Sermon Advent 2, 2024

I have always been tempted to begin a sermon a la John the Baptist!

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!!!”                     

John didn’t mince words and I kinda love him for it! But those words are not what we need to hear right now, no matter how fun they may be to shout out.  What I am hearing in this congregation is a discussion about why Advent matters.  Why we shut out Christmas fun and do this Advent thing.

As we know Advent is more than calendars of chocolate, Advent is a distinctly counter cultural experience.  It is a wonderfully unique season that sets us apart from the world at large.  After all, “Christmas” in the cultural sense started in some stores the second the Halloween sales were over.  The commercialism and push for sales records being the main focus for most of what we see and hear.

The church gets lost in our culture; we exist in the eyes of the world around us as more stereotype than anything else.    Even for many church goers; active faith doesn’t extend beyond Sunday morning.   By which I mean that how we live, on a day by day basis is not defined by what we believe, or at least not enough that people notice.

When we read our gospel today…we read of John the Baptist.  Now he was a man who stuck out in a crowd.  I don’t think anyone was in any doubt about what he believed!!!  He literally shouted his faith from the rooftops, or at least from the river sides.   We, as good Anglicans, find this a little …much. 

 

 

However, John was following an ancient type, an ancient tradition…the look, attitude and zealous faith of a prophet from old.   Speaking truth to power and taking his lumps when they came.  He lived his life apart from culture and polite society, living out his zealous faith every day.

John was in the world and yet apart from it.  He lived amidst the people and cultures of the near east, but like many of his Jewish contemporaries he lived a life in defiance of the culture at large.  The Jewish people under the Roman Empire were given the title of a permitted religion which included several important exemptions from Roman Law.  The most important of which was, unlike the majority of the empire, Jewish people did not have to worship the Emperor as a God.  Their food laws, rituals and temple requirements also set the Jewish people apart from their culture.  This was, in turn, tolerated and persecuted depending on who was in charge, but regardless of the time or place the Jews were a people who lived primarily in faith, and secondarily in the culture of the world around them.

The main reason for this is because of the unique relationship Jewish people understood that they had with God; a relationship which through Christ we now share.  A relationship that the people of God took seriously enough, that when a prophet came among them, such as Isaiah, such as John.  They listened!  They repented and they changed their ways back to lawful obedience and counter cultural, God centered living.  But sometimes it took time…

Long, long ago the people of Israel had been courting other God’s and cultures, their leadership straying from trusting God to trusting the powerful nations that were around them.  Trying to fix their political situations through human power and politics. At that time the prophet Isaiah called them back to God saying.

“A voice says, ‘Cry out!’
   And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
All people are grass,
   their constancy is like the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades,
   when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
   surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades;
   but the word of our God will stand for ever.”

Isaiah reminds us that the world around us is temporary, power and politics come and go, but God remains and it is with God we should put our trust.

Therefore Isaiah also said “3 A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
   make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be lifted up,
   and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
   and the rough places a plain.
5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
   and all people shall see it together,
   for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’”

 

The people of Isaiah’s time were awaiting the Advent of God among them, the coming of the King and of righteous leadership as promised.  In their impatience they fell back on the default of the culture; looking towards human power and authority.

The Prophet Jeremiah delt with the same thing.  Baruch was the secretary of Jeremiah and we read from Baruch today.  Encouraging the exiles in Babylon to wait on the Lord, who will bring them home.  The Advent of the Lord’s coming to a people in captivity.

We too live in a time of anticipation, of the Second Advent of Christ.  In our time and place the world is just as caught up in power and politics as ever, and we like those who preceded us, need to heed the prophets and be a people who live differently.

 

Not clinging to what withers and fades, but to what is eternal.  We await the Advent of Christ eternal and as we wait we are to live as though Christ’s coming is imminent.  Which is certainly the attitude that John brought to his ministry, the zeal and anticipation of Christ’s imminent arrival.

John believed that the culture and politics that were so important in the world around him hindered Christ’s advent, impaired God’s people from being open to receiving God among them.  Therefore, they needed to repent, change and live out the faith that they inherited.  You cannot simply sit on your laurels saying

“we have Abraham as our ancestor.” “or “ We can do as we like because Christ will forgive us”.  We are called to be a people who are active in faith.  Like those Isaiah prophesied to…a people of faith in a world based power and politics.

“‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
   make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be lifted up,
   and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
   and the rough places a plain.
5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
   and all people shall see it together,
   for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’”

 

In the wilderness of the world around us, and the wilderness of our internal struggles of faith, we are called to clear a path for God.  To shovel out the snow, salt the ice and unlock the door.  We are called to repent, to change our attitudes, our dependence on the world around us and turn to God.  We are to find those areas of deep darkness, in the world and our selves, and bring them up to the light.  To see in the plain light of day all that we would shame facedly hide.

All the pride and self righteousness, all our privilege and social standing …the mountains on which we place ourselves and the way we aggrandize those in the world around us; these we need to level out.  So that, all which is low and that which high is levelled made straight, and the path to our hearts is clear for God.

The word Advent means arrival.  It is a Greek work that comes from the same root as the word we use for Spirit.  Christ coming, the Advent of the Spirit filled God is still forthcoming, but the immediacy that John the Baptism had seemed to have faded.

However, it is at this exact time, a time when it seems like God is no longer among us that the prophets are needed and their words have the most impact.  Repent and live your lives as baptised, faith filled Christians.

The world is grass, the Word of the Lord is eternal.  We are a people who live with a difference, who live with the assurance of Christ’s advent.  It is time to prepare for his arrival…each day it is time.  To create in this broken and fear filled world straight and safe pathways for God, to bring to light that which is in shadow and to raise up that which the world casts down.  To humble the exalted and knock the powerful and corrupt off their pillars .

The prophets have spoken time and again, and Advent is a time to hear them anew.

To be a people set apart from the desires and goals of this world and culture and to focus on being a Christ like people, as we await the Advent of our Lord and God.

We may not be a “brood of vipers”, but we are still a people in need of self reflection and repentance.  As we continue through Advent, let us focus on how to reflect our faith in our day to day lives.  Raising the valley and leveling mountains, so we can pave a smooth path for Christ in our lives.   Come, Lord Jesus Come.  Amen.