How Sharp Were the Bits of Straw in our Lord’s Manger?

First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them” (although the law required them to be made). Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all [Hebrews 10:8-10].

The Lectionary committee showed particular skill in joining the readings for this upcoming Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Advent (RCL, Year C). For example, the Psalter reading, Psalm 80:1-7, with its descriptive metaphors and stark language, seems eerily appropriate in a time in which our vast resources seem altogether frail as we face a brainless microscopic virus that lacks a metabolic system and which is dependent upon host cells even to reproduce. In spite of what we had thought were boundless human assets, many fervently now cry out, “Where are you Lord? Have you forgotten us?”

Like generations before us, we long for a time when God turns God’s face toward us instead of in the other direction. Psalm 80 calls out a plea for the restoration of relationship with God, who seems so distant from the people’s suffering as to appear angry at us:

O LORD God Almighty, how long will your anger smolder against the prayers of your people? You have fed them with the bread of tears, you have made them drink tears by the bowlful [Psalm 80:4-5].

Consuming tears “by the bowlful,” Israelites in olden days turned to worship and sacrifice when Yahweh seemed far-removed. Indeed, based upon the Pentateuch, supplemented to some degree by the Old Testament’s Priestly writings, the children of Israel developed a rich worship rubric through which the sins of humanity literally were annually laid upon the shoulders of a scapegoat and removed from the midst of the people.

Alas, the Yom Kippur cleansing ritual—like a COVID-19 vaccination injection— produced only a joy of temporary relief. The underlying cause of humanity’s “illness”—the tendency on our part to love ourselves before God and neighbor— was, like a lurking coronavirus, still present. Just as we in the 21st century need what appears to be a continuous line of “boosters” after the initial COVID-19 vaccination, so also the children of Israel needed annual Temple sacrifices. Those in first century Palestine lamented to themselves, “If only we could come up with something that would free us from sin, once and for all time.

The unnamed author of the Epistle to the Hebrews reminded the first century Church—and us—that such a “vaccination” from sin, crafted by human hands, was never going to be possible. Wonderful as the Mosaic Law was, wonderful as our modern inventions might be, said the epistle writer, it was all still so inadequate:

For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshippers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins [Epistle to the Hebrews 10:1b-4, a portion of the Epistle reading for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, RCL, Year C].

To be sure, while the Mosaic law might be fully capable of reminding us of our sin, it could never free us from it. Yet as the Epistle writer allows, thanks be to God, for the Messiah has come. His body is a single sacrifice for our sin [Hebrews 10:12]. Christ’s once-and-for-all-time offering of His body was and is “a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world” [Book of Common Prayer].

And what does this mean for us, even 2,000 years after the offering of that body for our sin? Devout men and women have pondered this mystery over the eons of time. St. Athanasius of Alexandria [296 A.D. – 373 A.D.], often referred to as Athanasius the Confessor (the Coptic Orthodox Church), said that when Christ took up and offered His own body in sacrifice on the Cross, he destroyed the Old Adam (i.e., He destroyed humanity and in the process “vested us with His own nature” [Epistle ad Epictetum (Letter to Epictetus), No. 59]. Can we come to understand that the moment Jesus was born, the old humanity began to die?

500 years ago, John Donne, the poet and Anglican clergyman, put it this way:

The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die Martyrs, but Christ was born a Martyr. He found a Golgotha (where he was crucified) even in Bethlehem, where he was born; For, to his tenderness then, the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after; and the Manger as uneasy at first, as his Cross was at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas-day and his Good Friday, are but the evening and morning of one and the same day [John Donne, Christmas Day Sermon, St. Paul’s Cathedral, London,1626].

It isn’t enough, therefore, to say that Jesus died. We, as part of humanity, died with him.

There are two Gospel readings for this Sunday. One—Mary’s Magnificat [Luke 1:46b-55]—actually functions as the first “Psalm” for the day, in as much as it is a song sung by the Virgin Mary as she consents to God’s call to bear a son who will save the world. The other Gospel reading, Luke 1:39-45 (46-55), is the familiar story of Mary’s visit to her pregnant, yet aging cousin, Elizabeth, who will soon bear a son who will be known as John the Baptizer. While neither had yet been born, John jumped with joy at sensing the presence of our Lord. Even in his mother’s womb, John sensed the Grace that abounded within the life of his younger, distant cousin. As Leo the Great would so wonderfully say, “the birth of the head is the birth of the body [Sermon 6, in Nativitate Domini].

As we approach the Advent of our Lord, can’t you sense that same Grace that abounds within the life of Christ? The Advent message is straightforward. Through the Grace and Peace of Jesus Christ, we can come alive through Christ, once and for all time.