THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Today on this second Sunday in the
season of Advent we have lit the second candle on the Advent wreath, the candle
which represents love. And on this, the second Sunday, in the new church year
we read the first chapter in the Gospel of Mark, which will be the main source
of the church ’s gospel lessons for the next year.
The gospel of Mark is
considered by most scholars to be the foundational text for the synoptic
gospels, the primary text upon which the writing of Matthew and Luke was based.
And in this gospel account begins
with bold words of proclamation: “ The beginning of the good news of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God.”
Where does this story of good news begin?
It begins in a far off wilderness,
with the proclamation of John the Baptist. There, in that rugged landscape, the message about Jesus was
first proclaimed and heard—the good news
message that a Saviour was
coming into the world to make all things new and right; the good news message
that the love of God was arriving
on the scene in the flesh and blood person of Jesus, the Messiah. In Mark’s
account there is no back story, no explanation, no geneology of Jesus. Mark’s
gospel hits the ground running with John the Baptisters new and bold proclamation.
The message was new
and bold, but it was borne our of an old promise, the ancient promise God had
made to Abraham, and to Isaac and to Jacob, a promise articulated by Isaiah. And Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet
who told the Jewish people of the coming Messiah, tells also of the coming of
John, the bold uncompromising voice in the wilderness who shouted God’s promise--the
promise which is the basis of
Christian proclamation; the promise which comes from the loving heart of God.
Today,
we have lit the candle of love to represent the love of God shining forth in a
world which knows too little of love. And this begs the question: Why? Why is this the case? Why is there so
much want and neediness, so much loneliness and conflict?. Why are there such
massive gaps of need in the world today?
How can human beings who profess love as such a high value, such a lofty
virtue, be so unloving toward one another? How can even those people who
confess allegiance to Jesus Christ be so indifferent to the plight of the
needy? How does that happen?
The
answer lies in the long and ancient struggle, the contention, between humans and
God. God has sent the world his
love, and humans have resisted it. God has given commandments, but humans have
rejected them. God has gifted people with a vision, but humans have ignored
it—ignored it in favour of their own self-styled good-news, which all too often
becomes an empty promise. Back in 1967 the Beatles sang, “ all you need is
love.” But those words ring hallow when we see that human love can be so fickle,
can be choosy, stingy, exclusive
and selfish.
This is not
so with the love of God which is manifested, seen, in God’s great promise
to the world—and that is the promise to make all things new, and not just in
some future time, but in the present time. Where
is the proof of God’s loving promise? It is found in the life death and
resurrection of Jesus. The love of God, working in and through the resurrection
promise, can transform that human narrow vision into the broad loving vision of
Jesus. It is true: All we need is love— this is true. But we really need is the
kind of love which has defeated death; the kind of love not bound by human
limitation.
Creation
itself was an act of love. Human beings create out of love. I am sure that any
artist or artisan will tell you that it is difficult to create unless they love
what they are doing. So it was and is with God as God creates. The love of God
brought the worlds into being, created all there is, and is creating a new
world—and the first step of that new creation was the resurrection of Jesus. If
there is anything Christians need to understand, it is the proclamation of New
Creation. It is very much at the centre of Christian Faith. Bishop NT Wright,
who some of you had seen on our video nights, has done an excellent job of
highlighting this truth. You see, it is very easy to adopt quite a flat
interpretation of creation and eternal life: the common view of the afterlife
as a place of pearly gates and harps and that the physical world we live in
will simply vanish and no longer be relevant. In fact this is not the vision which is presented in the
pages of scripture. What is presented is a vision of reality transformed; what
is presented is a vision of a new creation. We get a glimpse of this vision
from the prophet Isaiah in today’s reading.
It is in
this new creation that real, and
lasting, and ultimately significant love is found. It is the kind of love which is not bound by death, or blocked
by pain, or shut out by poverty, or dampened by indifference. It is the kind of
love which shines through darkness, . This is why Christians celebrate
Christmas—it is the celebration of
arrival, arrival of he who leads
us into the light of the new creation. During Advent we anticipate this arrival
in memory, and anticipate Christ’s ultimate arrival to make all things right.
The followers of Jesus anticipate in patience the fulfillment of the promise.
But in the
meantime there is darkness. But the darkness cannot overpower the light of
God’s love which radiates from his promise of a new creation.. When John first
proclaimed the arrival of the Messiah, he did so in a very dark time. Those of
you who joined us for the four part video series saw how the Jewish people were
oppressed by the mighty and sometimes brutal Roman Empire. You saw how people
were searching for answers, looking for a way out .
Well—this
kind of situation continues as humans seek escape from the strange and painful wilderness
which life can too often be. People are hungry for answers and desperate for
love. Yes, people are desperate for love in the romantic sense, of course. And
many are looking in all the wrong places, as the song goes. But people are
desperate also for a foundational love—a foundational love of their being, of
their very being. And many are
also searching for that kind of love in all the wrong places.
But none of
those places are the promised land. None of those places will lead you to where
you really want to go.
God’s
promise says that there will be escape—more than escape--. God’s promise says
that there will be more than escape and relief, but that the darkness itself
will disappear. You will perhaps find no clearer description of the New
Creation, what it will look like and be like than what we read in the words of Isaiah. And in
that New Creation, there will no longer be separation between God and humanity.
There in the promised land, in the New Jerusalem, there will be a great and
ongoing agape feast, a feast of love, a feast of celebration, celebration of
eternal life, no more death, no more pain, no more suffering, no more
loneliness or pain or exile in wilderness, nothing but love. This is the world
Christians anticipate; this is the coming Kingdom. Now that is a rich picture
that puts to shame any popular caricature of what heaven will be like. But the
good news is that the agape feast, the love feast, yes it will happen in its
fullness in the future, but a part of it also happens in the present. There is
a small porthole which lets us be part of that great celebration, and that
happens in Holy Communion, the agape feast, the great foretaste of the eternal
feast. In this small feast of wine and bread, God’s love becomes uniquely
manifested in our lives.
It is a sign of God’s love for us, just
as Baptism is a sign of God’s love for us, just as God’s word of forgiveness to
us is a sign of God’s love for us..
Such love breaks through the darkness and shines a light in our hearts
like nothing else can. The
love present in the agape feast, of Holy Communion, the foretaste of the feast
to come, is not boxed in and contained, it spreads out and through the
Christian Community. The love present in the Word of Forgiveness and New Life,
transforms us in the light of God’s New Creation, as we move through this old
creation as children of the New Creation, as Ambassadors of God’s love.
Christ’s
light has shone on us and we are called to reflect that love. The heart of the Christmas celebration is not that
the darkness of this age has been removed from our lives in the present, or
that everything is okay in the world because December 25 is around the corner.
The heart
of the Christmas celebration is knowing that a Saviour came into the world to
defeat the darkness--darkness which is here for a time, but will ultimately
dissappear. May the light of God’s love illuminate your path, and the peace
which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
