This past Christmas Eve, we sang a familiar carol: “Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the new born King". Christmas is the time when we remember the birth of Jesus, and our attention rightly turns to him. But tucked away in the middle of that familiar song, the old hymn writer Charles Wesley penned a verse which reminds us of another kind of birth, one that has to do with us.
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
She was one of the founding members of the parish where I currently serve. She passed away on the last day of Advent – Christmas Eve 2007. Advent is the season of waiting – waiting for the birth of Christ. But Advent is also a reminder that all of us are waiting for that time of which Wesley wrote:
Born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
This old carol makes a remarkable claim. It claims that Jesus has the power of life. Many people and many things in this world have the power of death. Age and illness, accident and malice, things beyond our control, and things of our own doing and making. The world is full of the power of death, and the sorrow it brings. We meet those things in the deaths of our loved ones. Even God knows the sorrow of the death of a loved one. After all, He watched his Son die. We will, each one of us, join her in that part of the journey of human existence. We will all taste death. Even Jesus did. Yet this same Jesus, who tasted death, invites us to taste life. "Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."
We are hungry for life, and in our heart of hearts we thirst for love. How do we taste this bread of life? How do we drink this cup that will satisfy every thirst? We come to Jesus and we believe in Him. We believe his remarkable claim. Jesus promises that the one who comes to him will not “be hungry”, that the one who comes to him “will not thirst”. Jesus is pointing us, calling us, to a certain hope. What does the Christian soul look forward to? What is our hope?
And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.’
The Christian waits. Waits for the promises of God. Waits for fullness of life. Waits to be fully and eternally born again into the kingdom of God. Waits to be resurrected at the last day. What is this resurrected life that Jesus promises? It is life as God intended it to be, before sin and the power of death entered the world. It is not the life of ghosts or childish imaginations, of memory, or wishful thinking, or dreams of “what used to be”. It is fullness of life as God intended it to be. All the joys and loves and adventures of this life are, at their best, but pale imitations of the life God intends for us. All that is best and good and worthy in this life is only a small reflection of the life that is yet to come: “and I will raise them up on the last day.”
Our hope is that, even as we follow Jesus on the journey through death, we will, by his power, follow him on the journey to life. We have no choice but follow Jesus on the journey to death. It is allotted to all of us. But there is an invitation to something more. It is an invitation to fullness of life, and fullness of love: Our God, who knew the death of his Son, but raised him to life, promises us the day when death will be no more:
Over the last year I had occasion to visit with her. But today she needs no earthly minister – she is in the presence of the one High Priest; all of us have had our Christmas feasting, but today she needs no Christmas feasting, nor a re-telling of the Christmas story – because today she feasts with the ‘newborn King’, in his Kingdom , in that place prepared for her; she needs no choir to sing the old Christmas carols, for she is there, we trust, in the presence of the same angels who brought to us all the message of that first Christmas eve:
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
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