Letter to the Church: November 2022

November 29, 2022

As we are approaching Christmas this year, I am again struck by the creatures of cultural habit that we all have become. Our calendars drive us from the celebration to the next, and before you know it, the year is done, and we repeat the cycle without giving very much thought or focus on what these “seasons” should mean to us. Christmas is the biggest holiday of them all. We watch the Macy’s parade, listen to classic Christmas music, decorate our homes, and even in the Church, we can often become guilty of forgetting about the miracle that Christmas really is.

While I love all of the cultural aspects of Christmas – the story of Santa Claus (rooted in the historical figure of Saint Nicholas), the gleam in a child’s eyes, the emphasis upon joy, hope, and the giving of gifts to one another – it’s important to stop and remember that Christmas is built upon the coming of the Lord in human flesh, to save the world from our sin.

Perhaps the greatest miracle recorded in the Bible is the incarnation. God becoming man. Divinity putting on the limitations of humanity for a time, condescending to suffering in order to redeem the race of Adam, lost and bound in sin unto death. What a glorious reality that we now live in as children of God and look back upon with awe and wonder!

But what strikes me repeatedly every year as I reflect upon the first coming of Jesus is the fact that most everyone missed him when he did come. The Old Testament prophesied the coming of the Lord, and yet, an entire generation was taken by surprise when the Lord suddenly appeared in His temple (Malachi 3:1). The Bible gives us very few examples of people who were able to see beyond the mundane passing of time and the distractions of the world around them, to see the significance of the moment they were living in and the coming of the Savior in their midst. One of these individuals was a man named Simeon:

"And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 27 So he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought in the Child Jesus, to do for Him according to the custom of the law, 28 he took Him up in his arms and blessed God…" (Luke 2:25-28)

Somehow this man was able to see the time and season he was in, anticipating the coming of the Lord. The Bible describes him as waiting for the consolation of Israel. Waiting is often interpreted as a passive word, meaning without any action taken. But waiting in a biblical sense is very active. It is a discipline of the Holy Spirit to tune out all other drives and senses of our natural man, which is so easily distracted, and tune into the voice of the Holy Spirit. It was this posture of his heart that enabled him to see what others were missing, even though it was so close to them.

Historically the Church has celebrated a season of waiting called Advent. The word Advent means coming. It is a season on the liturgical Church calendar for the people of God to remember that we are still people in waiting. It is a time for us to adjust our hearts and attention to the significance of Jesus Christ’s first coming in Bethlehem. But it is also a reminder to us that just as He came the first time and many were unprepared for His appearing, Jesus is also our soon returning King. As surely as He came the first time, Jesus said He would come again, and He exhorted us to keep our hearts “awake” and ready for His return to the earth.

I believe this is vital for us as the Church in this hour. So many are becoming distracted and even captivated by the world as if history will go on the way it always has, and that God is bringing all things to a determined end. Unfortunately, so much of the Christian world has incomplete theology - believing and celebrating Jesus’s first coming, but whether directly or indirectly, ignoring the promise of His second coming and the signposts that Jesus gave us to watch for - so that we would not miss Him or be found unprepared.

Spiritual blindness is a very real phenomenon. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 that “even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.” But unbelievers are not the only ones who can fall victim to this disease of the soul. Jesus called out his disciples for having “hard hearts, eyes but not able to see and ears but unable to hear” (Mark 8:18).

Christians can be nearsighted; we see and live only in the reality of today and this world but cannot see what lies in the future and that God’s redemptive plans are not yet complete. We are still people in waiting, and our hearts are longing for the coming of our King, who will come and bring the fullness of His Kingdom on the earth.

I am concerned that if we asked the average Christian on the streets of America if they believe that Jesus will visibly and physically return to the earth and establish His kingdom, whether many would believe this most precious doctrine, or even worse – want Him to return. We have become so at home in this world and culturally adapted that we have become numb to the hour we live in and lost the ache in our hearts for the Savior to come and make all things right.

The cry of the early church, who lived in the constant tension of persecution and longing for the return of the King – had a word that they used to express this longing. The word was Maranatha!

Translated, it meant something like the Lord has come and the Lord is coming again. It was expressed more as a cry than a statement, Lord Jesus - come! Like you did before. This should be our heart's desire too.

This year, as we enter into all things Christmas, let us move beyond the cultural trappings and even the dry religious rememberings of an infant who was born to save the world long ago. My prayer is that we would reflect on the beauty and the mystery of the incarnation, Immanuel – God with us – but have eyes to see up ahead that we are speeding towards the return of the Lord Jesus. That we might become a people prepared for the Lord (Luke 1:17).

Merry Christmas. Maranatha!

Pastor Lee Cummings

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