A Sermon preached on Sunday, December 5, 2021 at St. Augustine’s and St. Christoph
Baruch 5:1-9, Philippians 1:3-11, Luke 3:1-6
Advent is the beginning of the Church Year and yet, initially at least, the readings we are given seem to be more about the end, than the beginning! Last week we heard a very apocalyptic passage from Luke’s Gospel and Paul had the Thessalonians looking forward to the end times and the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. This week Paul is still pointing the recipients of his letter to the Philippians towards the day of Jesus Christ, but in the readings from Baruch and Luke we begin to have a glimpse of a new light to come, of new beginnings.
The book of Baruch is set in the time of Israel’s exile in Jerusalem and in the section that we just heard, the prophet is looking forward to the glorious return of his people from Babylon to Jerusalem. he imagines them taking the shortest and quickest route possible, through the desert, but on a level path, made by the mountains and hills having been made low and the valleys filled in and shaded by trees – it’s a triumphal avenue, a metaphorical red carpet laid down by God. God is the actor: “God will bring them back, God has ordered, and God will lead Israel with joy. Now that is a beautiful prophecy and Baruch is definitely someone, I would consider inviting to a dinner party.
Less so perhaps John the Baptist. Luke doesn’t tell us what he usually wears – but from the other Gospel writers we know of clothes of camel's hair. We also don’t get to hear what John has to say this week, that’s next week’ gospel reading, and I won’t say much about that, as Dorothee will be preaching, and I don’t want to steal her themes. Suffice to say, John is nowhere near as cheerful and upbeat as Baruch!
Instead, John is one of the prophets referred to in today’s, one of God’s messengers the prophets, sent to “preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation.” Poet Malcolm Guite calls John the Baptist “Least of the new and greatest of the old,[1]” summarising his transitional role as the last of the great prophets standing in the Old Testament tradition, who is pointing towards something new, and greater than himself. Luke introduces him with the words of the prophet Isaiah (40:3-5) as the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, called to prepare the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight. This is also different to Baruch, as it is not God who is called to make the paths straight by filling valleys and lowering hills, but John, God’s messenger!
This does not mean that poor John is being sent out into the desert with a spade and a bucket to do some spectacular landscape gardening. The appeal to the levelling is a call to remove the moral and ethical obstacles to God's arrival and there are many. The references to the Emperor Tiberius, to Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, Annas, and Caiaphas are not just to give us the historical context, though they do allow us to date John’s appearance very exactly to AD 28 -29. The stand for a background of repression and misery, for all that is crooked and broken in John’s world and needs straightening. We will meet many of these names later in the Gospel as men (all men) implicated in both John’s and Jesus’ death. They are a personified catalogue of those human weaknesses and excesses that need to be turned away from.
John’s tools for his levelling project are his prophetic voice and the “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” that he proclaims. He calls on Israel to turn back, to turn from evil, and to turn towards God. He calls both the nation and the people to radical change. One of his predecessors, Malachi (3:7) had given Israel a message from God generations ago: “Return to me, and I will return to you.” John knows that God has returned in the one he is announcing, the one he is preparing the way for: Jesus Christ. Jesus will model how we should live, in accordance with his commandment to love God and our neighbour, and to serve, rather than be served.
John’s call still echoes down the centuries and should resonate with us today. Listening to John and the prophets who went before him will help us live the words of God in our own time, as they endeavoured to do in theirs. Across the generations, we share in the call to return to God, to care for the vulnerable, to restore relationship with one another. I could provide you with a long list of names of world leaders who are today’s personified catalogue of the human weaknesses and excesses that need to be turned away from. And we don’t just have to look to China or Russia or the Philippines …. we have moral failings here in Europe too. Just last week, our bishop issued a call to action after the recent deaths in the English Channel. He wrote:
“It is outrageous that these deaths should have occurred—or more accurately, that they were permitted by those who had both the power and the capability to stop them from happening. …. It is (also) difficult to comprehend governments standing in the way of charitable agencies seeking only to provide for the basic humanitarian needs of those who are suffering, exposed, and starving.”[2]
I am also alarmed by the Polish government’s refusal to allow journalists to witness and aid agencies to help those currently trapped at the Polish/Belarussian border. None of these policies and decision are consistent with the principle of universal human rights, and certainly not with the Christian law of love that so many of these leaders claim to be defending. And we are complicit if don’t raise our voices and if we do not “act in any way consistent with our beliefs and commitments” if called upon and allowed to assist.
John proclaims a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” to “prepare the way of the Lord.” We have been baptised, and when we were baptised, we made – or promises were made for us – to renounce and turn from all that is evil and instead to turn to Jesus Christ, to trust in him, and to follow and obey him. Thankfully we also have the second part of John’s proclamation – the forgiveness of sins – because as fallible human beings we are not always able to keep our promises. The offer of forgiveness means that there is always the opportunity of a fresh start and a new beginning when we go wrong, if we acknowledge our mistakes, and our complicity, and our own self-focus, and try to change.
Advent is about both endings and beginnings. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end,” Jesus says in the Book of Revelation (22:13) What sometimes seems to be an end or a failure - like Jerusalem’s destruction and Israel’s exile or like a death on a cross or the death and suffering of vulnerable refugees – can through faith and action become a new beginning. In Christ God renewed God’s relationship with humanity so that “all flesh” all humanity “shall see the salvation of God.” For in God nothing and no one is lost, and nothing is in vain, and there is no end. Amen.
