In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Thanksgiving is over and I for one will be carrying the weight of it with me for a few more weeks at least! (Or until I get back into the gym). And of course, before Thanksgiving had even occurred stores were decking their halls with boughs of plastic holly and television ads were trumpeting the joy that only a new GameBoy can bring to your child. But believe it or not, as early as it is, the church is also gearing up for Christmas. This week marks the last of the year in our lectionary calendar and next week we will begin the advent season as we commemorate the birth of Jesus.

Our lessons for today serve as excellent reminders of why Jesus was born. In the reading from Jeremiah God comforts his people by telling them that they will not be forgotten. Though their leaders have led them astray, God will provide a descendant of David who will usher in a new era of peace and justice.

Most Jews looked for the fulfillment of this prophecy, and other similar messianic texts, in the form of a warrior king, like David, who would ride in with an army of men and drive out the enemy restoring political self-rule and the monarchy in Jerusalem. This is perhaps best exemplified in the Dead Sea Scrolls were we find an entire scroll depicting a massive war that will take place both in heaven and on earth. The angels of light fighting the angels of darkness in heaven while two messiahs(!) (one a king and the other a priest) battle with the wicked here on earth. We, however, have the benefit of hindsight and we know that Jesus was a very different kind of messiah. He was indeed King of Kings, as our collect and Gospel for today reminds us, but he was not an ordinary king. He ruled not over a people or a land, but over all creation, heaven and earth. Jesus was a very different kind of messiah.

With Jesus justice and righteousness came in and Judah was saved. They were saved not from Rome, but from sin. The messiah, the anointed one of God, was indeed descended from David, but the salvation he brought was not what most Jews expected and what the Romans feared. External enemies, as we know all too well, come and go. When Jeremiah was writing it was the Babylonians, in Jesus’ day it was the Romans, and shortly after Father Ralph was ordained it was the Nazis. Today it is the terrorists. God can and does save us from these threats to our physical lives, but Jesus came to deliver us from the internal threat of evil and sin.

It is sin, not death, that can separate us from God. And it is only Jesus Christ who, as Paul says in today’s reading, can reconcile us to God "by making peace through the blood of his cross." This is why Jesus was born, so that he could die for our sins.

The Book of Common Prayer allows for two possible Gospel texts today. We have the passage just read, Jesus’ triumphant entry into the city, and Luke 23, which recounts some of Jesus’ final moments on the cross as he assures the repentant thief that "this day you will be with me in paradise." In today’s Gospel reading Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem as a king, but within days he will die as a criminal. As we look towards Christmas and the festival season that commemorates Jesus’ birth it is appropriate that we remember why God became flesh in Jesus.

It is quite fashionable today for scholars and priests to speak of Jesus as a great man or a moral teacher, perhaps even a healer, while rejecting the biblical claims and the belief of the church that Jesus was the messiah, the very Son of God. But the world already had plenty of teachers and preachers. Jewish history was already full of prophets. Why another and why such an ignominious death? Because teachers and prophets only showed us what we were doing wrong. The Law given at Sinai created a template, a guide for returning to God, but it was incomplete. The Temple had already been destroyed once and was soon to be destroyed again. Sacrifices offered there for the sins of Israel had to be repeated annually and could only be performed so long as the Temple stood. A final and complete sacrifice for sins had to be made in order to reestablish an intimate relationship with God. Jesus did indeed teach, preach, and heal, but he also forgave sins.

"Sin." It seems such an old-fashioned word. Better, perhaps than "iniquities," but it still feels archaic, distant from any concept we can really grasp. It might be worthwhile to "translate" some of what I have been saying. We hear the terms "sin" and "salvation" all the time, but do we really know what they mean?

"Sin" is pretty simple. It is disobeying God. The trick is, of course, knowing what God wants us to do. We all know some of the "big ticket" items like "you shall not commit adultery" or "honor your mother and your father." Most of us get most of these things right, but we all get lots of them wrong. Jesus raised the bar quite a bit when he said, (Matt. 5.27 )"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a person with lust has already committed adultery with them in their heart." Who can stand up to that kind of scrutiny and make it through adolescence?

Or perhaps a somewhat trite analogy will help. We all know that it is against the law to murder someone and we are able to abide by that law. We also know that the speed limit on the Causeway is 55 mph. Now how many of you never go above 55 mph on the Causeway? And when we are pulled over, as angry as we might be that the person in front of us who was going 70 mph got away, we recognize that we were in fact going 65 mph and accept the ticket.

The same is true with sin. We covet, desiring everything from our neighbor’s spouse (not a whole lot of coveting neighbor’s donkeys anymore as far as I know) to computers or cars or dresses or a nicer home. We hate with general dislike, annoyance, to raging fury, those around us whom we are to love. Now we don’t always get "pulled over" by the police for this, yet that does not change the fact that, as human as it is to be this way, we are being disobedient to God and there are consequences for our sins. Most of all, our disobedience keeps us from God; like the small child who stole a candy in the store and then hid from his parent, eating the sweet guiltily, but still knowing he hid within him the truth of his rebellion and could not look his parent in the eye. Or consider just three words: Adam and Eve.

We estrange(d) ourselves from God and within ourselves we wither and recede as we starve for the nourishment of God’s presence in our lives. Yet God sought to reconcile us to himself. In his purpose God began by working through a single nation, Israel, and the Law that he gave them on Mt. Sinai. This law was a guide and, as Paul said in his letter to the Romans, if it weren’t for the Law we would not know what sin is! But it was incomplete. With the advent of Jesus the law was fulfilled and with his death its sacrificial needs were completed. The penalty of sin that required annual and even daily animal sacrifice had been paid by Jesus through his death. It was and is available to everyone, not just the Jews, but to everyone through faith in Jesus. We must simply recognize and believe that he died for us and that in so doing he has released us from punishment of our sin.

When we take this step of faith we are reconciled to God and brought back into that mystical and intimate relationship with him. His spirit will fill us and enable us to move beyond the crippling effects of sin. Let’s face it. We all know, without any theological definition or sociological study, that sin is real because we know the damage that we have in our own lives. Damage caused by constantly desiring things we don’t have, by parents who could not commit to a single relationship, the pain and anguish that lingers with us from indulging in those impulses that we have been assured were "only natural." Through Jesus’ death the penalty of these sins have been removed and by faith in him his Holy Spirit will dwell in us and healing can and will begin in our lives and in our souls. Forgiveness… and healing…

When we confess our sins, as we do every time we come to his table to commemorate the fact that he paid our fine and took the punishment for us, we are reunited with God and in the breaking of the bread we become "living members" of Jesus Christ. We are made whole.

Finally, as we approach this advent season let us remember the reality of God’s most precious gift to us. Jesus was indeed born of a virgin into this "real" world. He lived and taught and preached and healed and he died. His coming into this world was for one reason: to die so that we might live.

But everyone dies. How do we know that Jesus’ death was any different? Because on the third day he rose again. This is the "sign of Jonah," this is the confirmation that all he said and did were true. It was not a product of group psychosis; it was and is reality. Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples confirming the truth of all that he said. But, as Paul reminds us in today’s epistle, Jesus was just the first of those raised from the dead. We too will be resurrected, body and soul, that those who believe in Jesus as the Messiah will have eternal life with him.

Jesus’ birth, his teachings, his death, and resurrection are factual, historical events and absolute truths. We confess and lay claim to this reality.

Be encouraged again by the words of Paul:

Col. 1.11 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. … 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.