Sermon preached by Fr. Tom
at St. Thomas Episcopal – Plymouth
December 15, 2013
Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 35:1-10
Psalm 146:4-9
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be an acceptable offering in your sight, Oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer.”
“Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.”
I have always loved today’s collect. My father used to talk about this Sunday, and he liked it as well. This is a hinge Sunday that splits Advent into two parts. Advent is half over today. We have a rose candle on the Advent wreath, and while there is not much penitence and fasting associated with Advent these days, it is a day to lighten up and rejoice if we are. Rejoicing and lightening up is not such a bad thing just in general, so that one is an easy takeaway.
Historically this collect was used on a Sunday in November, and cooks attending services in villages all over England would hear these words from the Collect of the Day, they would hurry home afterward to stir up the fruity batter that had been fermenting in their kitchens for weeks, the prime ingredient for their Christmas plum puddings and fruitcakes.
Since 1979 and the new prayer book, “stir up Sunday” has fallen on the third Sunday in Advent, and the traditional batter for Christmas puddings and cakes would be too thick by now to stir. My guess is that a pile of sermons have been preached on this Sunday on what needs to be stirred up in our souls to prepare ourselves to receive what God is birthing among us at Christmas.
In case you have heard a pile of these sermons too, I am going somewhere else. I am coming back to the hinge idea though.
I read a story about a couple on a bicycle tour through the countryside. They kept finding these bizarre signs. I have seen some things like this myself riding my motorcycle on secondary roads in places like South Dakota, and it really made me laugh. I think some of these were the one remaining sign from a Burma Shave sequence, but you would see a “Let those little” and then five miles later there would be a Wall Drug sign. Something is missing. One of the signs in this story said, “This is a sign.” That was all. Another read: “Do not move this sign.”
These signs are bizarre and out of place because they have no apparent purpose. A sign is meant to point to something else, or it has no meaning at all.
John the Baptist is stuck in prison in today’s Gospel. He probably understands he is going to die there. He begins to wonder perhaps. “Did I get it right?” John was not a man who minced words. He never held back. He was confident and preached with power about the wrath to come. He pointed to one more powerful than he. The Messiah was coming.
John is always portrayed in icons with his index finger raised, pointing away from himself, toward Christ. He is John the “pointer.”
But John is sitting here in prison, what he knew of Jesus confused him. I preached last week on things not turning out the way we expect. John for sure was not seeing Jesus delivering a message of repentance and the wrath to come that lay at the heart of his prophecy. He starts to worry that maybe Jesus is just another prophet, and the Messiah is still on the way. So he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are YOU the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
Jesus directs him to Scripture and refers to the reading we heard this morning from Isaiah. “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.” These are all the signs Isaiah foretold. This is what lets us know kingdom of God is near.
Perhaps what John has forgotten for the moment, is that with the Messiah everything is new. There is a new set of rules. Jesus changes everything.
Think of John as the hinge perhaps on the gateway into the Kingdom of God. John, we are told, is the greatest of all who have come before Jesus, but all who live in the Kingdom of Heaven, will know fuller life and purpose than John. John is like the doorman, who opens the door and ushers the rest of us through, pointing the way to life more glorious than what we have yet dared to expect or imagine. He hesitates himself there in that threshold.
When Ralph Manuel spoke at the dedication of the new Math/Science building on campus, he spoke about the glories of the past. He pointed to historical success and did not say much about the future. I am all about the future, because that is what I am going to be a part of.
John is not pointing to the past. He is pointing to Jesus. The coming of the Messiah is not a return to the “good old days.” It is what St. Paul describes when he says, “Glory to God whose power working in us will do infinitely more than we could ask or imagine!”
We are so busy these last days of Advent leading up to Christmas Day. There is a lot of tradition and things we “always” do. We want in many ways to recreate the past – revisit memories of holidays before the children grew up maybe. We can’t ignore though what God is doing now and what God has for us in the future. It is the ghost of Christmas past in some ways I guess that can distract us from our mission.
John points to something new and wonderful. It is the advent of the Kingdom of God. That is what is through the door, and we are standing there peeking through.
The prophet Isaiah proclaims the vision of barren desert rejoicing and blossoming abundantly, with joy and singing! Weak hands are strengthened; hearts are given hope; waters break forth to create flowing streams in the desert; the way home through that desert is turned into a broad and straight highway.
How much do we dare hope about the gift being given us this Advent and Christmas? Are we looking for more of what we’ve experienced before, or do we dare to look for more?
Today, John the Baptist stands among us still pointing. He is not pointing behind us, so that we can return to the “good old days.” John points us toward the future. This is the hinge of the Advent season, and it is the hinge for us too. We are standing in the doorway, and can look back or look forward. The future of course can make us nervous. There is the unknown, and we are not sure we are ready. Even John had doubts, so it is not like we are wretched sinners if we check the map a couple of times. Jesus did not tell John to repent when there were misgivings. He assured him that he was right with Scripture.
The great challenge facing the Church today is not how to revive or resuscitate what we had before. The challenge facing us is to offer the church and the world a fresh vision of a renewed and transformed world – the Kingdom of God transformed by grace and God’s redeeming power. This is a world made new because of Jesus.
The Kingdom of God being revealed in the person of Jesus Christ is not just new and improved. It is different. It is far more than we have yet imagined. And unless we are looking through that door, looking to discover something brand new, we are likely to miss the point of all this entirely.
John the Baptist stands among us this day pointing to life transformed in Jesus. My prayer for us is that we can wake up Christmas morning to the joy of opening up that life. It is a present more wonderful than we could have asked for.
Through our life together as faithful witnesses, we have a role as members of the Body of Christ. We have a part in this Kingdom. It is not just an internal conversion of life either, it is the transformation of all creation.
My takeaways are these
This is a gateway Sunday for the season of Advent and for us as well.
We need to look with joy to the future confident that God is working His will.
Jesus has brought us new life, and we are called to use that new life in the Kingdom of God.
“Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.”
“Thanks be to God!”
I have said these words in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen