The Third Sunday of Advent

Sermon

The Third Sunday of Advent

17 December 2023

The Reverend Dr James Gardom 

Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11                  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Vindication.

1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24          Christian Living

John 1: 6-8, 19-28                     This is the testimony of John

Advent is a season for stirring up our longing. At the heart of faith is longing. It can be longing for many things: Longing for meaning in our lives. Longing for forgiveness and completeness where we are false and incomplete. Longing for things to be made right and put right in a world that is full of foolishness and evil

But longing is at the heart of faith – I do not think that any of us would be here now if we were not hungry for something. The full, the satisfied and the complete do not come to Church. How blest are those who know their need of God.

Advent is a season for stirring up our longing.

That longing goes back to the Old Testament. We read Isaiah in Advent, because he is the prophet of longing. Starting in the years before the Exile in Babylon, going through the desperate misery of the collapse of God’s people, and continuing through to the beginning of the early signs that God would restore his people. Isaiah and his followers spoke God’s word about all of these, longing in turn for destruction, repentance and renewal. That Old Testament longing became Jesus’ longing. Isaiah is Jesus’ scripture. When he came to the synagogue at Capernaum and they gave him the scroll, this is the passage he turned to:

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.

Jesus’ longing has become our longing.

We are longing for the completion of God’s will. We are longing for wars to cease.

We are longing for greed to come to an end. We are longing for the end of slavery.

We are longing for Justice and Peace. We are longing for these things because Jesus longed for them. We need to stir up our longing, because we can become satisfied with the way things are, and cease to hope that they might be the way God wishes. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

That is what had happened in Jesus’ day, and that is why God sent John. John the Baptist came to God’s people to stir up their longing.  God’s people has ceased to long because they had ceased to hope. The Romans were in charge of their country.

They were under the control of a corrupt administration.  Even the temple and the priesthood had been captured to do the work of the rich and powerful. John stirred up hope and longing: "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord,'" as the prophet Isaiah said. 

He built on the longing of God’s people captured and expressed in Isaiah, and taught them that they could hope once again, that God would make things right, and they must start the work of preparation to make things right in their hearts, to make straight the way of the Lord.

Now it is our time and we must use Advent to stir up our longing.

We must try and recapture the sense of anger at the injustice and unhappiness of the world, which we first felt when we began to move beyond the safety childhood, and saw, at school, at work, on television the pain and suffering that surround us. We must try and recapture the sense of hope and joy that flooded into us when we first realised that there is an answer and a hope – that God has acted in Jesus Christ to make and to put all things right. Do you remember when you felt that God’s grace was everywhere, that you could reach out and touch him, and that obedience to his will was something easy, almost to hand.

The Church gives us this season of Advent to stir up our longing. We can do it with Advent Calendars (although I think chocolate ones rather miss the point). We can do it with prayers and thinking about the world in which we live. We can do it by going through the well worn rituals of planning and shopping and thinking about Christmas, which remind us of what it was like, as a child, to wait and to wait.

If you know The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe you will know that in Narnia it is always Winter and never Christmas. But we wait in hope. We know that if we prepare, Christ will come to our hearts on Christmas Day. We know that we are waiting for the completion of something that has already been given. We know that we are on our way, and the end is already begun.

So, in the seven days that still separate us from Christmas, in the shopping and the cooking and the wrapping and singing, remember to do some good hard longing. Long for Justice and for Peace. Long for meaning and for healing.  Long for Christmas, and for the coming of God’s kingdom and for the completion of all things.

For God is working his purpose out, as year succeeds to year – God is working his purpose out, and the day is drawing near.