Delivered at the Church of the Holy Cross in Poplar Bluff, MO on the 2nd Sunday of Advent, 2023
Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85 1-2; 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8
Sermon writing can be an interesting experience. Sometimes it’s really a good thing that I usually have a couple of weeks to prepare a sermon. As I looked over the propers for today — starting a couple of weeks ago — I wasn’t really sure what I could do with them. They seem to be a mishmash of things, and in many ways saying the same things that we will read next week, when I will be preaching in New Orleans. I really couldn’t see a way to make a sermon out of these propers. But as sometimes happens, the Friday and Saturday before I preach can bring more clarity. As I contemplate the scriptures and let the Holy Spirit do her thing in my subconscious, I can begin to see a way.
In Isaiah we are given comforting words, using the recurring theme of God as shepherd, and his people as sheep for whom he will care. God will take everything that’s upside down and put it the right way up. The Psalm follows in a similar vein, with promises that there will be truth and mercy in the world.
Then…we get 2 Peter, with the elements dissolved in fire, and the heavens “set ablaze and dissolved.” And it could come at any time. That’s a bit discomfiting.
And to top it all off in Mark we get John the Baptist, calling for repentance. That’s not the most comforting thing in the world either. And Mark claims that it’s the beginning of the “Good News!” How is that possible? How is having to repent “good news?”
Our Old Testament scripture comes from the part of the book that scholars call “Second Isaiah,” since it’s believed to have been written by a different person than the first part of the book. The content is so much different that it reads like an entirely different book. First Isaiah warned of the approaching doom of the Northern Kingdom, leading to its destruction by the Assyrian Empire. Second Isaiah looks to the return of the Judean exiles from Babylon, and the restoration of Jerusalem and the temple.
Second Isaiah spoke of a redeemed Israel, but there is also a strain among the Old Testament prophets that God would remake the world; that God would re-create the world as it should have been. And that it would be pretty…well, exciting…when it happened. Some of the later prophets speak of “the great and terrible day of the Lord.”
Peter’s letter points to a fulfillment of this prophecy, with the heavens being consumed by fire, and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth, where mercy and truth would reign. The new heaven and the new earth part sounds good, but the heavens being consumed by fire, to be frank, makes me uncomfortable.
So, it would seem that to get to the redeeming of the world we are going to have to go through some stuff. But the thing to remember is that no matter how bad things look, God’s acts are ALWAYS focused on redemption. There is a redemptive purpose behind all of it.
I think we can all agree that we are not living in the best of times. War in Ukraine and in Gaza. Climate change bringing massive storms. Hate crimes. Gun violence. Things get bad before they get better, but how do we get from the bad to the better? Getting from the bad to the good points the way for us to repentance.
The season of Advent is a penitential season. It’s not Lent, and we shouldn’t treat it like Lent. It’s not all sackcloth and ashes. But we are preparing for something – for the arrival of the Christ child — that amazing, singular event in which Almighty God chose to incarnate himself as a tiny child, to live with us, to experience what we experience—the good and the bad—and to redeem us from the horrible mess we’d gotten into. It’s a sacramental event, in which the divine breaks into the physical world.
And we are also looking forward to his coming again to complete the work he began two thousand years ago – the work of recreating the world as it should be, and of doing the same to us. This will also be a sacramental event, as the entirety of Creation is made anew in God’s image.
But are we ready for all this? We all have things that we need to repent of. And that’s why John’s cry of “Repent!” Is good news! We need to repent because Christ is coming! Because we want to be ready to meet him! And how can his coming not be good news? It’s the very best news.
At least, it is if we are ready. And it’s repentance, that turning away from the things we’ve been doing, that makes us ready.
Are we ready? Have we taken our sins against God and our neighbor out and looked at them honestly? Have we turned them over to God? He’s really good about forgiving. That is the sort of thing we need to be doing during Advent, perhaps instead of worrying about getting the tree decorated or the lights up or spending tons of money on presents.
The candle that we lit on the Advent Wreath today is the candle of peace. We can have the peace and comfort promised by Isaiah, the truth and mercy promised by the Psalm, but all of that won’t come without our turning around from those selfish acts that we all commit, even though we may not at first admit them to ourselves. This is the work of Advent. And make no mistake, it is work.
Are we ready for redemption to arrive? Have we unloaded all our baggage and turned it over to God? Or are we just coasting to Christmas through habit?
Do we actually want peace? Peace for everyone, not just for ourselves and the people we like? Or do we only want peace where we win?
Have we truly repented? We ALL still need to repent of something.
Let’s get ready. He’s coming.
And that’s good news.
Amen.
Becoming Dominican 