Second Sunday of Advent – Year C – Bill Harkins
The Collect of the Day: Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Luke 3:1-6 1In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 5Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; 6and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
In the Name of the God of Creation, who loves us all, Amen. Good morning and welcome to Holy Family on this Second Sunday of Advent. Advent’s familiar themes of waiting and hopeful expectation have a different ring this week. Is it possible that sometimes we in church make of Advent an aesthetic: a carefully rendered “experience” that is beautiful, tasteful, and moving while missing or at least masking its intimate, immediate connections to our sometimes messy, broken, world? Traditionally, Advent contained elements of penitence and reflection much like that of Lent. In fact, a perusal the 1928 Prayer Book will reflect this in ways that I find compelling.
The penitential aspect of Advent helps, I believe, to balance a season co-opted by those who desire only sweetness and light, often for marketing purposes. In fact, as a clinician I find this to be the single most salient cause of the holiday blues: the season demands too much of all of us, and depression, as Carl Jung taught us so well, can sometimes be a sane response to untenable demands. Advent captures the grand sweep of history, and I love the juxtaposition of the passages from Isaiah with those from Matthew. “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” And thankfully, John does show up.
Indeed, Advent is a tone poem in two parts. Early on, the season directs us toward the future: the second coming of Jesus—the ascension in reverse. We watch and pray for the consummation of the whole cosmos in Christ: history redeemed and fulfilled. No more tragedy, numbness, grief and loss. No more terrorism. No more injustice. No more seasonal depression. As Isaiah put it, “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Creation, finally and fully, will be healed. Yet, as the season progresses the second movement of the tone poem emerges. We are directed by the Church to turn our gaze to the past—to the first coming of Jesus. We exalt Emmanuel—God among us and with us—as the saving event of human history. And it happens right where we live, in the messiness of our daily lives and, indeed, the unfolding of history.
Then we hear the Gospel for this morning and the image shifts, doesn’t it? We find ourselves on the banks of the River Jordan face to face with John the Baptist, this earthy free-range prophet who crashes our joyful Advent gathering like an unwanted guest at our proper Advent party. And, what’s worse, John doesn’t tell us to rejoice. He doesn’t mix and mingle in tasteful Episcopal fashion, drinking hot cider and eating Christmas cookies. No, he tells us to repent. He stands in the middle of fellowship hall, during coffee hour, tracking mud, flotsam, jetsam, and leaves onto our carpet, and smelling of sweat, honey, and the river water dripping from his animal hides and sandals. Paul told the Philippians, and by extension tells us, not to be anxious about anything. John tells us to flee from the wrath to come. And, quite understandably everyone in the Gospel is asking, “What shall we do? What has to change if we are to survive the events that lie ahead? We are told that the axe is already laid to the root of the trees, and fire is prepared for the burning of the chaff. Where are Johnny Mathis and Mel Torme when we need them? What about the Yuletide carols being sung by the fire and folks wrapped up like Eskimos? John’s message to “repent!” is very different from “rejoice!”
So, I began to think about times when I have received wonderful gifts—word of acceptance to college, say, or a “yes” to proposal of marriage…the births of my sons; the word that I would soon begin a new job as a professor, and the moment that Bishop Alexander and my colleagues from the Diocese and Emory and Columbia all laid hands on me and my brother Thee at our ordination. These were moments of both rejoicing and repentance, because with these gifts came new life and new, responsibilities.
So you see, dear ones, part of what the new life of Advent means is that the old life just won’t work anymore. Becoming a parent or a grandparent, accepting a new job, receiving the gift of baptism or the gift of the Christ child—each of these means both rejoicing and change—repentance, if you will—from our old ways of being in the world. Rejoice! Repent! These are the words that come with the new territory of all great gifts. In one of Mark Twain’s short stories the Mississippi River shifted one night, during an earthquake at the New Madrid fault, cutting through a narrow neck of land. Those of you who have been to West Tennessee know that Reelfoot Lake, a birdwatchers’ paradise, was formed by this very event. It is said that for a time the Mississippi ran backwards, so great was the upheaval of the earth’s crust. In the story, an African-American man who went to bed a slave in Missouri woke up to find himself east of the river, in Illinois, a free man. He had been granted a new life. I imagine we each have stories of being granted a gift of some kind that changed things forever, and if we think about it, we will recognize that with that gift came a new set of responsibilities. John the Baptist offers some suggestions in terms of what to do with the remarkable gift of baptism—and with the anticipation of the new life in the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit—the One whose birth we anticipate, and of whom Isaiah spoke: “Look at who you are, and where you are,” John says; “begin there.”
As Wendell Berry says in this lovely poem:
“The Wild Geese”
Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer’s end. In time’s maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed’s marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
Rejoice, and Repent. They do go hand in glove this time of year, my friends. Don’t wait to be somewhere else, or to be someone else, or to be doing something else. What we need is here. Let’s begin with the Advent road we are on, and walk that road, and so allow God to transform the real lives we are living right now. John did not tell even the despised tax collectors or the hated and feared Roman soldiers that they had to go somewhere else to begin. Those occupations were no barriers to change, to repentance. Because you see, repentance and rejoicing are—in light of the gift of the Child for whom we wait—one and the same. Both have to do with transforming the life we are already living. Rejoice and Repent, and be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. As it is so often with so much, this is our response to the ambiguity of the world around us. Rejoice, for what is happening is wonderful. Repent, because from now on, everything will be different. Amen.