Morning Devotion for the Season of Advent
December 31, 2021
Invitatory
Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
Behold, the dwelling of God is with mankind. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them, and be their God.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end.
Amen.
Alleluia. To us a child is born: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.
Reading: II Corinthians 5:16-6:2
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
2021 might well be remembered as the year when everyone was strongly encouraged – or pushed, or prodded, or goaded – to count every possible trespass against just about everyone. Accusations abounded. I would like to join with Paul, then, and say “Good riddance.” Let the new year begin, and may it be truly new. And not in the sense of already well-worn resolutions that are trotted out in annually refashioned forms, which are all variations on the self-promise “I am determined to do better.” Maybe the newness of the new year may come in a new way, from an unusual receptivity – from taking to heart the depth and power of Paul’s exclamation that in Christ “every old has passed away.” Maybe… for, in reality, few of us want to believe this or act accordingly. We want to keep the past as leverage.
For Paul, however, the promise of newness can be realized in only one, very specific way: newness is the complete dissolution of the habit of counting trespasses, whether those committed against us or those we ourselves commit. We need to let the shock of this sink in. For if we see or imagine Christ “from a human point of view” or by the measure of our well-honed means of personal assessment, then he was no more than one example among many to be either emulated or forgotten. And this is the perspective that many have of Jesus, both outside and inside the church. He can serve as a kind of prompt for us to “do things better.” And, being relatively unmoved by this decision, we continue to muddle about in the old, never making significant or enduring progress. For Jesus then marks our trespasses, rather indelibly; and they’re never quite forgiven.
Isn’t this often the exhortation of the church. As ambassadors for Christ we mistakenly take on the role of trying to be better than we are or, far worse, passing ourselves off as better than others. To be “the righteousness of God,” then, is to claim a higher standing, whether this means decrying the sins of others or the sins of all of us or the insurmountable mountain of the sins of the past. And there is no end to the amount or the intensity of the anger we can generate. And there’s nothing new about any of this. Nothing. It’s as old as the record of human interaction. It’s plain old, human righteousness, and we’re selling the same product as everyone else. And it’s a very competitive market.
“The righteousness of God” as Paul described it is God’s ability “not to count.” Christ has created a context within which sin no longer matters; and we no longer have to drag it behind us, as if somehow, and in some way, we are participating in and bringing about a final reckoning. That reckoning has already happened, in Jesus. The old is past. It would do us well to think hard about how new the new is in Christ. Because then our faith will hold real promise… of great joy… to all people.
May 2022 be a time of this kind of newness.
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
