I invite you to eavesdrop with me this morning. Listen and we can overhear some conversations.
Overheard in the grocery store aisle: a mother and a little girl, shopping dangerously close to the candies, the cookies and the other goodies. The little girl saying, "I want these and I want those and I want this too and I want, I want …" Mom saying, "No." "Why not, mommy?" "Because" "Because what?" "Because, just because" "But, because what, mommy; why not?" "Just because, that’s all." Silence. Deep thought. "Mommy, just because I want it."
Every parent knows that the day comes when "just because" doesn’t get the job done. And "because I said so" doesn’t last much longer. "Because I’m your father and I pay the bills" might make it another few months. But every parent knows that it gets harder and harder to be heard. Being heard, being listened to, just because we’re there doesn’t work. Something else has to happen. Maybe parents have to earn the right to be heard.
Overheard in the bookstore, very close to the first day of school, a father and a young man, browsing among the academic equipment, the young man saying something about the demands ahead of him, "Dad, the professor says I have to have a business grade calculator that will do compound interest and inverse percentages." Dad saying, "Nonsense; when I was in school we worked it out with charts or figured it out by ourselves." "But dad, he says it’s required and that we can’t keep up if we don’t have one." "Ridiculous, I never needed one in school and don’t need one now." "But dad, don’t you see? It’s required. It’s expected of me." "I think I’ve still got my old compound interest tables at home."
Every child knows that adults can get so caught up in nostalgia and so tied up in inertia that they can’t hear that change has come. The old ways seem to be the only ways, the old patterns the only patterns. Change threatens; and many of us decide that the best way to deal with the threat of change is just not to listen. We don’t hear the challenge of the hour. We choose not to hear the challenge of the hour. And those who would prod us into the future have to do something else. Maybe they have to earn the right to be heard.
Overheard in my own house: My wife saying, "Joe, I need you to help with this turkey. I need you to hold it open while I stuff it and then I need you to put it in the cooking bag; after that I need you to carry it to the oven and make sure the bag isn’t touching the burners anywhere." My lips saying, "Uh-huh. Lions 13, Bears 6." "Joe, where are you?" "Yeah, all right … if he can get the field goal." "I need you now." "Okay … uh, uh, what was it? Hold something open and stuff it where?"
Obviously, even those who matter the most to us have a hard time being heard. We are distracted, we are self-indulgent, we are busy being busy, we are pleasantly pursuing the pointless, and we do not hear. Something else has to happen; even those we care the most about have to get our attention, they have to earn the right to be heard.
Overheard down the long corridors of history, from before recorded time and up through this morning, a one-way conversation with God shouting at the eardrums of humanity: the Lord saying, "I love you; I want to be your God and I want you to be my people." And humanity, every last one of us, men and women, young and old, Jew and Gentile, every last one of us saying, "I want to be what I want to be." God wooing us again and again, "But I have loved you with an everlasting love, and I have redeemed you." But you and I insisting, over and over again, "I want to be me, I gotta be me, I gotta be free."
And so even God has to earn the right to be heard. He who spoke but a word and the sun sprang into space; He who spat but once and created vast oceans; He who lifted but a finger and the moon and the stars He had ordained came into being – that great and infinite God cannot, will not, be heard by that creature He had made a little lower than the angels. Imagine! Even God has to earn the right to be heard.
That is what the author of Hebrews means when he voices a thumbnail sketch of the history of God’s approaches to us: "Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son, whom He appointed heir of all things … Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it."
Advent means that God has earned the right to be heard.
I
First, God has earned the right to be heard by getting involved with us, directly and intimately. God has turned our attention to His message by touching our lives, directly and personally, in Jesus Christ.
Maybe some of you have done this: I know I’m not going to ask for a show of hands to find out. But maybe some of you, having more month than money, have received a bill and just set it aside, trying to ignore it. If I don’t look at it, maybe it’ll go away. And then next month it carne again, this time with a service charge and a sternly worded summons to pay up. But you once again were short and you figured you could get away with setting it aside again. Out of sight, out of mind. If I can’t see it, it’s not there. And so the third month carne, and this time the bill with a red "Urgent" stamped on the outside and something about a collection agency on the inside.
And so when the fourth month came around and the telephone rang and someone, in a voice that could not be argued with, demanded payment, you acted surprised. You acted shocked. But you know what you did: you paid up. It got your attention.
Don’t ask me, by the way, how I know about such things. You don’t want to know!
You see, sometimes only a deeply personal confrontation will get results. And so our God, having sent us summons after summons, comes in Jesus Christ with a living confrontation that cannot be mistaken. He earns the right to be heard.
