December 8, 2024, Mighty God, Isaiah 9:6, – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ December 8, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to the sermon, click the link above. The text is below.

Welcome to the second week of Advent. The word “Advent” means “coming,” so this season, of all the seasons of the year, is all about the One who is coming. When we get ready to receive company, family or friends or whoever might be coming to stay with us, it’s really important for us to know the person who is coming. Then, we do everything we can to prepare for that particular person. We buy all the ingredients for lasagna, because that’s their favorite meal; we do what we can to make them comfortable, to make them feel welcome, according to their special needs and preferences. Because we love them. Because they are important to us.

That’s why we’ll be spending this Advent season taking a look at who this Christ is that is coming again to dwell among his people – because the better we know him, the better we can prepare the paths of our hearts to receive him, as John the Baptist calls us to do in the gospel reading this morning: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight…”

If you were here last week, you know that we’re going to get a little help from Isaiah for this, using the name Isaiah gave to the child that was coming to be born among us, to bring us light and life. Here’s the name: “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace,” one glorious name in four unique parts.

We began last week with what it means that the Christ is our Wonderful Counselor: a God of wisdom and righteousness, a God of grace and truth in astonishing measure. He is a teacher and guide, not for the great and powerful, but for those who are in desperate need – for us, the weary and the weak, the humble and the messed up, the last and the least and the lost.

So this week we get to the second part of the name of Christ. He is Mighty God. And that almost sounds like a redundancy, doesn’t it, like “hot fire” or “cold ice” or “huge elephant”? Of course the Christ is God. Of course God is Mighty. We read in Malachi today: “Who can endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears?” He is like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap, which is lye soap, burning away the impurities of our hearts.

God is omnipotent, all-powerful, supreme over every other power or authority that exists in heaven or on earth or under the earth. Mighty God – impressive, yes, awe-inspiring, even scary, just exactly what we would expect God to be.

Except.

Except, Jesus was very careful to teach his disciples that his kind of mighty-ness, the God kind of mighty-ness, was something very different from the kind of mightiness we know in the world of average humans. “You know how it is out there,” Jesus told the apostles once, “You know how the bigwigs like to lord it over their underlings. It will not be like that with you.” Being mighty in the kingdom of God, Jesus wanted them to know, is much less about lord-ing and much more about serv-ing. The one who wants to be mighty, he told them, should make themselves the slave of all, just like the Christ came, not to surround himself with servants, but to be a servant – even to give away his own life to save the lives of others.

The mind of Christ – who is Mighty God – is this, wrote Paul: “He was God, but he didn’t hang onto his godly rights and privileges. No, he poured himself out, letting go of his mighty power, laying aside his divine glory. Instead, he took the form of a servant, by being born as a human baby. And in that human form he humbled himself even more, by submitting himself to death, even the death of a criminal, on a Roman cross.”

The very last lesson Jesus taught his disciples was at the Seder meal of the Passover in Jerusalem. Jesus had sent Peter and James and John and the others to prepare this special meal. The food was prepared, and everyone had arrived, and they were all reclining around the table, laid with its holy feast. And suddenly and unexpectedly Jesus, the Master and Teacher, stood up. While they all watched, puzzled and very curious. Jesus took off his tunic and wrapped a towel around his waist and fetched a basin of water. And without a word of warning or explanation he knelt down and started washing their dirty feet, like a common slave.

Their was some sputtering and argumentation, especially from Peter, as we know, but Jesus kept on until he had washed the feet of every one of them. And then he put aside the basin and the towel. He put his tunic back on. And he said to them: “Do you understand what I just did? You call me Master and Lord and Teacher, and that is all right and proper, because that’s who I am. Here is what you must learn. If I, your Lord and Master, have knelt at your feet as a servant, then you, too, need to serve one another as I have served you.” Being Mighty is not about sitting in the place of honor. Being Mighty is about kneeling at the feet of your brother or sister.

The moment of greatest triumph for the Christ was the moment of his utter weakness, when he had given his life into the hands of his enemies, when he had poured out the last drop of his life. Then, Paul says, there at the cross, the Christ stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority, and he marched them naked through the streets.

In betrayals and beatings; in death and disgrace; the Christ was revealed as Mighty God.

O come, O come, Thou Lord of might

Who to your tribes, on Sinai’s height

In ancient times did give the law

In cloud, and majesty, and awe.

Come, Lord Jesus! +