The Advent Kingdom - Food/Fight

Preached on Sunday, December 10, 2017

Scripture readings: Isaiah 46; Revelation 19:1-16

Walking along Crab Creek; Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
November, 2017

Here’s a completely inappropriate joke for you: A newly wed couple just got home from their honey-moon, and the bride wanted to make their first home-cooked meal into a truly romantic, sensual experience. So, she thought it would be nice to do some fancy cooking with wine. After her first five glasses, she couldn’t even remember why she was in the kitchen.

Here’s another thing that I don’t know anything about. I imagine that most meals of a couple, before the wedding, are meals of exploration, and courtship, and longing, and promises. The meals of the wedding and the honey-moon are meals of celebration.

After that, meals are made from sharing, and giving, and serving. Perhaps those meals are where their strongest love will find itself.

Now we’ve read about a romantic meal in the Book of Revelation. It’s the wedding supper of the Lamb Jesus and his bride (which includes us with all of God’s people, from all times and places). Only, we don’t ever see the wedding or the supper take place: at least not maybe until very the end of the story, in chapters twenty-one and twenty-two.

In that case, the wedding supper is made from the fruit of the Tree of Life and the water of the River of Life, in the new heavens and the new earth. The Book of Revelation works like this.

I’ll give you a lot stranger way of reading about the wedding feast than the new creation. We could see the ingredients of the wedding supper when we look at the beginning of the battle that we’ve read about. The half dozen ancient Christians whose commentaries I have been consulting, this past week, tell me that the wedding feast must be the body and blood of Jesus.

Over the course of a year, the Church sees the first appearance of the body and blood of Jesus in his birth. The baby Jesus wasn’t bleeding; although he must have bled after his circumcision eight days after his birth.

Anyway, through most of his infancy, he wasn’t bleeding, but he had a real body with a heart pumping his blood, just like you and me. The Baby of Bethlehem is his flesh and blood given for us, saving whatever is young in us, saving all our beginnings. The Baby Jesus is part of the wedding feast.

Jesus is God in the flesh, as a real human being. Jesus took our body upon himself in his infancy, and his childhood, and his life as a young man and workman, and his life as a wandering teacher and compassionate healer, and his life as a crucified and bloody mess, dying for our sins, and dying to defeat sin, and death, and the devil.

This is the foundation of the Book of Revelation. It’s a book that takes what God has done in Christ, and reveals God’s promise of the shape of things to come.

In the picture language of the Book of Revelation, ancient Christians identified the rider of the white horse as Jesus. And those ancient Christians believed something that may seem very strange to modern people: that the white horse was picture language for Jesus’ pure and sinless body crucified for our salvation, and it simply says that the robe he wore was full of his own blood shed for us.

This teaches us something that will never stop being true: that our marriage to Jesus is made and fed from his body and blood, and it will never be any different. Jesus is our food.

We might have many meals where we are exploring, and courting, and longing, and making promises, and celebrating with Jesus. Jesus, for his part, knows us very well and has, in some mysterious way, already chosen us. He feeds us with his own sharing, and giving, and serving; as if we have already been married to him for a long, long time.

For his part, all our meals with Jesus come from his sharing, and giving, and serving. Jesus said it long ago: “For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) 

Jesus came with this in mind, so that we could see that God, in the flesh and blood of Jesus, carries out his great mission. The mission of God is what the prophet Isaiah heard him say so long ago. “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” (Isaiah 46:3-4)

Our life with God, our life with Jesus, is like the course of many meals that carry us every day, no matter what. Our life is like all of God’s people being present together (including you and me) sharing one table with Jesus. Our lives are sustained and carried all the way because of all these meals which are the body and blood of Jesus; the body and blood of God.

When you eat every day with someone who feeds you from their own heart, from their own giving, and sharing, and serving, you must be changed. How can you avoid (though some people do avoid it); how can you avoid being changed and becoming a new person?

Life together includes much more than that, but this much is true. And the fact that most of you have grown up (and were helped to grow up), meal after meal, at such a table. And most of you have watched others grow up, and you have helped them to grow up, as you have served them at your family table. And this must change you.

I think that the Tree of Life must be the cross and the fruit of the tree must be the body of Jesus. The River of Life must be the running wounds of the blood on the cross. These are our daily bread, just as much as our normal breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

This must change you. This is what the grace of God in Christ is, and why it is so strong.

The vision of the Tree of Life and the River of Life is something that we have not read together, yet. But they tell us that there is no other way to live. This is how the Lord will sustain us, and carry us forever. This is how we will change and grow forever.

This is the Kingdom of God, now, and more and more, forever. We have this now. We wait for more to come, and it will come. This is a lesson of Advent, which means coming; and waiting for what is coming.

It’s as necessary as food and eating and drinking. It’s as necessary as sharing a table with others, like you and me. It’s urgent, and it is also the most important reality we can know.

We must live in a world where God comes.

God saved humanity by making our personhood, and our flesh and blood, his own. God saves the world by visiting it and walking on it the way we do. God saves history itself, and the history of our lives, by visiting it, and living in it, as we do.

In Jesus, God is our meal together. And our meal is also our leader in battle. You hear the blessing of our invitation to the wedding supper, and the very next thing you see is a battle forming.

Well you don’t hear a description of any of the actual fighting, but you see Jesus and his people together: his people in white robes that are bright, shining white because they are washed in his blood. But Jesus is robed in his own red blood; maybe because it takes his blood to make us shine. So, Jesus goes with us to war, dripping red.

We are in a war, right now. This war has been going on ever since the cross, ever since Jesus died on the cross and defeated sin, and death, and the devil in the resurrection.

Jesus is the Word of God. And the Word of God is also the sword in Jesus’ mouth, and the Word of God is the testimony of Jesus, and the message of the good news, and the gospel of Jesus, and this is the weapon that won the war and will keep on winning this war until Jesus comes again.

The Word, which is Jesus, the Word that is our king, the Word that is the message of the cross, is essential for our life. The Word that is Jesus and the sword in his mouth are the only weapon that can win our war and our struggle with this fallen world that won’t let up on us.

We have so many battles that could ruin us, and embitter us, and make us hollow, and empty, and false, and make us spoilers and vandals of other people’s lives.

We need Jesus fighting in our hearts and minds, and in our bodies. We need the power of his Word, his sword, which is our food and also the meal we share with those who strengthen us and give us growth. We need Jesus fighting for us and feeding us every day.

Jesus has made all of us the same, in this way. In Jesus, every day of our lives can be a battle that we don’t see, but Jesus wins, and we win with him. In Jesus, every day of our lives can be a meal shared with him and with each other that gives us fullness, and strength, and growth, now and forever.

This is the Kingdom of Jesus today. This is the future that we are waiting for. It is a promise that he makes to us, and Jesus is called “Faithful” and “True”. His kingdom will come.