SERMON AT FARLEY ALL SAINTS’ CHURCH, MORNING WORSHIP
– SUNDAY 11
DECEMBER 2022 – ADVENT 3
Isaiah
35:1-10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11 (incorporating parts of
Sermon 178)
May I speak
in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may my words be a blessing
to all who listen to them.
Today we lit
the third Advent candle known as the Candle of John the Baptist or Candle of Joy
reminding us of the proclamation of John the Baptist that it wasn’t him who was
the long-expected Messiah but the one who now appeared before him to be
baptised by him in the Jordan.
But, we are
ahead of ourselves for, like last week, we must return to the period of the
Babylonian Exile and the words of that great prophet of that time, Isaiah, from
whom we heard in our first reading this morning. Many of the prophesies, at
that time, related specifically to the Jews’ return to the Holy Land and the
rebuilding of the Temple. However, the
prophesies of Isaiah go well beyond just this more immediate restoration but
look to a time when the Jewish people’s long-awaited Messiah will appear – a
prophesy and proclamation well ahead of John the Baptist’s!
For many
centuries after Isaiah, the Jewish people looked upon many candidates for their
Messiah as is recorded in the Apocrypha – those books which plug the gap
between Malachi in the Old Testament and Matthew in the NewTestament – which
are usually excluded from most copies of the bible.
So, for many
Jews, the period of waiting was very long indeed and we read in the Book of
Malachi how the people, including the priests, were indolent or casual in their
worship of God. Their Faith had become
stale because nothing seemed to be happening and their prayers not being
answered. We read how they offered defective goods as burnt sacrifices and kept
the best for themselves. Their worship
was half-hearted and lacking in conviction.
Isaiah,
though, tells the Jewish people that “the wilderness and dry land shall be
glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like crocus it shall blossom
abundantly.” This is a reference to
those dry stagnant times described in Malachi when the Jewish people thought
that they were in a time of wilderness. Perhaps we feel a bit like that too as
we see the world in turmoil and the difficulties facing our own country at this
time of challenge.
Isaiah gives
encouragement to his readers or listeners by telling them that something great
and wonderful will occur in the fullness of time and that God’s glory shall be
revealed and “he shall come and save you”. What wonderful words of joy and encouragement
after many years of captivity in Babylon.
I think I
know how it must feel. Twelve month’s ago I was in much despair facing several
months of treatment for a medical condition which my father had died with. I was at a very low ebb facing my own
mortality despite reassurances from doctors and family. A year on, only last week in fact, I was
informed that the illness had completely left my body and that I was now a
“picture of health”. I had done as my medical professionals had advised me,
taken the treatment, adjusted my lifestyle, lost weight and increased my
exercise but in addition to all that I had also prayed and asked for
prayer. I am utterly convinced that in
addition to the wonderful treatment I received the power of prayer also
contributed. The consultant was
incredibly impressed by the speed of my recovery and did say that she has found
that those with a Faith often heal quicker than those without one.
This is the
message, then of both Isaiah and john the Baptist. John went around preaching the baptism of
repentance by which Jews could seek atonement for their sins. The actual washing in the river, the baptism,
was an outward sign to others that they had truly turned away from evil and
washed away their sins. Hence John the Baptist called for people to
repent. You will recall, although it
does not appear in today’s gospel reading, that the Messiah, Jesus, would
baptise in the fire and spirit – i.e. not simply an outward symbolic gesture of
water cleansing the body but that, inwardly, people would receive the fire of
the Holy Spirit as we will see later at Pentecost.
Of course,
we do read at the beginning of the gospel passage today that John, having heard
of the ministry of Jesus from his prison cell, was still not entirely sure
whether he was the true Messiah – God’s chosen.
Had his own ministry been in vain, he must have wondered. There had been
so many pretenders in the Apocrypha as I mentioned earlier and the Jews seemed
to have been waiting for a very long time – time for them to be overrun and
occupied by stronger nations culminating with their absorption into the Roman
Empire. They must have really been feeling that God had left them to flounder. Jesus’s
response to those disciples of John was that they should report back all that
he was doing – the deaf hearing, the blind seeing, the dead being raised, the
poor hearing good news and so on. He had lived, but only just as we know from
the story, to know of the coming of the True Messiah.
In our
Second Reading, James in his letter, to the Jewish diaspora implores them to be
patient in their waiting for the Lord to return. He uses the example of the farmer waiting for
his crop to grow, waiting for the rains to arrive. Our house backs onto a field of various
arable crops and it always amazes me how the crop develops from a muddy field
into small shoots, then tall shoot and eventually the ears of corn or maize or
whatever and are then harvested. Year
in, year out this occurs with me, in the early days, wondering what the seeds
just sown will develop into.
Advent is a
time of waiting. It is a time of
expectation. It is a time of preparation and it can also be a time of healing.
A word used
a lot by theologians is “liminal”. It is
a word I wasn’t all that familiar with until I started my training as a
minister and later, even more so, as a spiritual director. I knew of its devolved word “subliminal”
better in the context of “subliminal messages” – those being messages which are
conveyed to you, often in adverts, which are not in the forefront but hidden
and conveyed very subtly. A classic one is the smell of bread upon entering the
supermarket making you feel hungry and thereby probably putting more foodstuffs
in your trolley than you intended!
“Liminal”
means “on the edge” or “on the threshold”.
It has been described as the “no longer, but not yet”. It derives from
the same root a lintel – that stone that you find above a door separating the
outside from the inside – neither itself wholly inside nor wholly outside.. Likewise being in a liminal place means we
are ourselves are in the “no longer and not yet” place. That is really where Advent
is too. We are “no longer” in a place of despair not knowing if and when our
Saviour is coming but in the not yet knowing that it will not be long. Of
course, today we know that Jesus has been and we also know, those who believe
that is, that Jesus rose from the dead and is alive today seated with God in
Heaven and will return. Now we await his second coming and so we are today
still in a liminal space with the exception that Jesus and thereby God can be
manifested by the Holy Spirit – that same Spirit that John the Baptist promised
the Messiah would baptise us in.
How many of
us long for that now? We live with ever
increasing tensions in a world with much hostility towards our fellow humans. We
only have to look at what is happening in Ukraine today. We would do well to go
back and read the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament and recall how Jesus
told those in the synagogue that he had come to fulfil the laws and the
prophesies not to tear them up. It is no coincidence that the passage Jesus
read in the synagogue in Galilee was from Isaiah’s prophesy.
I cannot end
this short homily better than by repeating the words of Paul at the end of last
week’s reading and by recommending that whenever we feel lost or lonely in our
Faith or want to tell others about it, these words may be a blessing and
encouragement to us and those around us who need to hear the Good News –
“May the God
of hope fill you with joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in
hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
So let us
look upon our Third Candle today with the joy which represents. The joy of the
knowledge that Jesus remains with us through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Amen MFB/09122022/179
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