Advent 3 - John the Baptist's "double vision"
Philippians 4: 4-7, Luke 3: 7-18
Well, it’s been quite a week – Brexit &
politics & the Strictly final - and Christmas just over a week away.
I wonder how you feel about John the
Baptist’s ‘least Christmassy message of joy’ from the gospel reading.
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?”.
But I want to suggest that it is John who
has the message we need to hear. The world is
a mess, personally, politically, environmentally, and instead of retreating
into an alternative world of Christmas cheer where everything is merry and
bright or ignoring the reality of the world and shutting ourselves away, we
need real Christmas hope - something
which changes forever the way we see our world and everything in it.
A few years 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 St Paul we hear
only one sort of vision – the vision of hope and joy, 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 aim
for the ‘perfect Christmas’ and 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 with all its mess. 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 you next year – health, family, money - whatever it is that is worrying you
- 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.
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.
God with us.
Amen.
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