RonBlog

Sunday 11th December, 2011 Third Sunday in Advent

Sentence
Bind up the broken-hearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners, proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, the day of vengeance of our God. Isaiah 61:1-2

Collect
Eternal God, You sent John the Baptist to prepare the way for the coming of Your Son; grant us wisdom to see Your purpose and openness to hear Your will, that we too may prepare for Christ Who is coming in power and glory, to establish His rule of peace and justice, through Jesus Christ our Judge and Redeemer, One God, for ever and ever. Amen

OLD TESTAMENT LESSON Isaiah 61:1-4 & 8 – 11

The Spirit of the LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendour. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.
For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery and iniquity. In my faithfulness I will reward them and make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants will be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the LORD has blessed.
I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.

FOR THE PSALM The Song of Mary

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord: my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour
Who has looked with favour on His lowly servant: from this day all generations will call me blessed
The Almighty has done great things for me: and holy is His name
God has mercy on those who fear Him: from generation to generation
The Lord has shown strength with His arm: and scattered the proud in their conceit
Casting down the mighty from their thrones: and lifting up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things: and sent the rich away empty
He has come to the aid of His servant Israel: to remember His promise of mercy
The promise made to our forebears: to Abraham and his children for ever.

EPISTLE 1 Thessalonians 5:12 – 28

Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, and be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.
Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it. Brothers, pray for us. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I charge you before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.


GOSPEL John 1: 6 – 8 and 19 – 28

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

Now this was John’s testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Christ.” They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.” Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’” Now some Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”
This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

© 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

One of the things about Christians that amazes me constantly is our failure to take notice of the very Scriptures we hold so very dear. Whilst most people are happy to delight in this, amongst others, of the Servant Songs of Isaiah, not very many are prepared to travel the journey that both Isaiah and Jesus put in front of us. For this servant song is not only in anticipation of Christ, but is a statement of how the People of God themselves need to operate. And the failure in that is enormous.

I do not need to spell out the implications for those of us here and now. Isaiah in his wonderings and musings as to what God was doing with Israel in his day remain valid and demanding for our own day. Whilst none of us can even begin to come into the same category as Jesus, in terms of our capability, we all are called into the imitatio Christi when it comes to how we behave and operate as servants of all. Far too often Christians are prostituted into what I would call Adamic modes of leadership, being like gods, being control freaks or bulldozers, which result in the complete downfall of what the Church is on about. I dare you to think all this through. The Church and its people have much to answer for in their refusal to follow their own truths.

Psalm

Again, I suspect that it is true how we Christians become familiar with something Biblical, like this Magnificat as we used to call it in Evening Prayer, and very largely miss the point! Certainly we recognize that this Song of Mary tells us a lot of how she tended to see her life as Mother of our Lord, but there it stops. In parts of the Church, Mary is lionised (if that can be done to a woman!) and elevated to something halfway between human and divine, which is precisely the opposite direction to that which this canticle takes us. Just as in the OT reading, this is a song about servanthood, both in Mary and in the God Who called her. It is a song about reversal of expectations, where the rich are (to be) reduced and the humble exalted. It is not about reversal per se, for that, like revolutions in the political sense, do nothing but reverse the roles of persecutor and persecuted, and nothing else changes. It is about the celebration of servanthood as the most beneficial way to go.

Epistle

How is that first verse in the Epistle today as an encouragement in exactly the opposite direction of the ‘world’ today! In fact the atmosphere of this reading looks almost too passé to be contemplated. However, that is nothing other than a clear and vivid statement as to how far our present world has moved from a modus operandi that values each one of us in all our differences. These readings are becoming somewhat disturbing, are they not? And that is the point of Advent (and Christianity) anyhow. Or, to put it in other words, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Gospel
John the Baptist! Nutcase or disturber? Sometimes there is not a lot to choose between the two! It is a strange and terrible thing to see people of whatever race or culture trying to find ways to sidestep realities in life. We call it ‘spin’ these days, knowing we are left with the enormous task of sifting truth from baloney. However we all tend to do it, as we defend ourselves – especially if that defence is designed to protect us from heading in a direction unwelcome.

