Sunday 16th December ADVENT III

Fr Julian Browning

Isaiah  35  :  1 - 10 ;  James  5  :  7 - 10 ;  Matthew  11  :  2 - 11    

Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord.    James 5.7

John the Baptist gives us the place to start. He cries in the wilderness. That is our starting point in Advent, our own wildernesses, where we feel lost and alone and despairing...

Wait and see. That's what parents used to tell impatient children. Now the gospel writers and the saints are trying to tell us. I know we can do all our Christmas shopping with a few clicks of our little mice, but there's no point demanding instant access to our faith, and being impatient with ourselves for not sorting out our religion, and impatient with God for not coming up with the goods. We're not going to believe it all at once. Religion doesn't work like that. Religion is more like a love affair with God. Sometimes it's on, sometimes it's off, and there are lots of times when we're hanging around, gazing into space, wondering whether He's going to call. The Church's year begins with four Sundays of waiting, getting ready, preparing. John the Baptist tells us to prepare the way, get the road ready, open a line of communication between yourself, ourselves, and the God who is going to come into our lives. We hear John speaking in two places in Advent, the wilderness and the prison. And that is where we hear him in our lives, in our wilderness, in our prison, weighed down by our “mind forg'd manacles”, that is to say the limitations we have put on our human spirit and our imaginations. Your life can change, you know. Take the risk and agree to be changed. What we are offered, through words which are thousands of years old, is a new way of being alive. John the Baptist gives us the place to start. He cries in the wilderness. That is our starting point in Advent, our own wildernesses, where we feel lost and alone and despairing, that is where we hear the voice of the prophets, of John the Baptist, and behind him that of Isaiah. Isaiah says: He will come and save you. And a highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness. We are to get ready for the God who will share our lives. The wilderness, that barren place that each of us lives in for longer than we care to admit, is not God-forsaken. It turns out to be the place of wisdom. Maybe Advent isn't just a season, the four Sundays before Christmas. Advent is more like a place we go, the wilderness where we can learn more about God and prepare to meet Him.

There's a bit at the back of the English Hymnal which you have probably forgotten about, called The Advent Prose. It is an introit or anthem using words from the prophet Isaiah. The chorus is: 'Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.' That's what we come here to see in Advent; the heavens and the earth meeting. God making himself understood, his forgiveness real.  The important visitor is not going to wait much longer. So our delaying tactics (too lazy, too scrupulous, too busy, too clever, too stupid, anything really to stop God interrupting my life), these won't work for ever. And it's not just about ourselves. It's about saving the world, not from carbon dioxide, but from the sort of secularised fog which prevents anyone from seeing God or themselves clearly. Getting ready for God  is not just an intellectual matter. The imagination matters, liturgy matters, symbols and crosses and prayer books and cribs and sacraments and even Christmas decorations and looking up at the stars on Christmas night, are all part of our preparation for the day of the Lord, and we have to be very firm with the clever anti-God squad who seek to discredit religious imagination. In religion, the emotional response is more significant than the intellectual response. Why are you here? Because you have got it all worked out? No, we are here, I expect, because at some time we allowed the spirit of God, whoever He is, to enrich our imaginations, to expand our horizons to infinity, to show us what life can be, and that gave us just a glimpse of hope, and a future, and we are not prepared to deny that experience. Theology and philosophy and arguing with Professor Dawkins can be very stimulating, but none of that gets us to heaven. That is not the way of holiness talked of by Isaiah, the miracle of the wilderness, where the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. The news that John the Baptist in prison heard from Jesus was not some clever proof of the Incarnation: he was to be told, in the very words of Isaiah, that the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk. That is when we see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God, as we heard this morning.

Advent a hopeful time for stargazers such as us. The story to come is the story of the Son of God. Advent means arrival, things coming to pass, the story becoming true. The story is riveting, always new. There's just one thing it's convenient for impatient people like us to forget. John the Baptist did not just tell us about Jesus. He proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. For Christians, the good news and the repentance always go together. We're not too keen on repentance, are we? We don't want to repent, because we think it's going to be like a multiple choice exam paper, headed Sin, with the answers Yes, No, and Not Saying.  We know we are bound to fail even when half the answers are lies. How trivial we have become. How modern to think of ourselves first. Repentance isn't about us at all. The Christian focus is neither on self-abasement nor on self-fulfilment but on the fulfilment of God's work, in which we are fulfilled. That's what we can be hopeful about. We look to God, not to ourselves. In Advent we clear a space, clear out the junk that we keep falling over, so that there is a space for God to be born again in our souls. We do not have to go through life alone, fulfilling our selves; I can think of nothing more soul-destroying, more sinful than that. The meaning of our lives is now God. Christianity is about the triumph of this hope in our wilderness. So let us rejoice. In Christianity joy keeps breaking through. God says through Isaiah: I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions; Fear not, for I will save thee: for I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Redeemer.