Throughout this Advent season, we’ve been preparing for the moment of Christmas by seeing how the Christmas event is not out of character for God. To put it positively, it is entirely in keeping with God’s creative nature to “become flesh and live among us.” However, the point that we are making during this Advent season may be quite different from what we have often heard about the nature of God. For years, Christian theology has been insistent that God is ‘wholly other,’ that the creator is not to be confused in any way with the creation, that there is a qualitative difference between the holy God and sinful humanity. There were great reasons for the church to press this difference. There is the ongoing temptation for us to try to create God in our own image, to imagine that whatever we love God loves, whatever we loathe God loathes, whatever irks us or frightens us or maddens us is what God also find onerous. It was in order to rein in our tendencies to reduce God to nothing more than what Karl Barth called “humanity with a loud voice” that the Christian message for many years has stressed the utter difference between God and us.

But, while it is idolatrous for us to reduce God to our own image, it is entirely God’s pleasure to participate in our way of being in the world. It is not human hubris, but a testimony of God’s grace to say that throughout the Scriptures, God is consistently revealed as one who is willing to take on our weakness and bear our frailty. John Calvin put it nicely that God “accommodates” Godself to our limited means of knowing God. And the primary way that God does so in the Scriptures, is through the utterance of human words. God names. God calls. God proclaims. God curses. God praises. God welcomes. God rejects. At the same time, God can be named. God can be called. God can be proclaimed. God can be cursed. God can be praised. God can be welcomed. God can be rejected. By God’s own choice, God participates in our world as both subject and object through words.

That’s the God whom we prepare to meet on Christmas – not a complete stranger who has never been part of our world before, but a familiar presence, one whom we cannot fully comprehend, but who has been an intimate part of our journey from the beginning. This morning we will look at how God has been part of our journey, primarily through the phrase “the Word of the Lord” that is used so often by God’s prophets.

I like to tell our Confirmands that whenever they hear the phrase, “Thus says the Lord,” they can probably guess that they are hearing from one of the prophets. That’s not always true, of course. There were those who liked to use that phrase to preface, not God’s Word, but their own opinion that they wanted people to think was God’s Word. That is the reason behind the prohibition against “taking God’s name in vain.” It is a powerful thing to use the words, “Thus says the Lord,” but it is an equally destructive thing to use those words falsely.

It was the “Word of the Lord” that brought the prophet Nathan into King David’s chambers and compelled him to point his finger at the king and say, “You are the one! You are the rapist, the liar, the murderer, misusing the power that God has given you and exploiting the people God has ordained you to serve!” You can be sure that if Nathan had dared to say such a thing as his own opinion he would have been hanging from the gallows by sundown. It was the Word of the Lord that took the prophet Amos to the market place and compelled him to say, “Woe to you who join field to field, profiting yourselves by impoverishing your neighbors!” It was the Word of the Lord that compelled Isaiah – a member of the king’s court – to stand up and condemn a strategic alliance that put Israel in cahoots with exploitative empires around them. It was the Word of the Lord that caused Micah to ask, “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly before your God?” During Advent, we especially think of how the “Word of the Lord” compelled John the Baptizer to stand on the banks of the Jordan River and to call the people to repent and be baptized. It was so compelling that the Gospel of Mark says that all of the Judean region and all of the Jerusalemites came out to hear and to be baptized. Yet, it was that same Word of truth that brought John into Herod’s disfavor, when he condemned Herod for taking his own brother’s wife as a way of trying to shore up his political stature.

God chooses to participate in our way of life through “the Word,” but “the Word of the Lord” is often disruptive and vexing, because it names life the way it is, not the way we spin it to be. And if life is false – if one of us imagines ourselves free while another lives in chains – then “the Word of the Lord” will surely confront us as a difficult thing to say and a difficult thing to hear.

At the same time, the “Word of the Lord” is often God’s life-giving way of participating in our reality. And that is clearly evident in our reading from Jeremiah today. Jeremiah was a reluctant prophet, whose role was, for a long time, to get people to wake up and see the disaster that was looming before them. That constant message earned Jeremiah the derisive nickname, “Mr. Gloom and Doom.” But now, in our reading, there was no more need to convince the people that they had gone wrong, because they had been invaded, their cities destroyed, and so many of their people dragged away in exile. It was as bad as times get. And it was then, in the depth of their suffering, that Jeremiah spoke a different kind of Word to the people:

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” In the heart of their disaster, came a word of hope. It was not a hope built on the vain imaginations that got the people into the mess they faced in the first place. It was hope that was anchored in God’s faithfulness.

When the Word of God becomes flesh and lives among us, it is through the words of those who speak truthfully about God’s faithfulness. Sometimes God’s faithfulness compels us to condemn a practice that is exploitative and hurtful, because God really is on the side of those who are hurt even by our friends. Sometimes God’s faithfulness compels us to speak a word of ridiculous comfort in a situation that seems completely disastrous, because God really is for us and not against us. The remarkable calling that we have as people of God is to speak truthfully about God’s faithfulness.

So, my question this morning is, as people of God, what is God’s faithfulness compelling us to say during this season of Advent? I’m not asking what I should be preaching at you during this season. I’m not asking what I should be preaching on your behalf this season. I’m asking what it is that speaking truthfully about God’s faithfulness compels you to say this season. What is that word – be it a word of challenge or of comfort – that God is compelling you to speak? As those whose lives have been claimed by the God who speaks; as those whose journey draws you ever-closer to the heart of God; as those who listen intently for the Word of God – what is God calling you to say? We must have more to say than “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” We must have more to say than the latest spin-jingle from our favorite political affiliation. We must have more to say than just a belly full of complaints. Too often that kind of speech lies perilously close to the sin of taking God’s name in vain. But what can we say, what must we say, as a Word of God that expresses God’s faithfulness truthfully to our day? That’s the calling that you and I have this season, which goes far beyond any simple word that we might speak. May God enable us to speak of God’s faithfulness with boldness and truth. Amen.