The challenge to John from the religious elite of Jerusalem was nothing other than diversionary tactics to free them from having to take any notice of this man’s rantings. They were certain that it was invalid because it had no connection with their control and leadership of nation and faith. And it was that control and leadership they were determined to maintain in spite of any real or imagined threat from outside. They saw strength in control, and their control in particular.

And Christians still do this blasphemous thing to each other ………..

NOTES FOR A SERMON

I may have told you this story before, so you can sleep a minute or two if I have. But quite some years ago I was asked by a branch of Mothers’ Union if I would give a talk on the Magnificat at one of their meetings close to Lady Day. I was quite happy to do so, but wondered out loud if they were ready for some of the material that is embedded in Mary’s Song. (I wonder if you know that someone else, long prior to that time, sang a song so similar that I suspect Mary of knowing it and valuing it. Dear old Hannah, mother to be of Samuel, sang a song very similar around the birth of her son. )

When the time for the talk arrived, the ladies expected a lovely, heart-warming chat about dear old Mary and her spiritual (and therefore ineffectual?) pilgrimage. Not that motherhood is an easy thing, but if it was about the Lord then it could not possibly be at all challenging and certainly not threatening.

So we chatted on about that Magnificat, and all expected, I think, emphasis on ‘all generations will call me blessed’ so that they could bathe in the reflected glory of their patron. But we went on to see what this Gospel of servanthood was all about, and the reversal of positions that would ensue from embracing this faith. We talked about removing kings from thrones, and that in terms metaphorical as well as literal. We talked about the revolution in the real sense, of little people being valued and elevated people having their pedestals taken out from under them. And the outcome of that chat was not at all in the direction or expectation of those little old ladies. ‘We have never heard anything like this!’ they stuttered, all a bit taken aback by something so unexpected.

We modern Christians, with all the wisdom of hindsight, tend to be rather scathing of the Jews of old who looked for a Messiah Who was going to solve all their problems with a wide sweep of his hand, and, as a consequence, did not recognize the Christ when He came. How could they be so foolish and so short-sighted, we sigh, when all the evidence was there? And then we proceed to do exactly the same thing with the Christ, 2,000 years later, managing to miss (or avoid) the harsh realities of Gospel because we do not like the harsher realities of the world in which we live.

Like the Jews before us, and shamans and other cult figures before and since, we have been unable to see past power and control as a solution to issues, missing the most powerful and poignant part of the Gospel.

Many more years ago, the men of our parish were invited to a meeting of a group wishing to form a branch of their so-called non-denominational pressure group in the town where we lived. I knew the instigator of this gathering, a friend of my brother’s. The meal was very pleasant and the company reasonable if a little rarefied, and after a talk from the leader we were asked to apply for membership. On one side of the paper, our details of name address and phone number were requested. On the other side was a sort of credal statement to which we were asked to append our signatures. On reading it, I found it not really possible to assent to some of the very narrow views of the Faith. I withheld my application. When asked why, I simply mentioned that I could not put my name to such tenets. That was responded to with something that really horrified me: ‘Don’t worry about that, Ron. We only have it there in order to control members.’ At that point I exploded somewhat, advising the person concerned that that made it far, far worse, not better. As you might imagine, I did not enrol.

The whole ethos of the Faith is of service, not control, not even power. Or if you wish to put it another way, the only ‘power’ that is involved is love. Even John the Baptist had to come to terms with that most remarkable variation to the Gospel. You might recall that, during his imprisonment, John sent emissaries to Jesus, because he was not sure he had pointed to the correct person in Jesus. ‘Are you the One Who is to come, or do we look for another?’ It is a stunning question in the light of some Christians’ assertion that they know it all, when even John did not. Jesus’ response was to point, not to Himself, but to the words of the prophet, Isaiah. To point to the Servant Song where even that ancient and long-dead prophet could see that God’s work is done through quiet service and not through violent power and punishment.

This Advent maybe a good time to stop, look and listen again to the readings, and to see if there is any need for us to change focus, direction or understanding of Jesus and Gospel. After all, that is why Advent exists, does it not!