Author: Tim Morgan

Image of the “The Defeat of Sennacherib” painted by Peter Paul Rubens (ca. 1612) taken from https://www.peterpaulrubens.net/the-defeat-of-sennacherib.jsp.

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

– And death shall have no dominion, Dylan Thomas

“To you, O Lord, I cry, And to the Lord I plead for mercy: ‘What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me! O Lord, be my helper” (Psalm 30:8-10).

Our representations of Jesus’ nativity often boil out the turmoil and turnovers, complexity and crises of its events. The Gospel of Matthew underlines exactly this aspect of Christ’s birth. It opens the story, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way” (Matthew 1:18). Immediately, before any angels or dreams or songs of praise, Mary and Joseph’s situation is introduced as scandalous. She’s betrothed to Joseph, but “before they came together she was found to be with child” (Matthew 1:18). So, Joseph intended to divorce her (Matthew 1:19). Then an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream disclosing the nature of the situation, that the child “is from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20), that they’ll name him Jesus, and that he’ll save his people. He directs Joseph’s attention to what God is doing in Jesus’ birth, in Joseph and Mary’s situation. Matthew tells us, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (Matthew 1:22).

What’s going on in Jesus’ birth? Trying to get at that question, we’re transported to the sign which Ahaz king of Jerusalem tells God’s people that God will provide in view of Syria and Israel’s siege of the city. It’s a signal of God’s victory in the midst of apparent defeat. Immanuel, Ahaz foretells, will come accompanied by destruction. “In that day,” Syria and Israel will be emptied of peoples and wealth, plagues will overtake them, the character and detail of their lands will be shaved smooth, “briers and thorns” will close the earth’s womb (Isaiah 7:16-8:4). A foreign river will drown their own channels and will flood over into Judah, its currant dragging God’s people to the depths. Immanuel, however, will remain the pillar which weathers this storm, for he is God’s word of promise, his sure sign of victory. Immanuel is the stone across which the peoples are shattered, the great void in which their word falls silent (Isaiah 8:9-15). The earth may be barren and desolate, but God’s word is unfailing. Immanuel, “God with us,” is indomitable.

The psalmist writes, “Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name. For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5). In the apparent scandal of Joseph and Mary’s situation, God’s word “Immanuel” secures the favored woman whom the Lord was with (Luke 2:28). In the scandal of Jerusalem’s siege by Israel and Syria, and finally by “the king of Assyria and all his glory” (Isaiah 8:7), God’s word “Immanuel” is a sanctuary for those who honor and fear him (Isaiah 8:13). And in the scandal of Jesus’ looming death, God’s word “Immanuel” is the sole foothold (yet strong and ever wide; “the broad place,” Psalm 18:19; 31:8) which keeps us from Satan’s threshing floor (Luke 22:31-32).

With this word of promise, God makes a claim and a demand. God’s claim is that nothing, absolutely nothing, not tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword (Romans 8:35) will withstand, frustrate, or overcome God’s mission. The lone Immanuel, “numbered with the transgressors” (Luke 22:37; Isaiah 53:12), is the point of departure and return for God’s mission, the Archimedean point for what God’s doing in the world. In God’s inevitable victory, Immanuel proclaims (and we in him), “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever” (Psalm 30:12). God’s demand is that we become the sign which Immanuel is: following the coming Jesus, we get in on God’s mission and become the signal of his impregnable victory. In this respect, “if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). The economy of work in God’s kingdom is organized and enlivened by Immanuel. Paul writes of the idle, the busybodies (who talk their way around getting in on what God’s doing), “Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living [literally, ‘eat their own bread’]” (2 Thessalonians 3:12). In our place, with our people, in our work, we are signs of God’s victory.

Today, I’d ask you to consider the situation which you are at work in before the coming Christ. The world exhales its long, violent last breath. Its stage is fraught with “blood and fire and columns of smoke” (Joel 2:30). We are run over, run through with unceasing troubles. Amid this, people grumble and gossip in search of position (2 Thessalonians 3:11; see 1 Timothy 5:13), in fear of conspiracy, subject to the twists and turns of worldly threat (Isaiah 8:12). God’s demand, on the other hand, is that we work quietly. Why? He has already won. And we signal that.

Further Reading: Psalm 30; Isaiah 8:1-15; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-18; Luke 22:31-38

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. 

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More Advent reflections can be found here.

“Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word” (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17).

The names “Eucharist,” “Communion,” and “Lord’s Supper” all get at different aspects of the same thing. None of them are (or at least ought to be) partisan claims staked against what such-and-such thinks about what’s going on when we take bread and the fruit of the vine with one another. The language, in each case, is as explicitly biblical as it gets (Matthew 26:27; Mark 14:23; Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 10:16; 11:20; the word “Eucharist” derives from the Greek eucharisteō meaning “I give thanks,” whereas “communion” is one viable translation of the Greek koinōnia meaning “commonality”). The “Eucharist” is a recognition of the gift of this bread and an expression of gratitude for what Christ distributes to us with the words, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). “Communion” is an articulation of what is going on in the meal we share together, namely, we our bound to one another (as one human being) in our “participation” in the body and blood of Jesus (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). The “Lord’s Supper” is the check put upon the prejudices we bring to this meal, in its articulation and in its practice: this is the Lord’s meal, not ours (1 Corinthians 10:21), because the Lord reigns in it (Luke 22:28-30). These images—which are fastened in the Church’s life to the depths of this meal’s significance—all depart from and return to the same focal point. Jesus is coming in this meal.

