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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
This time of year, in the season of Advent, when we think of someone visiting, we probably think of family or friends coming to see us for a Christmas party or more extended stay. A different kind of coming is in view in the historic Collect for the third Sunday of Advent, also used in the week that follows. The third Sunday and its week are different from the other three Sundays and their weeks, with a lessening of Advent’s penitential discipline and a more-joyous tone, both reflected in the rose-colored candle on the Advent wreath. Similarly, instead of the other weeks’ explicit petitions to “stir up” and explicit references to the Lord’s “coming”, the Collect that we pray this week and, as our midweek sermon series continues, consider in this sermon asks our Lord Jesus Christ to hear our prayers, especially that prayer for Him to lighten the darkness of our hearts by His gracious visitation. If you pull out your half-page service outline, printed on its front, you will find the Collect for the Third Sunday in Advent (and for the week following). Let us read it together right now.
Lord Jesus Christ,
we implore You to hear our prayers and
to lighten the darkness of our hearts by Your gracious visitation;
for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Now, I admit that the use of the term “visitation” in the Collect can be a little confusing, especially as we in the Church use the term “visitation” with more than one sense. For example, the Virgin Mary’s “visit” to her relative Elizabeth that we heard about in tonight’s Second Reading (Luke 1:39-56) can be called “The Visitation of Our Lady” (ODCC, 1704), but that use is more in the sense of the Virgin Mary’s coming to see Elizabeth for an extended stay (in that case, about three months). But, the “visitation” for which we pray in the Collect is more like the Lord’s coming to visit Samuel’s mother Hannah so that, after she had given Samuel to the Lord’s service, she conceived and bore three other sons and two daughters (1 Samuel 2:21). In other words, in the Collect we use the word “visitation” in what is now its largely obsolete sense of a superior coming to a subordinate and either inspecting the situation or taking action to cause a considerable change in the subordinate’s circumstances, for worse or for better. In its full theological sense, the word “visitation” especially is used of God as the “superior power” acting in Salvation History. (See Hamilton, TWOT, II:731-732; Beyer, TDNT 2:602-608.)
Of course, we may not like our superiors (or anyone else) coming to us as subordinates and either inspecting our situation or taking action to cause a considerable change in our circumstances. Government regulators, other accrediting agencies, or even in-house supervisors at least can be perceived as, if not actually be, intrusive, nitpicky, and otherwise unreasonable. Yet, they usually have official responsibility for such oversight, as, in at least some sense, God has with each one of us. When God visits us and confronts us over our sin, whatever our sin might be—and all of us do sin in some way, for we are sinful by nature—when God visits us and confronts us over our sin, there is no real answer (Job 31:14). God’s law stops every mouth and holds everyone accountable to God (Romans 3:19). We deserve for death to visit us (Numbers 16:29). As we heard in tonight’s First Reading (Malachi 3:1-6), on our own, no one can endure the day of the Lord’s coming or stand when He appears.
Elsewhere, God says he will “visit” the sin of the parents on their children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him (Numbers 14:18), as we all do by nature. If children, grandchildren, and great‑grandchildren follow in the sinful ways of their ancestors, then God will punish them all, although for their own sin (see Ezekiel 18:20 but compare Explanation #71)—punish them, that is, unless they repent. When we answer God’s enabling call to repent, an emphasis of this penitential season of Advent, then, instead of a visitation of wrath and punishment for our sin, we receive a visitation of mercy and grace that forgives our sins (confer Beyer, TDNT 2:607).
The Collect for Advent III apparently originally asked the Lord to lighten the darkness of our “minds” (Reed, 468), but somewhere along the way it was changed to refer to the darkness of our “hearts”, and in some ways that may be a better scriptural “fit”. For example, by Divine inspiration, St. Paul writes to the Corinthians that the coming of the Lord brings to light the things now hidden in darkness and discloses the purposes of the heart (1 Corinthians 4:5), and similarly he later writes to them that God, Who said “Let light shine out of darkness”, has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). In the man Jesus, God Himself comes to visit, or, as John the Baptizer’s father Zechariah put it, also by Divine‑inspiration, God comes to redeem His people (Luke 1:68), the Sunrise (or “Dayspring” [KJV, ASV]) from on high visits us because of God’s tender mercy (Luke 1:78). God’s “visitation” to save us is accomplished in the death and resurrection of His Coming One, the Messiah, the Christ (confer Beyer, TDNT 2:605). Mary’s song, the Magnificat, which we heard in tonight’s Second Reading and which we will sing in a few moments, prophetically reflects on all God would do through her Son.
Mary’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as we pray in the Collect for Him to do, certainly does hear our prayers and lighten the darkness of our hearts by His gracious visitation. To reflect that reality, we may even have come to celebrate His birth within days of the Winter Solstice, when we in the northern hemisphere begin to have more daylight. As we heard in tonight’s Opening Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 348), light shining into the darkness is a theme of Advent (as it also is theme of Christmas and Epiphany). Jesus’s Holy Spirit enlightens us collectively and individually with His gifts. One such gift is the reading and preaching of Holy Scripture, to which, St. Peter writes by Divine inspiration, we do well to pay attention, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the Morning Star (or “Daystar” [KJV, ASV]) rises in our hearts (2 Peter 1:19). Another such gift of the Holy Spirit is that same Scripture combined with water in Holy Baptism. Psalm 65 (v.9) connects God’s visitation to water, and Holy Baptism’s role in enlightening us is reflected by the practice of giving burning candles to those baptized, for them to use each year in remembering their baptism on its anniversary. Another such gift is that same Scripture combined with bread and wine in Holy Communion, which thereby also gives us Jesus’s Body and Blood. The Closing Hymn that we sang Sunday and will sing again tonight especially points to God’s coming to and presence with us now in the Sacrament of the Altar, with these words:
Now He gently leads us; / With Himself He feeds us
Precious food from heaven, / Pledge of peace here given,
Manna that will nourish / Souls that they may flourish. (LSB 333:2)
Through God’s words of Holy Scripture, including their Sacramental forms, God “visits” us and not only lightens the darkness of our hearts but also transforms us. In tonight’s Office Hymn, which almost seems to be echoing this week’s Collect, we sang to Jesus these words:
When once You visit darkened hearts, / Then truth begins to shine,
Then earthly vanity departs, / Then kindles love divine. (LSB 554:2)
That transforming Divine love in us enables us, as we heard in tonight’s First Reading, to bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord, offerings pleasing to the Lord. We join all creation, as we heard in tonight’s Psalm (98), in joyful songs of praise. That transforming Divine love in us, in turn, leads us to care about and so to visit others, such as the sick and the imprisoned, orphans and widows, and, thereby, we do deeds of love unto our Lord God Himself (Matthew 25:36, 39, 43; James 1:27).
Our Lord Jesus Christ both commands our prayers and promises to hear them, to answer them in His own way and in His own time. He has already in the past heard and answered our prayers to lighten the darkness of our hearts by visiting us, He likewise now hears and answers, and in the future He will continue to answer our prayers to enlighten us by visiting us. Whether or not we use the words “stir-up” and “come”, He does “stir‑up” and “come”, visiting us not in the wrath and judgment we deserve but in mercy and grace for His own sake, to the glory of His Holy Name.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +