The Fourth Sunday in Advent



MICAH 5:2-5: Matthew's Gospel tells us that this is the passage to which the scribes of Judea referred when the wise men from the east came to Jerusalem seeking the son born king of the Jews. He will be born in Bethlehem of Judea, they said.



The passage had its own place in the history of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. As Daniel Simundson says in NIB7:538, "Micah was the last of the eighth-century prophets. His name may be a shortened form of Michyahu, which means 'Who is like Yahweh?' He was from south-western Judah, west of Hebron. He is preoccupied with social justice and is totally independent of political and religious leaders. Times are bad: Assyria has captured Damascus and Samaria. Jerusalem was besieged in 701 BC. But danger was internal too: leaders accepted bribes; merchants cheated their customers; pagan gods were worshipped along with the Lord. Micah preaches about sin and punishment; people have rejected God. The coming punishment is due to their sin. Even so, there is hope for the future: a remnant will form the nucleus of a new Israel, and its leader will be a true shepherd, one who brings peace."



The above presumes that Micah wrote the whole book that bears his name. There is considerable discussion among scholars of the Prophecy of Micah which indicates that chapters four and five of the book were written by another person than Micah. This "Micah," they say, lived in Jerusalem when it was attacked by the Babylonians, first in 597 BC and then in 587. He had gone with the Judahites into exile in Babylon. He was proclaiming the hope that an infant king would be born in Bethlehem, as David had been, and would lead the people in the way of King David. The kings between David and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians had not ruled with justice and equity. The new king would do so.



Read in either setting, these words of the prophecy bear their own meaning.



The prophecy is addressed to "Bethlehem Ephrathah." Bethlehem was the home of David. "Ephrathah," according to Ruth 1:2, referred either to the region around Bethlehem or to a particular group of people who came from Bethlehem. Micah uses the two terms to refer to David. He was born in Bethlehem of a line of descendants that included Ephrathites. Among the cities and villages of Judah, Bethlehem was insignificant. It was "little among the peoples of Judah."



From Bethlehem a ruler will come. He will be of the line of David. He will be like the rulers of old, like David, who ruled Israel with justice and mercy. He will be like a shepherd, who will stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord. He will share the majesty of the Lord himself. The people will dwell secure. The shalom of God will be with them.



Verse 3 refers to the situation of the people at the time of the prophecy. Micah sees them as a people who are suffering, like a woman in the travail of birth. But, like the birth that will follow the travail, they will be relieved of their suffering and they will rejoice in the new child that has been given to them. The Lord, who appears to have given them up, will restore the people of Judah and Israel to their rightful home.



In no one other than Jesus did this prophecy come true. When the people returned from their exile in Babylon, they came to a decimated home, and the rulers that came to temple and palace were certainly not of the caliber of David. Only Jesus approached and transcended the kingship of David. Jesus was the king who ruled his kingdom with justice. He was the shepherd who gently led the people to rich pastures. He was the savior who delivered the people from the evils into which they had fallen. He was the lord to whom women and men gave their allegiance.



This prophecy, stated in the form of a poem and a song, is one of five songs contained in this lection for the Sunday before the celebration of the birth of the Son.



LUKE 1:39-46: I have re-arranged the order of the lectionary in order to put these two companion pieces side-by-side. The second is the magnificat of Mary. The first tells of the meeting between Mary and Elizabeth that results in the blessing of the

older woman, Elizabeth, upon the younger one, Mary.



"In those days," says Luke, "Mary arose." "Those days" refer to the sixth month of the pregnancy of Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah the priest and the kinswoman of Mary. Luke narrows down the object of Mary's journey. First she went to the hill country, then to a village of Judea, then to the house of Zechariah, and finally she arrives for her visit with Elizabeth.

She had not been told by the angel to go to Elizabeth, but she had to tell someone of her joy, and so she chose her kinswoman as the one to tell. Mary entered the house and greeted Elizabeth.



When Mary greeted her, two remarkable things happened to Elizabeth. "The babe leaped in her womb." Perhaps this was the first stirring of the child within her, the first indication that the fetus was truly alive. "She was filled with the Holy Spirit." This means that the pronouncement she is about to make is prophetic, a product of the Holy Spirit which has entered her.