When our son was very small, he would get lost in his own thought world. He would just go into a kind of waking dream and would not seem to hear what was being said. In fact, his first grade teacher told us that sometimes she had to reach out and take him by the chin and say, "Bryan, look at me. Look here. I need to get your attention."
That is the way most of us are. We are so busy being us. We are so distracted with the details of daily life that the truly important things escape us. And our God has had to reach out, personally and intimately, and take us by the chin, and tell us to wake up. Wake up to the things that matter.
Jesus Christ came into the world to make God’s message of love personal. He came to bring truth right down here where we live. He came and walked where we walk and lived where we live and taught what we needed to hear, so that they would say of him, "No man ever spoke as this man speaks." He came to make the infinite finite, so that we could grasp it.
Do you realize who this Jesus is? Do you know His name? The book of Hebrews tells you: "Through him God created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word."
Who is this Jesus? In the exalted language of the Book of Revelation, he is Alpha and Onega. He is Alpha, the beginning, he is the first, he is before all things. And yet he becomes for us, Omega, the last, the lowest and the least. For us he becomes servant of all. For us he becomes a tiny, squalling infant, a fragile thing, a tiny voice against a cold night sky. But that is how we can hear him. That is the way he earns the right to be heard.
God earns the right to be heard by coming in Jesus the Christ, personally, intimately, connecting with us. "Therefore", says Hebrews, "we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it."
II
But the witness of Scripture is that God also earned the right to be heard by doing more than just coming. Come He did, to be sure, and that would be gift enough. That would get our attention in itself. But God has done more. God has earned the right to be heard by giving us a messenger who suffers what we suffer, a courier who runs the same race we run.
God has made it so that we can neither avoid nor ignore His message, for in Jesus Christ, the word made flesh, He comes to be what we are and to struggle with the things that frustrate us. He comes to taste everything that is bitter to us, even to taste death itself. And when we see that, He is credible. He is believable. He has earned the right to be heard.
The writer of Hebrews moves quickly from his account of the Christ who was before all worlds and speaks now of the Jesus, flesh and blood as you and I are, "crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone … [He] had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect … Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested."
I know it’s popular to decry the O1ristmas shopping season; I know it’s customary to wonder whether Christ does not get lost in the way we observe Advent and Christmas. Frankly, I’m not worried about that. I can find reason to be glad that even when it is covered with tinsel, His face will be displayed for the crowds to see. I can take comfort in the thought that, even though the children will learn to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" with great gusto, they will also learn to lisp, "Christ the savior is born." I don’t mind the sights and the smells and the sounds of Christmas everywhere.
In fact, I could have sworn that the other day, as the lady in front of me at the electronics counter plunked down more than $400 for some gadget, that that shopkeeper was humming, as he put away the cash, "What a friend we have in Jesus."!
I say, I don’t fear the loss of the infant holy during the Advent season. But I do fear the loss of the savior crucified for us. I do fear that we will not remember that he came, not to a king’s palace, but to the sweaty arms of a poor mother, to suffer what we suffer. I do fear that we will forget that he came, not to a life of privilege and position, but to years of hard work and to months of disappointment, ending on a cross. Ending at Calvary. Ending at a tomb in Joseph’s garden. Ending. Omega.
He is Alpha and Onega, he the source, the ending he. He was before all worlds, and without Him was not anything made that was made. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being; He is Alpha, the first, the beginning.
And Omega, the ending. At the last I see Him, throned not above the heavens, nor even in a stable, but on a cross.
And that gains my attention. At the last, at the Omega point, I see him, suffering everything I suffer, and infinitely more; feeling everything I feel, and vastly deeper. And I know that anyone who loves like that has earned the right to be heard.
Says the writer of Hebrews, "Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested." He has our ears now. He is credible. He has earned the right to be heard.
Come, then, this morning, to the Table of the Lord, and hear the great Alpha and the awesome Omega. Hear and taste and see the one who has loved you from before the beginning of time, when you were yet in your mother’s womb, who is your Alpha, your beginning, deeply involved with your life.
And come to the Table, remembering that as He was there for you at the hour of your birth, your Alpha, so He is here for you now, knowing all that threatens you, and so He will be present for you at the hour of your death, your Omega. Come to the Table, beneath the Cross, where suffered for you the ancient of days.
Come to the Table and listen as you’ve never listened before. Come to the Table and hear all that He has to say. "Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it." "Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested."
He has earned the right to be heard. He is able to help.
