Rorate Coeli 2021

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent

December 19, 2021

Philippians 4:4-7

“He is a perfect little boy,” the doctor said to the new parents. But it was a lie. The flaws were hidden where the physician could not see. But you want it to be true. You have plans, hopes, dreams for the child. Just as you’ve had plans, hopes, dreams for yourself.

All these plans and dreams are rooted in self-love. The etymology of ambition is “the love of honor.” We want our children, just as we’ve wanted ourselves, to be on a trajectory toward success. The perfect child will become the perfect student, the perfect athlete, the perfect musician, the perfect carrier of our legacy.

At the hospital, nursing home, mortuary, a very different trajectory is plotted. Physicians work to arrest the rate of decline, but they can only delay the inevitable. The ambitious dreams of youth always come crashing down and into the earth.

This is what makes John the Baptist such an utterly unique figure. He voluntarily reverses his own upward trajectory of success. “I am not the Christ.” Elsewhere he says of Jesus, “He must increase, I must decrease.”

In other words, his own trajectory doesn’t matter. All our striving, all our contention, all our ambition is folly at best. The dream of building our own kingdom, personally, or for family, church, nation – it’s all vanity, self-love. Repent.

For as St. Paul says, “The Lord is at hand.” The Epistle for this Fourth Sunday of Advent, especially the larger context, shows the true trajectory of the Christian’s life according to God’s Word.

We’re in Philippians 4, but if we back up into chapter 3, we hear Paul talking about what a great student he had been, and how his career was on the rise - until he realized it’s all dung. “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Everything, he says, is rubbish, save one thing: having a righteousness outside himself: the righteousness “that comes through faith in Christ—that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection” (3:8-10).

So he doesn’t care if his worldly trajectory makes a rapid decline; one thing matters: “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (3:10-11). Death and resurrection is the trajectory. Do you see how it’s inverted? Our life experiences growth and success, then declination and mortality; but Christ becomes man to take us through death into resurrection.

Now in the meantime, we’re surrounded by enemies. St. Paul says in Philippians 3:18f, “Many … walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” All around you, the culture of this world encourages you to worship self, and set your mind on earthly things.

But St. Paul says we’re citizens of a different kingdom, “And from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself. Therefore, my brothers … stand firm … in the Lord” (3:20—4:1).

And then Paul names names. Two women in the church at Philippi weren’t getting along. I know it’s hard to imagine, but sometimes people in the church quarrel. What does he tell them? “I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord” (4:2). And he tells the rest of the congregation to help them, reminding them that their names are written in the Book of Life.

The discussion of quarreling in the congregation is what comes just before the magnificent words of last Sunday and today: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” 

The American holiday is a rejoicing devoid of substance. Listen to how many Christmas songs use words like cheer abstractly. There’s no cause for the cheer, and so it cannot last. The cause of joy for the Christian, though is the Lord who is at hand, who is coming to bring His bride the Church through the grave to the transformation of all things.

The next words, then, are directed to those two quarreling ladies and to us all: “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.” It’s difficult to translate this passage into English; reasonableness is sometimes rendered as moderation (KJV) or gentleness (NKJ); none of these capture the whole idea. The Roman politician and historian Tacitus called it one of two qualities that a leader must have. He must be sensible (phronimos), and epieikēs which the ESV puts as reasonableness. It’s the quality of being honest, balanced, courteous, and generous, but particularly, you deal with other people mercifully.

So you’ve got these two people in the church arguing, and Paul is saying, “Be honest with each other, and in your honesty, be courteous, be generous, be merciful.” And that, he tells the congregation, is how all Christians are to be to all people. “The Lord is at hand.” When He appears, will He find us arguing? Or will He find us moderate and gentle towards each other?

There’s no joy in winning the argument. There’s no joy in getting your way. That trajectory leads only to judgment, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The Lord is at hand. Repent. Rejoice in His appearing. He sets your life on a different trajectory. His trajectory is the story of the world: The way of humility, through death, into resurrection and the transformation of all things. +INJ+