She "exclaimed with a loud cry." Perhaps her cry was the beginning of her birth pangs. Perhaps it was a cry of joy at the sight of seeing Mary. She has not been told before that Mary is to be the mother of the messiah, but the Spirit within her tells her of that. Her response? "Blessed are you among women, blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why is it granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord" (1:42-45).



A number of themes are introduced in this passage that are later developed in the Gospel of Luke.



"Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb." These words of Elizabeth confirm Gabriel's address to Mary, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." Both salutations announce that God is acting in a way that will bless Mary.



"The babe in her womb leaped for joy." The babe was to become John the Baptist. The Baptist would rejoice when he saw Jesus come to him for baptism. Now while both are still in the womb, the elder weeps for joy at the coming of the other.



"Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord." Already Mary is acting in a faithful manner. If she was, as some say today, Jesus' first disciple as well as his mother, already at this early hour the obedience that marks her discipleship is in place. Blessing comes upon those who trust that the Lord will fulfill his word to them.



"The mother of my Lord has come to me." Even before Jesus' birth, Elizabeth recognizes that he is "her Lord." Her son is the forerunner. Mary's son is the Lord. He is Lord of all. That means he is Lord of Elizabeth, and at this early hour she confesses to that.



Luke talks often about "Joy." Mary rejoiced that God had looked on her with favor. She rejoiced that God would overthrow the powerful and exalt the poor. Luke will later report the joy came through the forgiveness of Jesus, his healings, his act of raising the dead, his way of receiving the outcasts. At the end of the Gospel, the disciples will return to Jerusalem with joy, and later they are in the Temple praising God. When God is present and acting, there is joy.



LUKE 1:47-55: Samuel Terrien, in his Till the Heart Sings (146-153), gives the most exciting interpretation of the Magnificat that I have ever seen. He says that the song was written first in Hebrew and then translated into Greek. He explores the Hebrew ideas behind the Greek words. I will follow his interpretation as well as I can.



Terrien begins by giving us a new translation of this song:



i.



46. My whole being celebrates the grandeur of the Lord,

47. And my spirit thrills in God my salvation.

48. Because he has looked upon the lowliness of his woman- slave,

Behold! on this account, all generations shall proclaim my happiness.

ii.



49. For the divine hero has done for me great deeds:

And his name is the Holy One,

50. And his womb-like compassion shall be

From generation to generation toward those who fear him.



iii.



51. He has acted out the power of his arm,

Dispersed the proud into the imagination of their hearts,

52. Deposed the potentates from their thrones,

And exalted the humble.

53. He has filled the hungry with good things,

And the rich he has dismissed empty-handed.



iv.



54. He has upheld his slave boy Israel

In remembrance of his womb-like compassion,

55. As he spoke to our fathers,

Abraham, and his seed forever.



46. "My whole being celebrates the grandeur of the Lord." Terrien makes the point that to translate this as "magnifies the Lord" gives the wrong impression. A human being cannot make God great. The Hebrew word refers to celebrating. Mary celebrates. Mary praises God with her flesh leaping with new life, her womb quickened with the child. In her whole being Mary fleshes out the greatness of God. "Great and glorious is the Lord, sings my soul;" runs another translation (G. BERNARD, Homiletic & Pastoral Review [New York] 91 {2,'90} 21-25.). "Rejoice my spirit, rejoice in God my Redeemer! How graciously he takes note of his handmaid's littleness."



47. "My spirit thrills in God my salvation." The verb "exults, thrills" implies a shriek of delight. It may take place in the whirl of a dance, in sexual ecstasy, or especially in a mystical trance. It is the primal scream, the shriek at the nearness of the void or at the presence of God himself.



48. "God has looked upon the lowliness of his woman-slave, Behold! on this account, all generations shall proclaim my happiness." The Hebrew verb concealed behind the Greek comes from a root that does not mean "to give a blessing," but instead signifies "to go forward, to race toward a goal, to lead the way." It evokes purposiveness. "Happiness" in Hebrew is never individualistic. It is spreading and catching. One is not happy alone. One cannot be happy unless one makes others happy.



49. "Because God has done great things for me." The "great things" speak of the intervention of God in history: the deliverance from Egypt, giving the covenant, bringing Judah home from exile, the disclosure of Israel's mission to humankind. But note how Mary updates this. God has done these great things for me, the woman-slave. The church to which the Gospel was written also was aware of the "great things" God had done for them. They said: God has drawn near to us; God has revealed his love toward us; God has saved us from our sins and from despair; God has filled our hearts with joy and hope and has given us the assurance of eternal life.



