Sermon at All Saints’ Church, Whiteparish – Advent 2 – Sunday 7 December 2025
Isaiah
11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
May I speak in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and may these words be yours Lord, and may
you bless all who hear them. Amen.
Today we lit the second
candle on our Advent Wreath –often called the Bethlehem
Candle, which symbolizes peace or faith and
is lit, as today, on the second Sunday of Advent. It is, often, typically a
purple candle and represents preparing for the coming of the Messiah,
reflecting on the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. The candle can
represent either peace, as Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace, or faith
in preparation for Jesus’s arrival. It
is meant to be a reminder to work for peace and at the same time to have faith
in God’s promises, reflecting on the journey to Bethlehem, the birthplace of
Jesus, and the beginning of a New Covenant with God. In many churches the
candle is purple in colour being the liturgical colour associated with Advent –
symbolising royalty and penance.
Traditionally, also, it represents the character of
John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus, who is described in the bible (in the
first chapter of John’s Gospel) as being sent by God but was not the light
(i.e. the Messiah) but came as a witness to testify to the light – that the
true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. So many sermons have been preached on the
Second Sunday in Advent on the topic of John the Baptist, that I thought, this
morning, it would be good to remind ourselves of the reason why God sent Jesus
into the world in the first place.
As is usual, on the Second Sunday
in Advent, our Gospel Reading this morning, narrates the now very familiar
story of the ministry of Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist who, we learn, went
into all the region around the Jordan to proclaim a baptism of repentance for
the forgiveness of sins and to proclaim the coming of Christ, the Messiah as
foretold by the prophet Isaiah some hundreds of years previously – in fact in
the First Reading we had this morning.
Back then, the world seemed to
reject God, as we read in the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi. I do recommend you read it as, in many ways,
it seems to foretell how our world is today – lacking any enthusiasm for God
our Creator and treating Faith as an irrelevance when we can take control of
our own destiny. Today’s world seems to
be about image and control, and money and wealth of course; and, so it was back
then.
I have now lived more than my
three score years and ten and during that period I have seen enormous changes
in the world and in this country in particular; probably none more so than
attitudes towards the Church.
As many of you will know, I spend
quite a bit of my time giving talks and leading stargazing sessions at sea
wearing my other hat as an astronomer. A question I am very frequently asked is
how I can reconcile my role as a scientist with that of a church minister?
Similarly, with the news constantly seeming to concentrate on scandals and
dissent in the Church, how I can continue to minister in the knowledge that
religion is so flawed?
My response, first of all, is to
say that churches are largely human institutions which often attract the
wounded, the vulnerable and, like any human-made institution they will suffer
from splits and dissent from time to time. Secondly, the wonders of God’s
universe as I observe it from my viewpoint as an astronomer, fills me with the
awe and wonder of God’s creation and the sheer awesomeness of it all. Thus, my strength continues to lie in my
Faith which is founded on the Gospel of the Good News of Jesus coming into the
world, to lighten and brighten it. To
save the sinners, to comfort the poor and to bring God’s Kingdom to Earth. In other words, to set aside the religiosity
of the church and get back to basics – why Jesus came to Earth and what he said
and did.
For me, the light bulb moment
occurred back in 2007 at Spring Harvest when a group of us went to that
Christian Festival from Winterslow Church.
I was not entirely sure whether I would enjoy the experience as, having
been brought up in a traditional Anglican liturgy, I was concerned that the
event might be dominated by “wacky” Evangelical Christians all wanting to tell
me how bad a Christian I was! For me,
therefore, I treated it as a cheapish holiday with my two children and if it
all got a bit too much for us there was the North Somerset Steam Railway next
door in Minehead which would certainly be “my thing”.
However, it was during the second
night of the big service in the Big Top that the keynote speaker was Rev. Steve
Chalke, the founder of Oasis and a Baptist minister in Waterloo, London. He
reminded his congregation that our role as Christians was not being
self-centred and ensuring our place in Heaven by being pious and religious but
rather being in the community bringing Heaven down to Earth. For me everything in the Gospel seemed to
make sense and suddenly a light had been shown to me just as in Psalm 119:105
we read:
“Your word is a lamp to
my feet and a light to my path; it shows me the way wherein I should go, both
night and day”.
That was the moment that I first
felt called to ministry – although it did take another five years before I started
training.
I love the gospels, because in
them we see how “The Light” worked in everyday society. At that first
attendance of Spring Harvest we all got “WWJD” plastic bracelets – WWJD
standing for “What would Jesus Do” and although I have long since lost that
bracelet I still regularly think about that slogan and it is a good mantra to
have at times when your Christian Faith might be compromised.
You see, the people of the Old
Testament had lost their way as we saw in Malachi. They needed “the Light” –
they needed God to come down and talk to them in their own language and to be
physically amongst them.
Imagine that you, a Human Being,
had created a colony of ants and that the colony no longer acted in the way in
which you had created them to be. It would be impossible to communicate with
them directly and so you would have to send another ant, your special agent
ant, to live and move amongst them to communicate with them and explain how
they should behave – in their own language or communication system – that is
how and why God Incarnate, in Jesus, came to be born in Bethlehem.
John the Baptist, appeared during the period of waiting for that Light
of World to appear and he encouraged people to repent and be saved through
baptism. Likewise, as we wait for Christmas, during this period of Advent
reflections, let us think about how we might have contributed towards or
ignored any darkening in our own lives by not reaching out for the lantern
which is Jesus Christ.
We light candles on the Advent Wreath as a reminder of that light. In
some churches we would also have had individual candles to remind us that as
Christians it is our duty to carry that light of salvation – the way we should
go – to all we meet in our daily lives.
Whenever we stray¸ when the world seems dark and cruel, when we feel we
can no longer see God, remember he is all around us and by accepting Him and
following Him we are in communication with God our Creator who made all things
– from the tiniest of living creatures on Earth to the vastness of the Universe
itself. As John the Baptist told us, we
need only repent of our sins to be cleansed. If we all followed that mantra
then I am certain the world would be a better place.
Through the adherence of our Faith the dimness in our lives can be
removed and replaced by the glorious light of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth.
Wishing you all a Happy Advent and Festive Season ahead.
Amen MFB/227/04122025
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