Second Sunday of Advent

December 9, 2007

Isaiah 11:1-10

Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Romans 15:4-13

Matthew 3:1-12

           Two Sundays ago, on the last Sunday in Pentecost, we celebrated Christ the King Sunday.  It was a time to honor the king of love and peace, the king of justice and righteousness, the king of sorrow and humility; the king who showed us by his life on this earth everything a king is not on this earth.  We sent him on to heaven so that we might prepare for his coming to us again at Christmas.  And so, last Sunday, we began our liturgical season of Advent.  A four-week period of time for us to remember what it is like to be without Jesus in our world.  Last Sunday, on our first Sunday of Advent, we grappled with issues around end time, when Christ will come into the world again, once and for all.   In the midst of darkness and death we began our period of waiting and watching and anticipating his coming.  We began in the hope and the promise that, indeed, he will come to us again. 

              This second Sunday of Advent gives us reason to believe.  Today’s scripture lessons begin to move us out of the darkness and despair of end time prophecy toward the Light our scriptures promised last week.  Light enough to give us a vision of God’s kingdom.  A vision which fosters hope and longing for a world much like the peaceable kingdom we read about in Isaiah’s famous passage of scripture.   We captured that vision in the hope and promise of John the Baptist’s claim that one is coming after him who is more powerful than he.  One who baptizes, not with water, but with the fire of the Holy Spirit.  One whose sandals John is not worthy to carry.  We come to the second Sunday of Advent ready to receive the psalmist’s vision of a righteous king.  The king who God will send into our life and our hearts “like rain upon a mowed field, like showers that water the earth.”   Lastly, in our Epistle lesson, Paul greets us on this second Sunday in Advent to encourage us to be steadfast in the hope of scripture; in the promise that peace and harmony are possible for those who wait his coming in glory.

              Yes, we are in a very different place this Sunday as we wait and anticipate the Lord’s coming to us again.   Our scriptures are calling us remember who we are as God’s people.  They are calling us to remember what kind of world is possible when God is present with us.  Our scriptures are leading us to incarnation.  A place where we can see and hear and touch God.  Today our scriptures are beginning to move us to the hope and promise of the manger.  They are inviting us to prepare for what we will find there.  Because one thing is for certain, if we are not prepared for what we find, we are bound to be disappointed.  If we journey to the manger with our limited human expectations of the child God sends to us then we will never encounter the gift God hopes we will receive.

              I can imagine the disappointment of someone like Isaiah who truly believed that that the one who would come out from the stump of Jesse, the branch which would grow out of his roots, would bring peace to God’s kingdom on this earth.  Isaiah would be very disappointed because there is little peace on this earth.  Lions still devour lambs, both in the world of animals and human beings.   From heads of state to heads of households, people do not trust each other.  We will not risk lying down together to share in the kind of peace and mutual enjoyment which is possible by the things we hold in common.   And still, during every Advent, we prepare to welcome the Prince of Peace who will come to us at Christmas.

              I can imagine the disappointment of someone like the psalmist who believes God’s Son will bring God’s righteousness to the world.  This Son who will defend the needy, rescue the poor and bring prosperity to his people.  What a disappointment to people like us who live in a world where there has never been more disparity between wealth and poverty.   A world where more and more people are in need of basic goods and services—like food, clothing, shelter and health care.  If you are like me you have received many mailings and phone calls asking for money to support the needs of people everywhere.  Our food pantry is feeding more people than ever, and I receive more and more calls to ask if St. George’s can help make a rent so someone will not become homeless, or a utility bill so someone will not suffer the darkness or the cold.   The abundance the psalmist believes will come with the rule of a righteous king—well that abundance clearly belongs only to a few in our world, and righteousness does not flourish.  And yet, every Advent, we prepare ourselves to receive into our world the King of Justice and Righteousness who offers us life abundant.