50. "And his womb-like compassion shall be from generation to generation toward those who fear him." Terrien gives a new translation to a nearly untranslatable word. For "mercy" he offers "womb-like compassion." By doing this he suggests that God the father has a mother's regard for her child. She bears the child and nurtures it. She treasures what the child does. She rejoices in the child's successes, and she weeps at the tragedies that befall the child. In the language of the Psalms and the Prophets, it means love without restriction or qualification, the longing of the womb for the child it had once carried. God treats us in this manner, says Terrien in this daring translation.



51-53 "God has dispersed the proud into the imagination of their heart, deposed the potentates from their thrones, and exalted the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has dismissed empty-handed."



This stanza, said Terrien, introduces into Christianity the prophets' passion for social justice and their theological critique of any political system that favors the rich at the expense of the poor. "He has scattered the proud into the imagination of their hearts." The wealth accumulated by the proud is actually the symptom of their fear of death, the dread of their final annihilation. The lust to acquire is the sign of the terror of ultimate destitution. Hell is a dead end, and the void.



Now Mary's song picks up a main theme of Second Isaiah. It talks about "the man-slave." Israel, the slave of the Lord, now becomes Jesus, the slave boy of the Lord. "Placed in the mouth of Mary, the mother of Jesus, tabernacle of the Most High," says Terrien, "the motif of the suffering servant unites Judaism and Christianity: God suffers on Calvary and again through all the holocausts, Christian as well as Jewish, in the course of the ages. The church is the company of those who suffer and still hope for a better world." Even before the child is born, his mother is beginning to think about the death she shall later witness, Jesus' death on the cross.



We need one more thing to round out our account of Mary's Song. Walter Brueggemann (Christian Century, March 24-31, 1999, 345) supplies it. We need to remember, he wrote, that "Jesus enacted his mother's song well. Everywhere he went he broke the vicious cycles of poverty, bondage, fear and death; he healed, transformed, empowered, and brought new life. Jesus' example" he concludes, "gives us the mandate to transform our public life."



PSALM 80:1-7: This psalm continues the theme that God will come with might to save us. "Restore us, O God; let thy face shine, that we may be saved!" The three invocations of the deity in these responses seem to grow in intensity. "Restore us, O God; restore us, O God of hosts; restore us, O Yahweh, Lord God of hosts." Two stanzas of the psalm compose our reading for the day.



"Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel." This is the only use of this title for God in the whole of the Old Testament. Calling God a shepherd is a daring thing to do. As Samuel Terrien reminds us, (Message of the Psalms) "a shepherd often risks his own life for the sake of a single stray sheep. . . . The poet attributed the highest quality of endurance and self-sacrificial love to the God whom he addressed as the 'shepherd of Israel.'" But there is more to the title than an acknowledgment of God's goodness. It also carries with it an admission of national stupidity and obstinate waywardness. "Ancient shepherds knew how stupid, cowardly, and irresponsible sheep could be. When Israel is aware of being God's 'people and the sheep of [his] pasture'" (Ps. 79:13), says Terrien, "it confesses its utter inability to reach moral decency and civic maturity."



It has to pay for that. As long as the people are wayward, the shepherd feeds them the bread of tears and gives them tears to drink in good measure. "Restore us, O God of hosts."



This God is said to be "enthroned upon the cherubim." These are winged creatures with human heads. They came to Israel and Judah through connections with Phoenicia and Canaan, Judah's neighbors, and behind these loom the cherubim of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Isaiah, in his call to prophecy, saw similar statues in the temple at Jerusalem (Isa 6). The name given to the people is also rather unusual. They are called "Joseph," "Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin." Ephraim and Manasseh were the sons of Joseph, according to Genesis 48:1. Benjamin was the other son of Jacob and Rachel. There is a thought that it was the tribes of Joseph and Benjamin who led the Hebrews out of Egypt. In Canaan the tribe of Joseph split, and they took on the names of the other sons. Asaph, to whom this psalm is attributed, often used the name "Joseph" for the whole of Israel.



HEBREWS 10:5-10: This short and significant passage consists of a quotation from the Book of Psalms, 40:6-8, and a commentary on the passage by the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews. By doing this, the writer of Hebrews points to an end to the sacrificial system of Judaism (and the sacrificial systems of the rest of the contemporary world, for that matter) and the new thing that God has done through Christ. To see the force of it, we need to look first at Psalm 40 and then see the interpretation that Hebrews has brought to it.



