“COME, LORD JESUS”
“The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God 2 as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:
“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way” 3 “a voice of one calling in the wilderness…prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”
4 And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. 7 And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I…”
– Mark 1:1-5, 7a
Faith matters… as in matters of faith… we all believe in something!
When I was younger… growing up on Amberly St. in Austintown, Ohio my family… for the most part… ate our evening meal around the kitchen table. In 1956 there was just me, my mother and father and my father’s mother and before we ate… we prayed… “Come Lord Jesus be our guest and let these gifts to us be blessed.”
And by the summer of 1957… my sister Becky was born and there were five of us… same kitchen… always good food and the same prayer. And by the time I left for college in 1972… there were seven in the family adding two more sisters and when I returned home that first Christmas… my parents had added a baby brother… and now with eight chairs around the table… and although he doesn’t remember… we prayed… “Come, Lord Jesus…” giving thanks to God recognizing the blessings of our lives… as the prayer was an invitation… ‘Come, Lord Jesus…’ somehow suggesting the presence of God wasn’t there from time to time and since those days my faith has grown, developed, deepened and has even been challenged from time to time and has allowed me to embrace a bolder thought… words on a wall plaque which state… “Jesus Christ is the head of this household; the unseen guest at every meal and the silent listener to every conversation” …making all the times I bowed my head as a child all the more meaningful now understanding Jesus was already present… and my asking… ‘come, Lord Jesus…’ was a way for my family to recognize his presence in our lives and central to our family’s faith.
You see… the Church believes all kinds of things about Jesus… all kinds of stuff… and at this time of the year Christians focus on two of those things… one… the announcement of Jesus’ birth and God coming into the world… in the flesh… as one of us… a birthday of birthdays causing the whole world to pause in response… now unto two thousand years with some of us stretching that birthday out each year… another 12 days… Whoah!
The other thing is the anticipation of Jesus’ return… a second coming… or as some say… his coming again… in power and might… the exact opposite of the first time… fragile… puny and in need of around the clock attention! In fact, the early church believed Jesus would return in their lifetime and prayed the words… ‘maranatha’… which translates from the Aramaic… “come, Lord, now!” or ‘come, Lord, soon!’ which was sort of an everyday attitude back then… unlike more recent decades and a century or two when people start talking about the end of the world and Jesus’ return to set straight all of the crazy, stupid, maniacal, world-ending threats humans have concocted over time… like real wars and cold wars and selfish land grab wars and big bomb wars for profit as military might makes some very rich at the cost of so many lives… innocent lives…
John the Baptizer was right… “one mightier than he was on the way…” so… let us pray… ‘come, Lord Jesus’… let us make a straight path to him… so that as Jesus remains God’s greatest gift to the world… we will all find blessing in his presence.
The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Gigee is a long-time resident of Pearland, having pastored four churches over the last four decades in Texas and Louisiana. Read more following Brian’s blog ‘murmurings’ at https://briangigee.wordpress.com/. Send comments and/or questions to godworks247365@gmail.com.
