in the Lord's eyes than a whole crowd of American Christians, who in every shallow way fulfill the standards of prosperity and success, but deny the needs of their fellow human beings. When the question comes, "Whom should we help, and how shall we help them?" we must be wise. We must use discrimination. Even in the very best causes there are dangers lurking. Every good cause has weeds growing in it. There are dishonest people working in the best of causes. There are subversive people as well. Yet the Christian should never tire of well-doing and say, "Because this cause is not prefect, I won't help." "Be wise as serpents," said our Lord. We should never let the problems, the weaknesses, the distortions of human life become an excuse not to fulfill the demands of righteousness. The alternative is a sobering one. The goats are sent into everlasting torment. What this means is to experience everlasting regret and remorse over the opportunities that we had to do good, and did not fulfill them. You never forget that hungry man that came to your door that you denied … and that is torment. Everlasting remorse is reserved for the Devil and all his angels. Our Lord's call, then, is to

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meet the needs of this world and to give to the hungry, the naked, the friendless, and the lost. The great Russian author, Tolstoy, truly a Christian mystic, expressed in his life and his writings the way that one finds the power of Christ. When he died his body was carried by the peasants to his grave in great sorrow. They loved him because he identified his life with their needs, giving away all that he earned because he had found an experience of Christ in humble service. One of his beautiful stories brings this out. An old cobbler had been given a vision that one day Christ would come to him. All his life he had been waiting. One Christmas Eve there was a knock on his door. It was an old beggar who was hungry. Gladly he gave him something to eat. Later, another knock came. It was a little child and his mother who were in rags and tatters. He clothed them. Some others came who were homeless. He brought them in and cared for them. Still, he wondered all the time, "When is Christ coming to me?" Just at the end of the evening and when the bells were announcing the celebration in the church of the birth of Christ, he was reading the Bible and by accident he fell upon the passage from the thirty-seventh verse of the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew. "Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and gave you drink, and when did we see thee a stranger and welcomed thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick and in prison and visit thee?'" Then the old cobbler read the answer "And the King will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'" Christ had come to him in every one of those desperate individuals, and he was filled with the joy of the revelation of the presence of God. We are all called to a similar life of humble service and dedication. This is where we find the true meaning of life. In the midst of sorrow and weakness comes the power and the goodness of God. To deny this, to run away from it, to seek our own individual prosperity may have its temporary rewards, but it is the road to eternal regret and remorse in that wasteland "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."