C. S. Dillistone, in his book Christ and His Cross (pp 95-97), reminds us that "This is one of the most remarkable prayers of the Old Testament. Realizing how great have been God's mercies to him, the psalmist asks how he can show his gratitude. Not, he decides, by going to the sanctuary and presenting sacrifices and offerings. Rather, he wil1 come (to the santuary) with the roll of the book in which God's will has been written, and he will solemnly consecrate himself to do that will in every detail. He will delight to do God's will. He will set it constantly within his heart. Such seems to have been the original force of the psalm."



To this powerful psalm Hebrews adds its own interpretation. In the Hebrew text and in some texts of the LXX, Ps 40:6 reads, "Ears you have dug for me." That strange phrase has an important meaning behind it. The image is that of God digging open the ears of a person and of that person now prepared to listen and to obey God. The OT writer had perceived that no merely formal presentation of sacrifices and offerings was acceptable to God. It is necessary for him to present his ears, and indeed his whole mind, to receive the revelation of God's will and to consecrate himself to the performance of it.



Hebrews turns this into a different statement. The Letter envisions Christ and God in the heaven of heavens, and the Son says to the Father, "A body hast thou prepared for me." Christ presented not just his ears but his whole body to do the will of God. As Dillistone wrote, "Christ's willingness was not an attitude that could be expressed as merely spiritual. (Christ did God's will) through the body that had been prepared for him. Through his body he was related to his physical and social environment, and it was there that God's will had to be done. The holiness of God's will had to be made known. The purpose of God's love had also to be made known. We can imagine that at every stage of Jesus' life and in the face of every new experience, this was Christ's prayer:

A body hast thou prepared for me: ...

Lo, I come to do thy wi11, O God.

He said this over and over until he came to the cross, where Jesus' willingness to let his body be crushed on the cross resulted in our salvation, our sanctification.



Christ's willingness to do this resulted in profound changes in the religious systems of the world. As Hebrews says, "Christ abolishes the first in order to establish the second" (10:9). Christ has brought a new thing into the world.



The most obvious change that exemplified the new order was that it ended the sacrificial systems by which men (women, to my knowledge, did not make sacrifices) tried to be made right with God. We who live in the 21st century can hardly imagine how pervasive these systems of sacrifice were. In Jerusalem the fires of the temple burned day and night as adherent of Judaism brought their animals to the temple for sacrifice. We are told that the stench of burning flesh was so powerful that pilgrims could "smell" Jerusalem long before they could see it. The same systems inundated the pagan world. Take the market-place and acropolis of Athens as an example. On them there was the temple of Zeus, the temple of Aphrodite, the temple of Hephaistes, the altar to the twelve gods, the altar to the unknown gods, the temple of Ares, the temple of Apollo - among others! To each altar devotees brought their sacrifices to the various gods. What happened in Athens occurred in every city of the Hellenistic and Roman world. Widespread as it was, how did it end? It was the coming of Jesus Christ who brought a world-wide end to the sacrifical systems that had dominated the religious scene for centuries on end. Another way to be brought to right terms with God was opened. At the time of the writing of Hebrews, temples and altars were everywhere. Somehow this writer came to understand that Jesus Christ would end all this. And he did.



In its place stood the sacrifice of Christ. In his body, as Hebrews said, Christ went to the cross. Unlike animals that were sacrificed daily, Christ died once for all. Unlike high priests who succeeded one another in their office, Christ presented himself as the great high priest once for all. Unlike the repeated rituals called for in the law in order to annul our guilt, this act of Christ's was performed once for all. That phrase "once for all" is significant. Christ died on the cross, and once for all he opened the way to God. J. M. E. Ross puts it well: "At the last, . . . Christ stretched himself upon the cross. So he became the world's High Priest, offering the sacrifice for which the ages from Abraham onwards had been searching, for which God had been waiting. So the cross became an altar indeed, strange, rude, repellent, yet never to pass as other altars passed, the one Shrine forever for souls that know their need and their sin." (Dillistone, Christ and His Cross, The Tree of Healing 124)



Hebrews puts it even more strongly. "By the will of God (in sending Christ) we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (10:10).