Weekly Devotional for December 13, 2015

Scripture readings: Psalm 80:1-7, Jeremiah 31:31-34 (Appointed for December 17)

"We preach best what we need to learn most."

I used that quote from the 2003 Luther movie on Sunday to describe my task that day. When I stood before the congregation at Canadochly that morning, I could feel the weight of the world on my shoulders and everything that goes with it: discouragement, weariness, and desperation. I spoke to seeing the light in the darkness, to finding hope and joy in the midst of life's travails, knowing that it was what I, if no one else, needed to hear.

If anything, in the days since, the darkness of my world has gotten more oppressive. The young man, Freddie Kemfort, that I spoke of in my sermon died that afternoon. I've spent most of this week preparing for his funeral and visiting with his wife and two young daughters (ages 3 and 1). My emotions alternate between rage at the unfairness of this mess to empathetic sorrow at what his family must be experiencing to the fear of "what if," knowing that my own beloved wife is only one month younger than Freddie.

So what then do I need to hear today? Is it what you need to hear as well?

It is not coincidental that among the texts appointed in the Daily Lectionary for this week is Jeremiah 31:31-34. This is, of course, one of the many Old Testament prophecies that we Christians interpret as predictive of the coming of Christ Jesus on Christmas. And given that it is the time of Advent before Christmas, such texts are fitting.

But I find its pairing with Psalm 80 to be curiously fitting in another way. Psalm 80 is a lament, a cry of anguish to God about some calamity or misfortune.

O Lord God of hosts,
how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?
You have fed them with the bread of tears,
and given them tears to drink in full measure.
You make us the scorn of our neighbours;
our enemies laugh among themselves.

These are not the words of some happy camper. These are the words of someone in pain, someone fed up with the trials of life, someone tired of dealing with life's crap. Someone like Freddie's friends and family. Someone like the people at my congregations. Someone like me.

And then, as if in answer, come the words of God to Jeremiah.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

We know this new covenant. It was a man, God made flesh in the form of an infant born in a stable in Bethlehem 2000 or so years ago.

As I have said in nearly every funeral sermon I have ever preached (and after nearly 15 years of ministry, that's quite a lot), that God does not sit idle while his people are in pain. God is on the move. He is acting to put right what has gone wrong with his world and our lives within it. The Old Covenant to Abraham was the first step of that. I remember well its words.

'and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ (Genesis 12:3b)

That universal blessing came in the New Covenant that Jeremiah predicted. It came in Christ, who lived, died, and rose again for the sake of us all.

All too often in our society today, we pretend away our pain in the onslaught of faux Christmas cheer. But Christmas has no meaning without our pain. Our pain is the reason Christmas exists, because it is the reason Christ came. He came to put things right. He came to destroy sin and death and open the way to salvation and eternity for us. He came to fulfill the promises God had made in both the Old and New covenants and from the cross, he cried out "It is finished!"

We like to harp on the "true meaning" of Christmas. Well, this is it. God wins! God is setting the world to right. God has answered the prayers of his people, the deepest longing of a broken world. All made right in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God wins!

And because of that, so do we.