Author: Tim Morgan

“Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels” (Psalm 5:10).

“And the strong shall become tinder, and his work a spark, and both of them shall burn together, with none to quench them” (Isaiah 1:31).

The coming of Jesus is God’s event, not ours. That’s pretty well spelled out for us: Jesus is born of a virgin (“from the Holy Spirit,” Matthew 1:18, 20; compare Luke 1:35), brought forth from a genealogy the continuity of which depends step by step upon God’s action, and divinely preserved from the machinations of Herod—and the list goes on. This is especially transparent in Matthew, where the evangelist tells us time and time again that the events surrounding Jesus’s birth happened “to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet” (Matthew 2:15). The significance of these events is decided by God, not by us. The angel said to Joseph, “She [Mary] will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Even Jesus’ name (yeshúa, a variant of yehoshúa, which means “YHWH [the Lord] is salvation”) testifies that this thing that’s happening is God’s thing, that it’s happening because God’s doing something. While we don’t get to decide what Jesus’ birth means, our own meaning is decided by it. While it’s not up to us, it is for us.

In Jesus’ coming, God is foremost saving us. He is drawing us up from the mire to which we’ve stooped to the high dignity for which we were intended. God is restoring peace to the earth, establishing his Kingdom, “the city of righteousness, the faithful city” (Isaiah 1:26). He’s claiming his people, calling them into “his own kingdom and glory” (1 Thessalonians 2:12). In Jesus, God opens the way out of the complex web of our constant vying-for-position-by-any-means. He invites us into a new way of life, into a way of relating with one another that’s entirely embedded within our relationship to God in Christ (life “in the Spirit,” Romans 8:1-11).

However, in Jesus’ coming, God is also judging us. We struggle with this part. Entailed in God’s gracious act of salvation is a judgment without reserve upon our way of life, down to the notions of ourselves which we hold so near to our hearts (the many ways we tend to answer the question, “Who am I?”). Indeed, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). However, this isn’t because God delights in the punishment of the wicked, sadistically chomping at the bits, waiting for us to stray so that he can cause us pain (see John 3:17). Rather, God’s judgment is the approach of his promised future. It’s the dark night in which lightning strikes to illumine the landscape. It’s fearful to be in God’s hands not because they aren’t good hands to be in, but because he intends to reshape everything we’re afraid of losing (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Today, I’d ask that you reflect upon the fact that, just as you are God’s, so too the Church is God’s. The judgment which God pronounces upon our ways of life, he pronounces upon our ways of living together. The Church is our “together-ed” getting-in-on what God is doing in the birth of Jesus (God being the “together-er”). When the poisons of duplicity and positioning infiltrate our ways of living in the Church, then God’s word of judgment stands against us.

Further Reading: Psalm 5; Isaiah 1:21-31; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12; Luke 20:9-18

Written by Guest House Theologian, Tim Morgan. These reflections are a complimentary addition to our Advent Blend Coffee Bags. Scan the QR code each day to read the most recent reflection. 

BUY NOW

More Advent reflections can be found here.

”Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night“ (Psalm 1:1-2).

“For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10).

A common churchly sentiment these days is that “works,” meaning in its most consistent signification the entirety of human activity (our thoughts, words, and deeds; the highest accomplishments and lowest degradations of human spirit), do not save us. Strictly speaking and in the most proper sense of the word “save” (there are other senses; Luke 7:50; James 5:15), this is inarguably true to the point that its alternative is absurd: the situation we find ourselves in before God and in the world is such that the thought of wiggling our way out on our own is silly. God is not a “thing” or “someone” (like us!) that we can sweet talk or handle or pull one over on, as networked as these kinds of efforts are into our religiosity. Sin is not one prong of the fork which stands before our simple, unaffected decision-making at any given moment. As in Paul’s famous words so often invoked when discussing these things, “you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked” (Ephesians 2:1). No one escapes that “you,” no matter how much money they give out, how often they volunteer at the food pantry, how many insults they swallow, or kindnesses they show.

However, I suspect a certain disease has accompanied this evangelical truism—of which indeed we ought to remind ourselves unceasingly—in the Church. Alongside a recognition of the dangerous potential of works to co-opt our souls, turning gratitude into pride, has settled a distrust or fear of works. It seems as though we have diagnosed “works” as the problem. In its most fatal variety, we’ve rendered works irrelevant to the Christian life. Why give out money, volunteer at the food pantry, swallow your insults, or show kindness?

We really ought to keep reading that famous passage, because Paul continues, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). This means that God’s grace and our works don’t squeeze each other out. They don’t occupy the same space in the same way. God created us in Jesus. He prepared our good works. And we walk in them. God paves the road of our lives (including our works!) in Jesus and the significance of our God-graced, faith-founded actions is to stay on the road. He paints the whole picture of “Tim” in Christ (as Christ, not me!) and my responsibility, the effect of God’s grace through faith, is to live into, conform to that picture.

Today, I’d recommend to you a simple, but worthwhile practice: reflect upon the fact that no one could by any means make the birth of Jesus happen. It’s a radical eruption within the world of our projects. Rather, the birth of Jesus makes us happen. It captures us and envelopes us, one way or another.

Further Reading: Psalm 1; Isaiah 1:10-20; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Luke 20:1-8

Written by Guest House Theologian, Tim Morgan. These reflections are a complimentary addition to our Advent Blend Coffee Bags. Scan the QR code each day to read the most recent reflection. 

BUY NOW

More Advent reflections can be found here.

Let the Church exult and sing

praise at the birth of the Birth of the Most High

For both heights and depths stand illumined at His Epiphany.

Blessed is He at whose birth all receive joy!

– Mary and the Magi, Anonymous

“The night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13:12).

Advent has always struck me as a strange time. The season straddles past, present, and future with dizzying effect. We pray for things we’ve already been given. We expect things that have already happened. We (more or less overtly) put ourselves in a present that’s not our own, celebrating the birth of Jesus as though it were today. We declare “peace on earth!” with the heavenly throng as wars rage and anxiety reigns. Of course, time has the power to render the strangest things mundane. The hymns, the symbols, the stories, the rituals—they’re all quietly displaced from their native multichromatic and textured landscape to grey, vague nostalgia (or utility!).

The strangeness of Advent isn’t accidental, a bridge we can cross with a little more context or moral fine-tuning. Rather, it’s essential. The birth of Jesus puts us in this situation. It inflexibly determines the space we occupy. The apostle Paul writes, “You know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep” (Romans 13:11). This metaphor seems simple enough: you’ve been asleep during the night, but it’s close to daybreak and time to wake up. The difficulty comes in that “sleep” here is the entire present arrangement (“this world” or “this age” as he puts it earlier; Romans 12:2). It’s difficult to imagine—life without an overwhelming appetite for things rather than God, without strife woven into the fabric of our biology, our day-to-day, our society, and our world, even our Church. However, that’s precisely the strange situation in which the birth of Jesus puts us. The day will soon break upon the dream in which we’ve been lost, so we need to wake up! Paul writes, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14). It’s difficult to imagine, but the coming dawn undoes the limits our imaginations place here. The way to God is open and the road to peace paved in Christ.

This Advent, I invite you to meditate with me upon Jesus. Let’s posture ourselves toward the coming day, waking up from our self-centered ways of organizing the world, opening our eyes in faith to the situation we are in before him.

Further Reading: Psalm 122; Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44

Written by Guest House Theologian, Tim Morgan. These reflections are a complimentary addition to our Advent Blend Coffee Bags. Scan the QR code each day to read the most recent reflection. 

BUY NOW

More Advent reflections can be found here.