              And what about Paul’s disappointment.  What would Paul be writing to any of his churches today?  I imagine Paul would be writing the same letter to us.  Paul would likely register his disappointment in things that have not changed since his efforts to guide the people of his church in Rome to live after the example of Jesus.  He would be dismayed by the ways the church does not model God’s purposes for redemption.  The church is certainly not a model of harmony in the world.  The church does not glorify God with one voice.  In fact, churches can be downright divisive.  They are more inclined to see each other by their differences than by what they share in common.  And our own Episcopal Church models how divisive we can be from within our own denominations.   We set ourselves apart from believers who are not like us, even other Episcopalians.  Even people like Mormons and Muslims and Jews, all of whom worship the one and same God.  The divisive issues of our day have  changed from circumcision in Paul’s church to conflicting articles of faith; dogmas which lay down laws and rules which judge people to be in or out of a worship community.  No, the Church has not come to learn or to lead the world in harmony and peace.  Yet, once again, during this season of Advent we prepare to welcome our welcoming and inclusive Prince of Peace.

              Then there is John the Baptist.  I am inclined to believe John might be the most disappointed of all with Jesus.  Perhaps because John had the most single-minded and fundamental expectation of Jesus.  John’s whole life and ministry was centered in repentance; in cleansing Jews and converts to Judaism alike with the water of baptism for the purpose of turning their lives away from sin and into righteousness.  In John’s mind and in John’s world people were either sinners who were damned, or the righteous who were saved.  Nothing you could claim for your life, like your ancestry or your good deeds could save could from your sin.  Only true repentance.  And if you did not bear fruit worthy of repentance, if your life was not a model of change and righteousness, then you were destined to be consumed by God’s wrath.  Where John had the misguided belief that the One who was coming after him was coming to be the ultimate judge of who would be saved and who would be damned.  A judge who would wield the winnowing fork in this granary we call earth.  He would separate the sinful from the righteous by shoveling the good wheat into the granary and the bad chaff into an all consuming fire.  But how disappointed John must have been to realize that Jesus was not about to take up is agenda.  Jesus would not come into the world to condemn sinners.  He would come to save them.  Today, on this second Sunday in Advent, we prepare ourselves for the One who baptizes us in the name of the Holy Spirit, who empowers us to live a life worthy of the God who created us and redeemed for his good purposes in creation.

              Last week, our first Sunday of Advent invited us to be in the darkness and ponder the possibility for the Light which would come to us.  It was a time to be still and to reflect on darkness and light.  A time to consider what the Light might reveal to us, what the Light might reveal about us, and how the Light might change us if we were willing to walk in it.  This Sunday we are invited to start moving toward that Light.  The Light which invites us to repent of all that would keep us living in the darkness of our sin.  The kind of repentance modern theologian Frederick Buechner calls “coming to our senses.”  The light which helps us come to our senses about the things we must put aside or throw out of our life so that we might fill our life with the things of God.  We need to put aside our limited and self-serving expectations of who Jesus is and why he came into the world.  We need to let the Light speak for himself.  As we journey to the manger we need to discard the useless and damaging religious agendas and church teachings which do not reflect the Light of Jesus to our world.  We need also to empty ourselves of all the useless and damaging stuff of this world which keeps us from receiving the Light. 

           God invites us to litter the road to his manger with such useless and damaging baggage because he knows that if we don’t, we will arrive at the manger disappointed or resisting what we find there.  And that will limit our ability to receive God’s grace.   Without God’s grace we limit the possibilities for living our life in the faith and trust shown to us in Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom; we limit the kinds and abundance of blessing we find in our psalm; we limit the peace and harmony of Paul’s epistle, and we limit the possibilities for the good that we can become and the good we can bring to a world by our baptism into the body of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.  But God does not want us to live life by our limitations.  That is why he sent his Son into the world.  So that we might be liberated from all that would keep us from living into the fullness of the life God is calling us to live.   

              If the light that is inviting us to the manger reveals anything to us this second Sunday of Advent, it reveals to us our self-imposed and other-imposed limitations for living in this world.  As we journey to the manger, we have a choice; we can hang on to our baggage, baggage which keeps us living in fear of what we might find at that manger, and resistance to the ways that might change us.  We can hang on to all the fears instilled in us by the prejudices we learn from our families, friends and communities.  We can remain victims of the fears which keep us slaves to unjust laws and divisive rules and the inequities of our religious and social and economic institutions.  We can nurture the fears which cause us to believe the propaganda of our governments and the uncritical messages of our media.  We can live by the any or all of the limitations of this world which enslave us in darkness and fear.  Or we can live in the light and love of the gospel.  The good news which liberates us to live our lives differently in this world, by the fruits of our repentance. 

           We will find the good news in the light of the manger.  The light which can bring us to our senses.  To live a life which reflects the good news of that manger in all that we are and all that we do in the living of it.