We eat and drink this meal in the face of affliction. In two of the four reports of the Lord’s Supper (excluding John’s account which, along with Matthew and Mark, does not include it), Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24). In three of the four reports (four of five, including John’s account; all of the accounts if we perceive the inherent connection this feature bears with 1 Corinthians 11:27-32), Jesus draws attention to his betrayer’s place at the table (Matthew 26:21-25; Mark 14:18-21; Luke 22:21-22; John 13:21-27). The command to “do this in remembrance” of Jesus is particularly fixed on his establishment of the new covenant in his blood (Luke 22:20). In offering his blood and body, God is initiating a new relationship with his people, a relationship “not of the letter but of the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:6). God commands in the Eucharist a remembrance of the relationship which he has established with us his people; a remembrance of the promised kingdom (Luke 22:16-18), even and especially meant for times when its coming isn’t apparent. And to this point, it is a remembrance in the face of adversity. The psalmist writes, “I have been forgotten like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel. For I hear the whispering of many—terror on every side!—as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life” (Psalm 31:12-13). Precisely this is Jesus’ situation at Passover with his disciples (and its intensity accelerates in the subsequent events). In his coming, Jesus’ situation as the desolate-yet-vindicated one embraces our own situation before him in the world. We too are desolate-yet-vindicated, “for not all have faith. But the Lord is faithful” (2 Thessalonians 2:2-3).

Today, I’d ask you to reflect upon the significance of the Lord’s Supper—not necessarily the categories of debate which tend to vaguely wander between different churches. Rather, what is God doing in the Eucharist? Can we see it? Can we get in on it? The birth of Jesus is the decisive fact in this regard. He’s sent to God’s people for their redemption. He’s afflicted from the outset. He’s preserved by God for God’s purpose step by step. He founds our final disposition of gratitude before God. He effects our final condition of unity with another in him. He pronounces the final judgment upon our world.

Further Reading: Psalm 31; Isaiah 7:10-25; 2 Thessalonians 2:13-3:5; Luke 22:14-30

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. 

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More Advent reflections can be found here.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

– The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

“Better is the little that the righteous has than the abundance of many wicked.” – Psalm 37:16

Can anxiety be overcome for God’s people? The answer seems apparent to those of us who’ve been familiarized with the language of the Bible, who’ve grown up in church settings of many kinds and assimilated to the churchly mannerisms around anxiety. Most of us are familiar with Jesus’ famous words: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life…” (Matthew 6:25-35; Luke 12:22-34). However, the obscurity of this question’s answer, the lack of its self-evidence to us, is highlighted in the fact that, in the Bible, time and time again God’s people must be reminded of it. The psalmist refrains, “Fret not” (Psalm 37:1, 7-8). The Lord’s word to Ahaz by the prophet Isaiah is “Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint” (Isaiah 7:4). Paul requires of the Thessalonian church “not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed” (2 Thessalonians 2:2). This is all fine and good, but is its way open to us? Or is the demand too great?

In Jesus’ birth, the way is made from the prison of anxiety. The Gospel of Matthew illustrates this masterfully: Jesus is born a threat to the regional vassal, King Herod. The king sought Jesus’ life, in order to maintain the stability of his reign. Three times God’s angel conveys a message in a dream which ultimately saves Jesus’ life. At each point, however, the message isn’t “those who love God don’t experience turmoil” or “the more righteous you are, the less that evil will affect your life.” (Joseph, Mary, and Jesus have to go into exile! His infant course is directed by a plot to murder him!) Rather, at each point, the message is that what God’s doing is happening: “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’” (Matthew 2:15).

If the success of God’s mission is measured by the world’s moral progress, then Jesus’ coming is difficult to see—then we have good reason to worry! The world is not getting better. In fact, the world doesn’t want to get better. On its own terms, Jesus’ way is obtuse. If Jesus’ way is a list of ingredients for “succeeding at life,” then the world’s got a better recipe. However, the psalmist writes, “Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers! For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb” (Psalm 38:1). In view of Jesus’ coming, the refusal of God’s reign is heightened in the world. That’s a bit counter-intuitive. The apostle Paul writes, “The mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way” (2 Thessalonians 2:7). Like the reservation of Jesus’ death for “the right time” (Romans 5:6), the consolidation of the wicked under Satan’s manifest rule is organized around God’s own mission, around the coming of Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10). As Christ draws near in glory (Matthew 16:27), the wicked reject his claim all the more pointedly. On the world’s terms, this rejection seems entirely reasonable. After all, it is reinforced “by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders” (2 Thessalonians 2:9). This “mystery” is already in effect, although restrained. It is part of the situation we are in before God. If our eyes are on the armies before us, rather than the work of God in the world, then we “will not be firm at all” (Isaiah 7:9).

Today, I suspect it would benefit each of us to consider the manifold ways in which anxiety (indeed, our distrust of God) determines our actions. The psalmist writes, “Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil” (Psalm 37:8). In the face of his impending death—for all intents and purposes the apparent failure of his ministry—which was orchestrated by Judas Iscariot “who was of the number of the twelve” (Luke 22:3), Jesus himself orchestrated to celebrate with his disciples God’s deliverance of his people from bondage in Egypt. In the face of Satan’s manifest rule, a plan executed by his own standards with irreproachable success, Jesus’ eyes are on what God is doing. The coming of Jesus delivers us from “worldly success,” always driven by anxiety and self-preservation. At the height of the world’s frenzy, when its insanity seems to be the very fabric of life, then Jesus will kill it “with the breath of his mouth” and bring it “to nothing by the appearance of his coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:8).

Further Reading: Psalm 37:1-18; Isaiah 7:1-9; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12; Luke 22:1-13

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. 

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More Advent reflections can be found here.