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Sunday 4th December, 2011 Second Sunday of Advent

Sentence
Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. For the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all peoples shall se it together, Luke 3:4

Collect
Merciful God, You sent Your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation; give us grace to heed their warnings and to forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer, Who live and reigns with You, and the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever. Amen

OLD TESTAMENT LESSON Isaiah 40:1-11

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling: “In the desert prepare the way for the LORD: make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
A voice says, “Cry out.” and I said, “What shall I cry?” “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the LORD blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.”
You, who bring good tidings to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, “Here is your God!” See, the LORD comes with power, and his arm rules for him. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.

PSALM 85:1-2 & 8-13

O Lord, You were gracious to Your land: You restored the fortunes of Jacob
You forgave the iniquity of Your people: and covered all their sin
I will hear what the Lord God will speak: for He will speak peace to His people, to His faithful ones whose hearts are turned to Him
Truly His salvation is near to those who fear Him: and His glory shall dwell in our land
Mercy and truth and met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall flourish out of the earth: and righteousness shall look down from heaven
The Lord will give us all that is good: and our land shall yield its plenty.
For righteousness shall go before Him: and tread the path before His feet.

EPISTLE 2 Peter 3:8 – 15a

Do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.
So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation,


GOSPEL Mark 1: 1 – 8

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in Isaiah the prophet: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way — a voice of one calling in the desert, Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’”
And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

© New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
Copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the
Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission. All rights reserved

NOTES ON THE READINGS …………….

Old Testament Lesson

Perhaps because of Handel’s Messiah, these are remarkably familiar words, but because they come from the Old Testament, the point of the prophet’s exposition is missed. Small wonder that Israel’s expectation of Messiah became rather distorted and out of shape. Is it because no one expects Biblical prose to make sense?
Israel was in exile in Babylon around 550BC, and felt itself to be in a hopeless situation. Homeland ruined, capital and temple destroyed, and, in contemporary thought, all that meant final defeat of God and His Chosen ones. In wide perspective, it meant (to all intents and purposes) that evil had triumphed over good, as it always seemed to do. There seemed to be neither future nor hope. However, the prophet Isaiah had managed to explore further than the popular perception, and pointed people to something they hardly could have imagined. That is, that Isaiah looked forward to rescue from this dead-end situation, a rescue brought about (in real time and in real life) by no one less than God Himself.
It strikes me that Isaiah reached this position, not by observing current political and historical trends, but by examining Israel’s history. For Israel the Exodus was formative to its understanding of itself and God. And there, God rescued His people from almost certain extinction. He had something more for Israel to do. So the prophet encouraged Israel-in-exile to see that there would be life after this exile, and that while human strength was limited and mortal, God’s power was something else again.
History itself proved Isaiah to be correct.

Psalm

Notice, please, the emphasis in this psalm on truth and righteousness (justice.) If there is one thing to which most of the OT prophets pointed and jumped up and down about, it was precisely that. Never, never lose sight of that emphasis.

Epistle

It is a sad and strange thing that modern Christians often are unable to see beyond the literal, and so miss or misunderstand so much of Biblical comment. There are a couple of very powerful and significant things to notice in this passage. The first is Peter’s reference to the patience of God. If God operated the way humans tend to do, then He would have wiped out everyone who failed the test of truth. It would be the Flood visited for the final time. Or those 12 legions of angels would have had a field day just before the crucifixion. So why did He not? Because (a) that would have multiplied the evil [think that through if you dare!] and (b) it would have given perpetrators no opportunity to realize what they had done, and repent from it. Please read that again.
The second is just as important. When Peter (and other apocalyptic writers) wrote about suns and moons falling and heavens disappearing with a roar, they were not asking you to read them literally. Here is poetic (more than poetic, apocalyptic!) stuff, which translates better if you understand this as referring to the collapse of a culture, community or civilisation. Peter was writing about the certain outcome for a culture or country that operates on lies and falsehoods and injustices. It may take a while, but collapse will come, as John also makes very clear in his Revelation. Once again we have the almost sci-fi ‘before its time’ recognition of the great human battles between truth and falsehood. The People of God need to be aware, and to be on the side of truth.


GOSPEL

You may not have been aware of the Exodus/Exile connection referred to above in the OT Lesson section. But the Biblical writers like St. Mark certainly were. The beginning of the Gospel was the fresh and most significant rescue by God of His people. Notice the significance of the connection that Mark made with Isaiah 40 and Exodus. In other words it is important to catch sight of the entire work of God towards humanity to understand properly whatever He does.
Mind you, I think you – personally - may have had difficulty coping with someone as one-eyed as the Baptist. His message tended to be quite unequivocal, which is probably why later the Baptist was unsure whether his Cousin was the real McCoy or not. John expected a very rough outcome for people refusing the truth. Jesus’ approach would have seemed somewhat ineffective as far as John was concerned – yet it was far more God-like!!!.

