Third Sunday of Advent

This season of preparation for the great celebration of the birth of Christ, which the church throughout the world calls Advent, takes its name from the Latin word which means, “coming”, and refers to the coming of Christ, the Son of God, the Light of the World.  Church tradition has assigned two themes to this “coming”, the first when Jesus Christ was born on Christmas Day, and the “Second Coming”, when Christ will return at the end of the world as we know it. So we see during Advent a mixture of joy in the redemption that was won for us through Christ’s death and resurrection, with the sober awe of the judgement which confronts us when Christ returns at the end of the world. What we don’t know is when that “Second Coming” will happen, and that was the theme of the First Sunday in Advent Gospel reading, “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’. So we wait and wonder, and unless we do this during Advent, allow our hearts and minds to wait and wonder, we will find no real reason to celebrate what Christmas is really about, and fall into the trap, as so many do, of celebrating an empty festival which is all about spending as much as we can, even though we can’t afford it, and buying presents that are not really wanted, or needed.

For Christians, waiting and wondering are signs of a heart that lives, a heart that remains open to God. It enables us to prepare for a life where God acts, where the unexpected future is unfolded as if it were a mysterious treasure map, which if you think about God’s plan for our lives, that’s exactly what it is. When we accept the Advent invitation to wait and wonder, we find ourselves in good company with others who have tasted dread and delight, anticipation and wonder. Those prophets of old, who foretold the coming of Christ.

The principle character in the Gospel story last week and this, is John the Baptizer, whose message is a central theme of Advent.  It tells of the coming of Jesus, not as a baby in Bethlehem, but as the man born to become The Christ, The Messiah, the Saviour of the World. This may seem a little confusing for us as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ, but the story of John the Baptiser moves us on 30 years from our Christmas story to the very start of Christ’s earthly ministry.

In the days immediately before Jesus began His ministry, God sent His prophet John to prepare the way for his coming.  This wild and woolly prophet went out, and in his zeal, invaded the traditions of the religious people of his day.  Like a street corner preacher, he showed up at the River Jordan with a passion to speak God’s truth, preaching a baptism of Repentance, and announcing the coming of the Messiah, ‘I baptise you with water; but one  who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie his sandals.  He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire’.

At this time the Jewish people were sadly conscious that the voice of the prophets, which we read about in the Old Testament, like Isaiah and Elijah, were heard no more. The Jewish religion was centred on God speaking to them through prophets, very often the most unlikely people who were nothing to do with the Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, who ruled the temple at Jerusalem, and made the religious laws.  And so for over 400 years the voice of prophecy had been silent, but in John the Baptiser, the prophetic voice spoke again. What was his message? “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”. John was telling everyone who would listen, that what the prophets had promised for centuries was about to take place.  The Messiah, the long expected Son of God, was about to come amongst them, someone more powerful than John was coming to baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  In modern language John was telling them that Jesus is coming, and you better get ready for what he brings and what he reveals about God and about us.  That’s the message for us today, because he warns us that every tree that doesn’t bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

John calls us to self-examination and confession, demands that we look in the mirror at the reality of our lives, at our selfishness, greed, uncaring ways and at our sins that separate us from God, and to turn away from our old lives and turn to God.  What the Greek’s call Metanoia, which literally means a change of mind or heart. John also calls us to understand our faith.  Too often we fail to understand we belong to a religion of relationship, not a religion of law.  In a religion of law, like the Jewish religion, it’s sufficient to simply follow the rules. In a religion of relationship, in Christianity, we have to acknowledge our relationship with God and to engage in that relationship, just as God engages with us.  That is our essential commitment as Christians; by becoming Christian we commit to a relationship with God, with Jesus Christ that puts justice, mercy and the love of our neighbour at the forefront of our lives. We are received into our relationship with God through Christ, through Baptism, Confirmation and sustained week by week through the Eucharist.

So this week we should ask ourselves, can we let John the Baptiser invade our thoughts by hearing him call us to look deeply at what our lives would be without God, and to look at what part we have to play in this broken and troubled world.  Can we let John invade our complacency enough to make us think about the injustice, inequality, prejudice, ignorance, poverty, hunger, illiteracy, powerlessness and hopelessness that shape so many people’s lives in the world today? Can we let John invade our indifference by asking what part we play in these, and how we can play our part in changing the world. John invades our hearts with a word of hope. Repentance. If we examine ourselves, we can confess our failings, and having confessed our failings we can repent of them and ask for forgiveness. We can turn away from our old lives and embrace the new life offered to us by Christ. That’s John’s message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”. In recognising our failings, and repenting our weaknesses, we can build a new day.  Build with a firm resolve to choose God’s way, rather than our own.  Each of us must listen to this rough prophet, this John the Baptiser, who invades our pleasant Advent story.  We must listen to him in this season by preparing the way for the Lord. Preparing the way, so that God may renew us and change us into people who act and live by following his commands and loving his children; knowing that we are vulnerable and remembering that we are mortal can lead us to find a greater reliance on, and faith in God in new and deeper ways.  Recognizing our failings and complicity by commission or omission, in the ills of this world, can prompt us into helping in the healing of a broken world. John invades our manger scenes, making clear the power and meaning of a familiar story.  John invades our lives to make sure we know that the Jesus who is to be born into our lives again this Christmas, is coming to set us free from the materialistic and self-centred values of this world.  John invades our lives to make sure we know that Jesus is coming to save us, so we may become God’s children once again, and follow in his ways. Amen.