A million years ago a movie plot asked the question “Guess who’s coming to dinner?” It was a story of prejudice and racism – a black man coming to dinner to meet the white parents of his white girlfriend. In 1963, that dinner table was a shock and surprise. Looking out on the world today it is hard to imagine how controversial that movie was in its time. Our age is not perfectly free of bigotry but it has moved the playing field of our humanity more than we often realize.
Every year we begin the Church Year with the question again, “Guess who is coming?” Our general attention is not to the ills of a corrupt world or society or ourselves and how to improve them. It is to a man in a red suit who comes as the all knowing judge to decide if we have been good or bad and if we will get what we want or something we don’t. He comes with gifts for those who have followed the rules and with a lump of coal for those who have not. He is probably fooled even by a token repentance so that there will be plenty of presents under the tree even for the naughty ones. Santa may keep score but not grandma and grandpa.
Here we are on the First Sunday in Advent, the first season of a new Church Year, and we are asking the same question. Guess who’s coming to dinner? The answer is no surprise. You can be the worst delinquent member or raised in a family of wolves that never went to church and you ought to be able to answer that question. Of course you know – everyone knows. The dynamic duo – a man in a red suit and Jesus in a manger. You may not invest much into this child born of Mary but at least you know who He is. Why He is coming – well, that is another question.
We have invested in all the wrong answers for why there is Advent and Christmas. We think He is coming to right the wrongs of our culture and society, to make the world better and to make our lives better. No wonder so many do not come back after Christmas. Our hopes are set so high and when the worship service is over, we go back home to the same old problems, the same old world, and the same old lives. We think He is coming to give us what we want. We have lists prepared just in case He does not know us or what we want. The next month of so is invested with so many impossible hopes and dreams that we are bound to be disappointed by the red suited man who is supposed to make us happy. It is no wonder that we are sad when what we want from the baby in the manger seems too much to hope for – even if He might be the Son of God. We know who is coming to dinner but we are not sure why He is coming or what He has come to do or give.
This is why the Church makes it unmistakable on the First Sunday in Advent. The readings appointed for the day make it hard to miss – who He is who is coming and why He has come. He comes not in a shiny new car to feed your dreams for a sweet ride but in a donkey, the colt the foal of the donkey. He comes not to hand out coats to those who need one but so that they we might shed our coats of sin and lay them down before Him. He is come not to figure out what we think we need but to give us what we really need but do not know to ask. He is come as the Savior, the Son of God in flesh and blood, born of the Virgin by the power of the Spirit. And in this same liturgy, the Church also teaches us what to say to Him who is coming. “Amen, come, Lord Jesus! Blessed is the King who comes in the Name of the Lord.”
There is no God to know except the God we know in Christ and there is no Christ except the Christ who comes to be crucified. Bethlehem is not far from Golgotha. The wood of the manger will be used to make a cross. The swelling sound of the crowd’s welcome will deteriorate into a cry to crucify Him. Still He comes. He comes to wear the job description of a Messiah even it that leads Him to the suffering of the cross and to a cold, dead body laid in a fresh tomb. You might be thinking that this does not sound much like Advent or Christmas but I am here to tell you that this is exactly what Advent and Christmas sound like.
Christ is coming. The omniscient one who is strong enough to know His future will lead through the cross to death and still He comes. The omnipotent one who is strong enough to carry the load of your sin and mine even while His arms are stretched out in suffering and still He comes. Guess who is coming to dinner? The Savior who embodies the promise of God’s mercy from a stable and the first breath of His incarnate life to the final sigh before the last breath of His suffering is over.
What fools we are to think that we need to keep Christ in Christmas. There is no Christmas without Him. This world will not improve and we are but a gazillion little Dutch boys and girls with their fingers in the dyke trying to hold back our own self-destruction. The answer to all our ills is not and never was a ballot box away. The most even the best leaders can do is to quarantine our will to self-destruct a little while longer. White bearded men in red suits are great distractions but terrible Saviors. There are here and gone before even scratching the surface of whether we are naughty or nice or what can be done about it. A seasonal figure of kindness makes for a good story but a terrible Messiah. Guess who is coming to dinner? It had better be the only One who can deliver hope to a hopeless people.
This Messiah is come not to add more rules we cannot keep to the burden of our own failure. He has not come to sit on the sidelines of our lives and tell us what we should have said or done or who we should have been. This Messiah is mercy embodied, the God who comes to lay aside His righteousness for our misery and His right to be worshiped in order to serve us with salvation. Guess who is coming to dinner, who prepares the food, who sets the table so that vagabonds and sinners may have place and absolution. Guess why He is coming to dinner, the Savior who leaves the halls of glory on high to become sin’s offering down here and then to make Himself the food no one deserves but everyone may receive with faith.
The hope of the world is not for political problems and political solutions. The desire of our hearts is for more than a moment of distraction provided by a deity who knows were naughty but will never give us coal. Christ the Lord is here and in Him a people who have nothing to say of themselves but they are sinners hear the most glorious voice forgive away the sins of thought, word, and deed. Those whose voices cry “hosanna” will hear “it is finished,” those who take offer their coats will wear the righteousness He alone can give, and those whose do not know what they want to eat will be fed upon the bread of heaven and cup of salvation.
Christ is coming to finish what He began and that includes you and me. He will bring to completion what He has begun even though we are not sure it is what we want. He will come not as a solitary Savior on the back of a beast of burden but upon the clouds, riding the clouds like a horse, while angels sing and we repeat the song with them. Blessed is the King who comes in the Name of the Lord!
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