NOTES FOR A SERMON

It was almost 50 years ago, when I was in Theological College training for the priesthood, and experiencing twice-daily services in the Chapel. Monday mornings was always the time when staff members preached, and I recall vividly the day when the Vice principal, later to be Archbishop of Sydney, preached on the 10th and 11th verses of today’s Psalm.
Mercy and truth and met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall flourish out of the land, and justice shall look down from heaven.

I do not remember all that Don Robinson said that day, but he certainly made me look very much closer at the nature of the Faith and of the Gospel. Spend some time, will you, pondering the nature of a world here if those particular aspects of life did flourish, and think of all the differences that would be made to relationships. This difference would be most noticeable in family relationships, in civic ones, national ones and most particularly, international ones.
It would have been almost 40 years afterwards that I was embroiled in a discussion with an avowed and very heated atheist, who was denouncing the pointlessness and purposelessness of a religion he despised. He had gone to an expensive Anglican College, so he knew it all, of course. After his tirade about useless religion, I asked him what aspects of life he was concerned about. He was a medical man of quite some distinction, so he was not short of education, articulation, …. or cash. He was no angel, which perhaps explained something of his anger at what he thought was narrow and limiting.
His answer did not surprise me, but my response did unsettle him! What that man saw as hugely important in life were the issues of justice, integrity and truth. And he thumped the table as he listed those items. When I drew his attention to the fact that we were on the same side, it almost took his breath away. The same thing has done likewise with other rather likeable atheists I have encountered over the years.

When religious people, and Christians among them, manage to avoid the real issues of life and relationships and history, that they lose credibility , with the world at large., and so does their gospel! If that is where you are, may I be rude enough to suggest that you spend some time reading the OT prophets, especially the Minor Prophets – if only because they are shorter and quicker to absorb.

Whenever the Season of Advent returns annually, I will often ask people to stop and see where the emphasis lies. It lies in the theme of the Lord Who comes. However, we often put on our blinkers and look backwards to the Lord Who came 2,000 years ago, or forwards to the Lord Who will come again, at the Parousia. When we are as myopic as that, we miss the real and present emphasis on the Lord Who comes constantly into THE RIGHT HERE AND NOW, with the challenge to respond to situations or perhaps to challenge the status quo with a Gospel reaction to whatever the challenge.

I think that poor atheist had been hoist on the petard of his own propaganda about the Faith. To be fair to him, there remain quite some Christians who would demand a strong obedience to their narrow perceptions. This certainly seems to be a period, historically, of the rise of fundamentalism in all sorts of directions, and that is profoundly sad and destructive to the Gospel. And to people! It is a defensive approach, and defensiveness tends to be a singularly unappealing thing anyhow, very damaging and self-defeating.
So the question is when is this Lord coming, and how does He come, in the right here-and-now. And the answer tends to be a surprising one, for it has become fashionable to think either that God no longer exists, or that He exists only in the fantasy of some people’s minds or memories, and that the whole business can be consigned to the dead pages of the past. Dead Gods cannot be met in the present, and certainly not in the real world and in real time. Or so the theory goes

My experience on this subject may well be somewhat limited, but I find that, in all sorts of experiences and situations in life, this Lord comes, and presents me with an opportunity, or a challenge, or even sometimes an enigma. This ‘advent’ may come in the form of someone in difficulty, needing help of some sort. It may be a chance encounter, where the challenge is to respond honestly and Christianly. It may come in the form of deeply serious illness on myself or someone else, with the enormous question of ‘where does this fit with a God supposed to be loving?’
One of the factors I find almost constant in these advents, is that there is no fuss or bother, no wide-screen, bold advertising let the world know thing. It is usually very low-key, so that I tend to be the only one even vaguely aware of the fact that anything is going on at all. It is often ‘to the least of these my brethren’ – and only that brother or sister and I are even aware of the challenge.

On the other hand, it may be something on a wider canvas that calls for me to do some solid thinking through. I remember, for instance, when the pill first became available. It was a long time ago now, and its genesis raised the ire and antagonism of a huge range of Christian people. It is still anathema for the Catholic Church ….. though not of many of its adherents. Those days (late 1960s) we used to have adult fellowship groups on Friday nights once a month, and those adults asked what was my attitude. Did I think that it offered people the chance to be promiscuous? The answer to that was, yes it does, but then anything in life has both its advantages and dis-advantages. At that time, world population was exploding and it seemed to me that, right at the time such a crisis was looming, in God’s good time, there was an answer, somewhat simple and effective. The pill is like so much else in life: when things are used truly and properly, there can be enormous benefits which I would see as God-given. But anything, anything, in life can be misused, abused, treated with disdain – and it has to be said that the way a person deals with things says little about the good or bad of the thing concerned, but does say a great deal about the integrity of the person choosing And is not that the real issue?

So what I am trying to emphasise in this short but pointed address, this: that if we see in Advent only the celebration of looking way, way backwards to the Lord Who has come (at Bethlehem) --- or looking way, way forward to the Lord Who is coming again, then we will be spending time in never-never land, and missing sight of the Lord Who comes to us constantly, to challenge us to follow Him.