Advent 3

Sermon preached by the Revd Canon Richard Ames-Lewis

As this extraordinary year comes to its end, the media have been searching for the word of the year 2020. The Cambridge Dictionary announced “Quarantine” as the word of the year, defeating “Lockdown” and “Pandemic” as the most highly searched for word. But the Oxford English Dictionary has said that there have been so many events generating so many new ideas that, as they put it, this year “cannot neatly be accommodated in one single word.” Tracking its vast corpus of more than 11bn words found in web-based news, blogs and other text sources, its lexicographers described seismic shifts in language and a huge rise in new coinage over the past 12 months. “Unmute” was one candidate; “Mail-in” was another, and of course “Coronavirus”.

But with all due presumption I would like to offer you my own word of the year. It is “Portal”.  This is of course a hugely successful video game series, with which I am completely unfamiliar. But it is an ancient word with a contemporary meaning, and also a word with theological resonance, which is why I offer it to you today, at this point in Advent, Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday when we are bidden to rejoice in the Lord always. 

Portal means a doorway, a gate or an entrance, especially a large or imposing one. Portal also means a website or a web page providing access or links to other sites. So it has been a word in increasing use this year as we have all become more adept with technology. We have become used to passing through electronic portals as we have moved from one site to another. Indeed, I believe that, post Brexit, “Portal” is going to be the key to accessing the new arrangements at our borders. The actual border gates at our ports and airports will only be opened by penetrating virtual electronic portals.

The word “Portal” implies a significant movement of passing through, from one place to another, and it presages change. A portal might be founded on a threshold, or surmounted by an arch or giving on to a passageway. All these architectural terms describe metaphorical and symbolic places of movement and change. For example, as we pass through the portal of our front door, we move over the threshold from the outside world into the warmth and safety of home. As we pass through the portal of our church, we move under an arch into sacred space set apart for the worship of God. In every case movement through a portal brings change. 

You are not quite the same when you have passed through, but passing through a portal is an occasion for rejoicing.

Today in church we are confronted with “a man sent from God whose name was John.” There, right at the beginning of the Gospel narrative, is John the Baptist. The story of our redemption begins not with Jesus but with John the Baptist. John emerges into the story as though from nowhere. Down at the bank of the river Jordan he is baptising. And accompanying his baptising he is delivering fire and brimstone sermons about repentance. 

No wonder the temple authorities in Jerusalem want to know what he is doing. “Who are you?”ask the priests and Levites. John replies “I am not the Messiah.” “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said “I am not” …  “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” John replies by quoting the prophet Isaiah “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord.” 

John is out on the edge, beyond the threshold, living a counter-cultural lifestyle, eating strange food of locusts and wild honey, wearing strange clothes of camel’s hair. He is calling people to repent, not just in words but in deeds: “whoever has two coats, let him share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise; tax collectors, collect no more than the amount prescribed; soldiers, do not extort money by threats or false accusation and be satisfied with your wages.” This is a moral purifying, based on justice, honesty and truth. Only in this way can we make straight the way of the Lord.   

John the Baptist is a portal. He is a portal of repentance. He is the doorway through whom we must pass to make straight the way of the Lord. And in passing through this portal we are confronted by our need to repent, our need to change our lifestyle, our need to purify the morality by which we lead our lives. While this message may be demanding, it is not something to fear. Passing through this portal is an occasion for rejoicing.

As we approach every Christmas every year, the Advent message of John the Baptist to repent faces us just at the time of our maximum spending in preparation for the festive season. Every year, we have to manage this, just as we manage keeping a good Advent in the midst of Christmas frenzy. But this year it is different. The restrictions forced upon us by the pandemic have provided their own kind of repentance, made us look at our lifestyle, reassess our priorities and accept that Christmas will be different this year. 

I don’t know about your Christmas plans, but despite the lifting of the restrictions we have decided that we shall not be with our family but alone on Christmas day. And this decision, however sorrowful, has provided a context for simplicity and reflection about how we are going to celebrate both the Incarnation and the mid-winter festival.

The model of John the Baptist as a portal helps in this, but not just in the details of celebrating Christmas, but because this prophetic portal speaks of a much larger change ahead of us than whether or not we may meet our family at Christmas.

The portal which we are passing through speaks of major change in the status quo, change which was already happening and has been hastened by the pandemic. Change in the economics of the high street; change in the education of our children; change in the way we meet each other socially; change in our patterns of working and commuting; change in relations between rich and poor and between rich countries and poor countries; change in the way we go to the pub; change in the way we worship in our churches. 

To all these effects of the pandemic, we have to add the coming fallout from Brexit and the imperative to decarbonise our lives in response to the climate crisis. We have a prophetic mix indeed. 

Whatever happens when we have all been vaccinated, and let us hope this will be soon, we are never going back to normal. We are instead passing through a portal.

But passing through this portal is not something to fear. It is an occasion for rejoicing. The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it. We belong to God and we have been redeemed by Jesus Christ, born at Christmas. Rejoice, let us make straight the way of the Lord.

Amen.