Readings: Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11; John 1:6-8,19-28.
It’s traditional in an Advent sermon to say it’s a season of waiting, and of hope. Quite so. It is. For must of us, it’s waiting for Christmas to be truly realised. It’s hope that Christmas will be as exciting and wonderful as when we were children. Only it never is quite as exciting. Which ought to make us realise that really, the hope and waiting of Advent is for something altogether more fulfilling and altogether more earth-shattering – Christ’s return, the second coming. Now this has its difficulties too. I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to be wholeheartedly excited about the idea of Jesus coming back any moment. Not only is it couched in all sorts of fantastic imagery, with trumpets and angels, and being caught up in the clouds, but frankly, I have so much to do first. Several writing projects way past deadline this week, and a couple of talks to give on top of everything else. So this week’s right out. Next week isn’t great either, what with Christmas shopping, Christmas services and so on. How about some time in January? Yes, Jesus – you can come again in January. That will be fine; I’ll put it in my diary so I don’t forget.
The trouble with Advent is that real life gets in the way. It’s the same with the other big themes of Advent – the Four Last Things – death, judgement, Heaven and Hell. Traditionally, the preacher would explore these through the Sundays of Advent, as well as the idea of waiting and hope. Quite how we’re supposed to wait expectantly for death and judgement has always escaped me, because again, I want a whole lot more real life to get in the way before I face my own personal death and judgement. However, I happen to think this is a healthy and positive way to approach Advent, to let real life get in the way. For the simple reason that, if I spend all my energy waiting and hoping, then I won’t be living a real life now, the real life which Jesus pointed us towards through his teachings. Because, “eternal life starts now” is another way of putting it. If you’ve decided to follow Christ in your life, to put his cross and resurrection at the centre of who you are and what you do, then there’s too much to be getting on with now to simply wait and hope. The waiting and the hope are there more to realign how you live your real life now.
Look at that reading from Isaiah. “Oh no, not Isaiah again!” said one of the members of the Bible study group we hold here every week to look at the Sunday readings. Yes, Isaiah again. The great prophet of hope, which balances the OT out against the even more sprawling book of Jeremiah, the great prophet of doom. But in Advent we hear from Isaiah, again and again, promising real concrete hope in the midst of real concrete life. “As the earth brings forth its shoots”, he promised at the end of that reading, so “righteousness and praise…[will] spring up before all the nations.”
Well it’s hard to see new growth in “all the nations” at the moment, or much hope either. I wonder how David Cameron hopes to be remembered in years to come. As the Prime Minister who argued valiantly against the might of France and Germany, and every other country in the European Union, to preserve Britain’s future? Perhaps, but he might turn out to be the Prime Minister who irreparably compromised Britain’s position in Europe. I wonder; we’ll have to wait and see. I rather suspect that he hopes he’ll be remembered as the Prime Minister of the Big Society, the architect of a new social vision which transforms the nation. I wonder; we’ll have to wait and see. But however much I wonder, and however much I say we’ll have to wait and see, the reading from Isaiah tells us about hope for God’s Big Society, coming down from heaven and rapidly towards us this Advent as we sit waiting and hoping in the midst of our real lives of Christmas shopping and “To Do” lists.
Isaiah’s a pretty sprawling book. It’s thought that, by and large, it comes from three different periods in Israel’s history, starting in the C8 BC, when Jerusalem was holding out against Assyria, the military superpower of the time. Imaginatively enough, scholars call the prophet who wrote this bit: First Isaiah. He’s the one who wrote things like: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”, a mainstay of all candlelit Advent Services. Then there’s Second Isaiah, several hundred years later, when the Babylonians were the superpower. They did conquer Jerusalem, and took the people off into Exile. Many of the mournful laments of the OT come from this time. “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion”, goes Psalm 137. But against this lamenting, Second Isaiah promises hope: “Comfort, comfort my people”, he begins. In fact, we heard that last week, together with his promise that they’d be led back home, along the “way of the Lord”, made straight. And now this week we heard from Third Isaiah, perhaps another generation or so later. Now, we find that the people are back in Jerusalem: the Exile’s over; they’re back home, Second Isaiah was right about that. But why isn’t life in the legendary Jerusalem as good as what was promised? The authorities are incompetent and greedy; the ideal society they hoped for is far out of reach. Society is small, not Big. Real life is nothing like the dream. Is it any wonder then, that disillusionment has set in? So Third Isaiah promises yet a new order, a truly Big Society which will burst all expectations. And we heard today about its architect, the Servant whom Second Isaiah had predicted would suffer, “despised and rejected”; well he’s now taken up by Third Isaiah and transformed into the one anointed by God’s Spirit, who’ll bring good news to the oppressed, bind up the broken-hearted, and proclaim liberty to the captives. But how is this to be realised? Well, through the anointed one, Jesus the Christ of course, he was here 2000 years ago, doing exactly this.
But what about now? Who are the good citizens of God’s Big Society, the Kingdom of God, carrying this on today? You know the answer: it’s you and me. But I want to put before you a perspective on that, from the Gospel passage, telling us about John the Baptist. Funnily enough, we heard a very similar passage about him last Sunday too, and we will again in January. I find this highly ironic, focussing so heavily on this one man who tried his hardest to point away from himself. He’s literally a no one, he told the priests and Levites who came to question him: he’s not the Christ, not Elijah, not the prophet. He’s defined by who he isn’t. At best, he’s a voice, shouting in the wilderness, making straight the way of the Lord. But these are all words which the Jews knew well from the prophets, Second Isaiah to be precise. So what’s authentic to John the Baptist, what sets him out? Well nothing he’ll admit to. But that seems to be the point.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth”, says Jesus in the Beatitudes, which I always find a bit puzzling. It’s hard to understand why the meek would ever get together en masse to inherit the earth. Surely they’d prefer to sit quietly on the sidelines, out of everyone’s way? I suspect that John the Baptist qualifies rather well as one of the meek: those people who point attention away from themselves. Not out of shyness though. It’s his role: to draw people to himself in order to point away from himself. Those who earn greatness in God’s coming Big Society, are those who have it thrust upon them reluctantly, who not only don’t seek it, but who try to escape it. They have no identity of their own, except to make the way straight. And this, I suspect, should be the way for all of us, as we wait and hope, for real life beyond our Christmas shopping and our “To Do” lists, but real life for sure, in the midst of our disillusionments and hopes for better. This ought to be the shape of our own discipleship, to enable the one who is coming to bring good news to the oppressed and liberty to the captives in our time. We’re those who can point the way in our own generation by bringing good news and liberty now, pointing to him who’s still coming as we do so. We’re all too aware that we’re hardly Elijah, nor the prophet, nor the Messiah, nor the One to come. Anything we claim about ourselves is ephemeral, misleading in the scheme of things. So if we can hope to be something in the kingdom, it’s to be voices in the wilderness.
