Sunday, 5 December, is the Second Sunday of Advent. The readings are (to read them, except for the Benedictus, go HERE):
Baruch 5:1-9
Canticle: Benedictus
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6
The Benedictus
1 Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel, *
who has come to his people and set them free.
2 The Lord has raised up for us a mighty saviour, *
born of the house of his servant David.
3 Through the holy prophets God promised of old *
to save us from our enemies,
from the hands of those who hate us,
4 to show mercy to our forebears, *
and to remember his holy covenant.
5 This was the oath God swore to our father Abraham:*
to set us free from the hand of our enemies.
6 Free to worship him without fear, *
holy and righteous before him all the days of our life.
7 And you, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, *
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
8 To give his people knowledge of salvation *
by the forgiveness of all their sins.
9 In the tender compassion of our God. *
the dawn from on high shall break upon us.
10 To shine on those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death, *
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Sermon
In the year 2021, in the second year of the leadership of Micheál Martin as Taoiseach, in a coalition government, when Michael D. Higgins was President of Ireland and Leo Varadkar was Tánaiste, when the Most Rev. John McDowell was Archbishop of Armagh in the Church of Ireland, and during the vacancy in the episcopate of the newly created United Dioceses of Tuam, Limerick and Killaloe, towards the end of the second year of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, the word of God once again came through John, son of Zechariah, to the people of Ireland, and not just of Ireland but throughout the world, wherever Christians gathered to worship on the Second Sunday of Advent.
The first time John had spoken the word of God, he had proclaimed it some 2,000 years before, in the region around the River Jordan in the land of Israel, which at the time was part of the Roman Empire. The land that John went to was a wilderness, and when people followed him there, John talked to them, using the words of their Scriptures. Specifically, he quoted the words of the prophet Isaiah from hundreds of years before, telling of someone who would be a voice crying out in the wilderness. John said he was such a voice. He called people to repentance and baptised them in the waters of the Jordan.
The people flocked to hear John, and to receive his baptism. His words had a familiar ring, for John’s words reconnected the people to the stories of who they were so that they were reminded of God’s promises. John’s words echoed not just the prophet Isaiah, but also another person from a time long before in their history, a person named Baruch. He had spoken during a time when all the people’s ancestors had been in exile from their homeland and life had seemed a disaster. And both Isaiah and Baruch had spoken of the valleys being filled up, and the mountains brought low, and rough ways made smooth, so that a straight path could be made for God.
The people liked these words from John. It was not that they wanted their land to be levelled, for they had plenty of mountains and valleys. But the people were troubled by events of the world and they felt cut off from God. The Romans occupied their land, and the people’s own leaders made life hard for them. The leaders even told the people that their sins and their illnesses and their afflictions were signs of punishment from God. But John’s words had a ring of hope in them.
Some of the older people perhaps even remembered a few decades before when John had been born, and his father, Zechariah, a priest, had made a strange proclamation. Zechariah had said that God had always promised through his prophets, such as Isaiah, that God would set his people free and would save us from all enemies. And then Zechariah himself had predicted that John would prepare the way of the Lord and would help people see how they might be set free by the forgiveness of all their sins. And then Zechariah had said what would happen, what this salvation, this setting free, would look like:
“In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us.
To shine on those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
And so on the Second Sunday of Advent, in the year 2021, the words of John still come to people in the wilderness.
The wilderness in which people live is not one defined by terrain or weather or population. Instead, the wilderness into which John speaks again his words of hope is one in which people are thirsty for meaning and hope and where they struggle to know God. In the year 2021, people are especially desperate, for the aforementioned coronoavirus pandemic seems not to get better but only to get worse. The people long to return to a previous way of life, but it is not coming, and the people react in a variety of ways. Some stage protests that the government could impose any restrictions on their movements. Some hunker down in their homes and wait. Some go about their business basically as usual, but taking precautions, and wonder what is coming next. Some refuse to believe something strange is happening. Some wonder if something more is demanded of them, and they wonder if God has a hand in these events. Some people might wonder or believe, as did the people back when John first came, that their illnesses and afflictions were signs of punishment from God.
When John first spoke in the wilderness, calling people to repentance, the people heard that he was preparing the way of the Lord, but they did not know what was coming. But they found out very quickly, and by the Second Sunday of Advent in the year 2021, the story is out but has been forgotten. John was preparing the way for God himself, who would come to the people then, and the people now, and to the people in all the centuries in between. God would come in the person of Jesus, so that through him the people could know forgiveness and mercy and joy and hope. Jesus would call people to a new way of life. The mountains between the people and God would be levelled, and the valleys filled, and the windy road to God made straight, so that all flesh could see and know the salvation of God. But all this levelling and filling could be hard, for it would mean that the world would look completely different, and the old ways would be gone.
For Jesus Christ himself is the road to God. The path is sure, as people put their lives on the path of Christ, and commit their hearts to him. No winding about through the wilderness, no struggling to know God, but instead people arising from darkness and the shadow of death, in order to walk in the way of peace, knowing that their sins are forgiven and that God cares for them, no matter how hard it may be to understand how that could be and no matter how tough the world is.
And in case there could be any doubt that God could do such a thing, another messenger came named Paul. He was full of zeal, as John was, but in a different way. For he first used all that passion and energy to persecute the early followers of Jesus, until he himself experienced the forgiveness of God through Jesus. And then he went about starting churches and writing letters to those churches. And in one letter that he wrote to a church in the Greek city of Philippi, he writes with such affection for those people, he prays for them so unceasingly, he cares so much for their well-being, that he shows what can happen to a person transformed by the power of Christ, for his affection for the people is the affection of God. The compassion of God foretold by the prophets, and promised by John, and fulfilled in Jesus Christ, is now made real in individual, faulty, quirky human beings who set their lives to following Jesus and who keep helping one another and who together know the rejuvenating power of a bond with one another through their faith in Christ, even when all the world seems to have gone mad.
John spoke 2,000 years ago in the land of the Jordan, to prepare people for the coming of Christ. And John still speaks, now in the land of Ireland, in the year 2021, to prepare us for the coming of Christ, not just then, but also now. We continue to hear the words of the prophets, and to hear the story of John, because Jesus continues to come when life is hard, or especially then, and Jesus continues to come into all hearts and lives prepared to receive him, making straight the path to God.
— The Rev. Canon Liz Beasley