Advent 3 - God is at work.
Matthew 11: 2-11, James 5: 7-10
How great it
is to stand on the brink of a great new chapter for our world. A new start, a
new government, a time of peace and prosperity and goodness for all people.
Not a
reference to Thursday’s General Election result – but a reflection of what our
Bible readings have to say about the kingdom of God.
However we
feel about the new government, we can all agree that through the human
decisions that are made at Westminster we want to see a country – even a world
– where God’s will is done, where the values of the kingdom are honoured, where
God is in charge, for the good of all God’s children.
But how do
we know what God’s kingdom looks like, and how do we become part of it?
The passage
we heard from Matthew comes from a time right at the start of Jesus’ ministry,
when John the Baptist, who has been put into prison, is wondering about God’s
kingdom .
Specifically,
John asks whether Jesus is here to bring in God’s kingdom. “Are you the one
who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
The answer
Jesus gives - to John, through his
messengers, and to the crowd around is all about looking.
1. What do you see?
“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the
poor have good news brought to them.”
The first thing to do if we want God in
charge of our world is to look around for those places and those people in whom
God’s good work is being done. Where lives are better, fuller, healed – God is
there. And did you notice that the blind will see – one sign of the kingdom is
that more & more people will see it as it grows and as people flourish.
I’m not suggesting we ignore the difficult
things in our world – but I am suggesting that we should be the first to notice
the good things, and be ready to point out to others that God is at work to
bring healing, hope and joy.
I love Isaac Watts’ hymn with which we will
end our worship today ‘Joy to the world’ – especially the verse ‘No more let
thorns infest the ground or sin and sorrow grow’. The kingdom is like a garden:
we need to look and root out the weeds, but we also need to look for the fresh
growth of good plants and encourage them.
2. What did you expect?
Back in
Matthew’s gospel - Jesus then turns his attention to the crowds around him
“What did you go out into the wilderness to
look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes?
Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out
to see? A prophet? Yes, and more than a prophet..”.
Recognising signs of God’s kingdom involves
recognising our expectations of the kingdom. The people of Jesus’ day went out
to listen to John the Baptist because they recognised that, like an Old
Testament prophet, what he was saying was a message from God. That message
wasn’t an easy message, nor did it come from a place of privilege or earthly power,
but it came with the conviction that God was with his people, out there in the
desert.
What do we expect to see when we look for signs of God’s kingdom? Surely
something of God’s peace, justice, joy, healing. But where should we look? Not
just in any royal palace, nor even in the palace of Westminster, but anywhere
where God’s promises are fulfilled.
In my Christmas letter to ministers of the
synod, I mentioned some unexpected Good
News, delivered this December by a group of artists.
The four artists
nominated for the 2019 Turner Prize will share this year's award after urging
the judges not to choose any of them as a single winner.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Tai
Shani and Oscar Murillo got together to write to the prestigious prize's panel.
They said they wanted to make a "collective statement" at a time when
there was "already so much that divides and isolates people and
communities".
The BBC, reporting this, have suggested
that ‘Maybe annual awards … are reaching their sell-by date: an anachronism
from a bygone binary age of winners and losers.’
Maybe for us, as we look for the Good News
of the kingdom, we will find that with the birth of Jesus Christ, God with us,
God has also declared an end to the
bygone binary age of losers and winners.
The figures collected around our Christmas
crib show us the endless reach of God’s inclusive grace – the young and
powerless are there, with the old and faithful; foreigners and outcasts;
high-born and lowly; the desperate and the seeking ones; even the beasts of the
fields and those who tend them. All are drawn together by angels, star and
circumstance, and at the very centre, God made flesh. The kingdom of God is
here.
Sometimes we see signs of God’s kingdom
where we least expect them.
3.
See – I am sending my messenger
Jesus says of John the Baptist:
“This is the one about whom it is written,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of
you,
who will prepare your way before you.’
Truly I tell you, among those born of women
no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom
of heaven is greater than he.”
Jesus tells the crowd around him to keep
looking, keep watching, keep waiting for the ever-unfolding signs of God’s
kingdom.
If the main message of Jesus is to look and
see – then the letter from James mainly tells us to be patient (no less than 4
times in that short section).
However pleased some of us may be by the
make up of our new government, we know this is not yet the kingdom of God fully
come on earth.
But be patient, people of God, and know
that God’s purposes will unfold - that
God will one day bring total peace, security, wholeness, and joy to his
creation.
And in the meantime, prepare to celebrate
the coming of Jesus, once and for all, as the child of Bethlehem.
So sing with the angels ‘The Lord is come!
Alleluia’.
Amen.
Comments