Third Sunday of Advent (B)

Third Sunday of Advent

 

Sermon by Christopher Ward

Sunday 13 December 2020

Readings:

[Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11;] Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

 

Sermon

“He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.”

Some words we heard today from the opening verses of John’s Gospel. May I speak in the name of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Welcome to Gaudete Sunday, where as you can see from the special colour of the candle we lit today in the Advent ring that a little light is being allowed today into our Advent theme. It won’t last, of course, because our sombre purple will once again take over the lead next week, but it is a sign of encouragement and hope that the wait may soon be over, and the rejoicing can begin. And our Gospel reading today chimes perfectly with that theme. We can see that pink candle as bearing a symbolic witness to the brilliant white light that is to come on Christmas morning.

For me, John the Baptist is a fascinating character, and one who does not always get the recognition he deserves. As with so many things in Advent, it is all too easy sometimes to focus on the glory of the endgame, and thus overlook the significance of some of the intricacies along the way. John himself is very clear as to who he is (as is Mark, in the Gospel passage we heard last Sunday[1]); he is the ‘voice crying out in the wilderness’ foretold by Isaiah to ‘make straight the way of the Lord’. And for this purpose he proclaimed a baptism by water of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

However, it is clear from our Gospel reading today that the Jewish religious establishment had some difficulty with understanding precisely who, or what, John was, and what he was about. He was clearly a highly charismatic individual, despite the eccentricities of both his dress and his diet, with a broad appeal to a people subjugated by a hated foreign power, the Romans. Was he perhaps a much longed-for leader, either spiritual or temporal, pointed to in the Hebrew Scriptures, who would enable the Jewish people to fulfil their desire to escape from the shackles of the Romans? If so, he was clearly not behaving as they expected.

And I wonder if there was also some confusion in the minds of early Christians about the precise role of John and its relationship to Jesus. In those wonderful opening words of John’s Gospel in which he unveils the great mystery of the Incarnation in just 14 verses, a model of precision and brevity in drafting, John goes out of his way to add words emphasising that John the Baptist was not the Messiah.

I don’t think that John the Baptist himself had any doubts either as to his role or status, or about the relationship between his own ministry and that of Jesus. That much is clear from our Gospel reading today. Subsequently, John describes in his Gospel an occasion when Jesus passes John the Baptist, who acknowledges Jesus as the ‘Lamb of God’, whereupon two of his own disciples join Jesus. Later, when John is baptising and questioned about Jesus also baptising at a different location, he reminds his questioners that they themselves had heard him testify that he was not the Messiah and adds, “I have been sent as his forerunner”.

So, what does that make John the Baptist, and does it matter? For me, John can best be described as Jesus’ first missioner. He was the one charged with preparing the way for the Son of God. As he testified after an occasion when he had seen Jesus coming towards him, “ … the reason why I came, baptising in water, was that he might be revealed to Israel”. And this, I think, may be where the confusion about the role of John the Baptist came from in the minds of the Jewish religious establishment; they simply were not expecting God to send his own Son.

And for me, it matters because we have all now joyfully accepted the role of God’s missioners on earth. We look back to John the Baptist as a source of example and inspiration; that for me is a key element in his importance in the Christian story. We are the ones who have willingly accepted the role of seeking to make straight the way for the Lord at the present time in this wilderness of a world. And Advent provides a perfect opportunity to reflect prayerfully on how we can do it. John the Baptist did it, very successfully we understand from the Gospels, in his own distinctive way, albeit that, in the end, he paid the ultimate price. We may never be tested to the same extent, nor may we baptise, but I will just note in passing that, while we associate baptism with the ritual we observe in church, it is the privilege of any follower of Christ in an emergency to baptise in his name.

So what might mission mean for us? The options are endless. It might include something active and direct, like a role in church, helping at a night shelter, visiting the sick or the lonely, or volunteering at a food bank. But it might also be something less obvious, like some simple words of comfort to someone who is fearful.

On the other hand, mission might include something indirect, like providing financial resources to the Church. Here at St Paul’s, we have been running a Stewardship campaign over the last few weeks with a target response date of today. I would encourage you to be generous in your responses: our individual stewardship commitments are the bedrock of our parish finances and a lifeline in the coronavirus afflicted times we currently live in. They support not only our mission within the parish, but also the wider Diocesan mission and, not least through the financial support provided to ordinands who go on to serve elsewhere, the mission of the wider church.

And finally, but no less of value, it might include something intangible, like prayer. In this context, I can tell you that the emerging mission strategy of the Diocese for the next decade, with its apex the ambition of bringing the love of Christ to every Londoner, has at its base the words ‘Underpinned by Prayer’.

Our responses will naturally be as individual as we are, but let us all take some time in the course of Advent to reflect both on the ministry of John the Baptist, and how we might, in our own ways, give life to those words of Isaiah and ‘make straight the way for the Lord’.

 

Amen