Advent 3 - John the Baptist's Advent vision
I am preaching at Tavistock URC, where we are also marking the retirement of their minister, Roger Cornish.
Readings:
The prophet Zephaniah declares “Sing
aloud, you daughters of Jerusalem! Shout & exult!”
Saint Paul says “Rejoice in the Lord
always, again I say, rejoice!”
John the Baptist shouts “You brood
of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”.
It sounds at first hearing as if
John the Baptist wins the prize for ‘least Christmassy message of joy’ this
morning.
But I want to suggest that it is
John who has the message we need to hear.
I can’t be the only one who cringes
at the relentless advertising showing us the perfect family Christmas, with
permanently twinkling lights and roaring log fires and endless good cheer.
I cringe because I don’t want to
ignore all the realities of this world and shut myself away from the truth by
creating an alternative world of Christmas cheer where everything is merry and
bright. If Christmas hope is real, it has to do more than just give us an
escape for a few days – a holiday from our real lives – and offer us something
which changes forever the way we see our world and everything in it.
Two weeks ago I went to an Advent
Carol service in Winchester Cathedral. It was organized to celebrate the 70th
birthday of Christian Aid, and we lit candles and thanked God for the hope
Christian Aid has brought and still brings to the poorest of our world.
But we also marked the fact that it
was the beginning of Advent, and Rowan Williams – former Archbishop of
Canterbury, who is now the Chair of the Board of Trustees of Christian Aid –
preached, brilliantly.
He described the way in which we
need to look at Advent in two ways as being like having double vision. With the
one ‘eye’ we see the real state of the world, with all its sadness, messiness,
and pain; but with the other ‘eye’ we see the promise of God coming to us in
Jesus Christ, to show us what life in all its fulness looks like. The problem
with double vision is that it is disorientating, and the temptation is to shut
one eye so that the double vision stops: but as Christians we need to hold
together the two images, of reality and of hope. Learning to do that is what
Advent is for.
Perhaps in the words of Zephaniah
and St Paul we hear only one sort of vision – the vision of hope, held out to
people who already had a pretty clear vision of how difficult reality is. And
in the vision offered to us by our materialistic world we are too often
encouraged to shut the eye which might see suffering and hardship. But we need
to look at both hope and reality.
So let’s look with that sort of
Advent ‘double vision’ at what John the Baptist is saying.
“The axe is lying at the root of the
trees: every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown
into the fire”.
Change is coming, and it will be
real and drastic and hard. You cannot welcome God into your life in a
half-hearted way, you have to turn right round and change and receive a new way
of life from God.
The response from his listeners is
‘what, then should we do?’.
And John tells them to share with
others, not to cheat and not to exhort from them.
God is coming and it will not be
easy – the eye of Advent which looks at reality can see that the coming of
Christ is not meant to be sweet, or traditional, or cozy – the coming of Christ
will bring change and that change will be hard and drastic.
Yet the eye of Advent which looks at
hope can see that there are things that people can do to be ready for Christ.
They can repent, they can change, they can choose ways of life which are more
loving, and less selfish.
John has double vision: and the
people wonder if he is the Messiah. But John tells them he is not, there is
another coming: Jesus is the one who will come to bring God’s hope to them. The
passage we heard ends with that odd sentence “So.. he proclaimed the good news
to the people.”.
On the face of it what John says
does not sound very much like good news. But it is good news when someone is able to see both reality and hope and
not shut their eye to either, and John points clearly to Jesus, in whom hope
and reality are firmly brought together.
Jesus comes to show us how God
completely inhabits reality – born in human form, in simplicity, in poverty,
into a world of danger which will eventually send him to suffer and die. Jesus
sees, knows, lives reality. But Jesus also comes to bring hope – healing for the
broken, peace for the tortured soul, and the joy of life which is greater then
death.
What does Advent double vision mean
for us?
If you are worried about what will happen
to this church with Roger’s retirement, then you need the Advent vision of hope
and reality to see that change will come, but that God will be seen at work in
and through that change, as surely as he has been at work her ein the last 15
years.
If, like me, you get a bit jaded by
the blinding tinsel of a perfect Christmas, the Advent vision of hope and
reality reminds us that joy can come to us in the reality of a
less-than-perfect Christmas.
If you are frightened by the state
of the world this Christmas, the Advent vision of hope and reality can tell us
that God knows how awful life can be and yet God chooses to enter into it to be
with us in Jesus.
So I pray that you will have Advent
and Christmas double vision and know the reality of true hope and the hope of a
changed reality – in the name of the one who comes to us – Emmanuel.
Amen.
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