December 11, 2005 - The Third Sunday of Advent - Father Andrew Green

FIRST READING: Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11
PSALM: 126
SECOND READING: 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24
GOSPEL: John 1: 6-8, 19-28

(Audience participation will be noted in bold print and italics)

That rose candle shines amongst four purple candles. Light shines in the darkness. The prophecy of Isaiah, which is one of the most beautiful and joy-filled prophesies, is preached in the midst of a time of exile and oppression. You don't talk to people about putting away mourning and taking on the oil of gladness unless they are well-acquainted with mourning. You don't talk to them about "good news to the captives" unless they are a people in captivity. And, indeed, the people to whom Isaiah is speaking are all people who have, in one way or another, been left behind or put aside. They are people who are oppressed. They are people whose families have either been destroyed or taken away. Some of them actually were left behind, are without friends, and are considered outcasts by their own people because they didn't go into exile.

So, in the midst of all of that, Isaiah has a message for them, and, if you wanted to put one word on Isaiah's message, what word do you think that might be? I'm thinking "hope". Isaiah's message is a message of hope to people who are encountering all the things that come from being oppressed and from being broken, in terms of families and everything else. People who are in mourning are being preached a Good News that is about hope - a message that says that, even in the midst of everything you are suffering, God is going to bring out of that new life for you and for your people - even the land, itself, will be renewed.

Hope is perhaps one of the most significant messages in Advent. We have a sign of that, although I guess I have to tease it out of the Gospel; but it is pretty obvious in the lesson from Thessalonians, "Rejoice, pray unceasingly". Paul is talking to people who, themselves, are acquainted with persecution and with suffering for their faith, and he is encouraging them by letting them know that keeping to the path and keeping hopeful in their understanding of what God is doing will carry them through.

But now, in the Gospel, we have gotten another look at John the Baptist - a different look than we had last week. John the Baptist, last week, of course, was preaching hell-fire and brimstone and telling people they ought to be running off, and things like that; but, here, John is rather more circumspect, just quoting from Isaiah, the same passage in Isaiah, and he is letting them know that he is not the One - he is not the One. He has a baptism for them, a baptism of water. John is letting them know that he is about repentance. Now, I think it's a hard sell, sometimes, to talk about repentance as Good News.

The baptism that John is talking about is a Jewish baptism. There are no Christians, yet, so it's not a Christian baptism. If you were a Jew, and you had become unclean for any variety of reasons, you would not be permitted to go into the Temple to worship. Now, to be honest, most people didn't go into the temple to worship anyway, but you couldn't if you were unclean for any of a number of reasons.

One of the ways of being restored from uncleanness was through baptism. If you were not a Jew; if you were a Gentile and you wanted to become a Jew, baptism was one of the steps that you had to encounter in order to become a Jew.

Now, that is the baptism that John is preaching - a baptism of repentance, a baptism of cleansing. It's a baptism that is designed specifically to make everyone who hears his message understand how far they have fallen from what God has expected of them. People who are doing everything right don't need repentance, right? People who are doing even one thing wrong are in need of repentance, and so that is what John is preaching. He tells the people that there is One who is coming after him - there is One who is following behind him - who is in their midst, even now, whom they do not know, and whose sandal John is not worthy to untie. He will baptize, not with repentance, but with the Holy Spirit. He will baptize with that same Spirit of God that was active in the creation of the world - He will baptize with the Spirit that gives New Life to all who encounter it.

Now, that is a message of hope. That is the Good News to which all of us are called. Can you imagine being a bunch of people who could only go around and let everybody know, "You're doing that wrong! You need baptism! You're doing that wrong! You need baptism!" We could keep going around and around with the same crowd, because, I don't know about you, but from week to week - my staff, I think, find lots more things that I am doing wrong than any other people - but, from week to week, it's kind of clumsy.

But that is not the Gospel that we are asked to preach. John is getting people ready to hear the Good News of hope. John is going into the middle of a bunch of purple candles focused on penitence and repentance for sin and letting them know that, when they are ready, God's hope is there for them - that the Spirit of God is going to give them New Life.

Now, in Advent, we are very specifically preparing for hope in a specific way. We are preparing ourselves. We are cleaning the house, and we are cleaning our hearts to be ready to make a home for Christ. Christ is the sign of all the hope that God has in store for us. Christ is the sign of God's Spirit active in the world. Christ is the sign of God's New Life constantly springing into people who may even feel themselves as good as dead.

For the second time in my tenure here at St. Paul's, I have run into somebody who, because of an illness, ended up in a nursing home; or, rather, it's a rehabilitation center. In a rehabilitation center, more or less, you are there for a week to two weeks, and then out; but this person, like the one before her, has decided that that is where she wants live. In both cases - husbands gone, no children to speak of, at least in the area, and feeling themselves to be quite alone and very down - they got into this place, which, I can tell you, I, right now, am not planning on going in my old age! And, in the midst of it, they found a couple of things. It was really nice to have a room so that, when you were sitting up, you could look over and see somebody else instead of the four walls of your house, or walking from room to room and finding them empty; and a whole group of people, all of a sudden, began to attend to her in a different way. Out of the darkness, she found hope.

Now, in both cases, with both folks, their goal in life would really be to be in heaven with their husbands. That is what they would really like. But, as we talked, I saw somebody who was more and more energized and alive than I had seen in some time. I think that's hope.

Now a story.

There was a part of a family during the Holocaust in a concentration camp - obviously a Jewish family - and they were trying to hold together whatever threads of their observance of their faith they could. It was the first day of Hanukkah, and the father got the son and the daughter together; and he had saved a pat of butter, which was their last food, and he had taken some thread from his rags and fashioned a candle. And the son said, "Papa, papa, no! That is our . . . What are we going to eat?" He says, "We can survive a long time without eating, but we can't survive one day without hope". That candle was a sign of hope, just as it was at Hanukkah.

The birth of Christ is our sign of hope. John the Baptist is preaching that message of repentance to get us and everyone else ready, and we are invited to do what we can to prepare ourselves, and the world around us, to be ready for the New Life that comes when we receive Christ in our hearts.

AMEN