Sermon notes from 12/4/22
For as long as I can remember, I have had the insufferable habit of reading the very end of books before I finish the opening chapters. Not the entire end, of course, but enough to check and see that the names of the main characters are still there – to make sure everybody is still alive. To my husband’s eternal irritation, I read the synopsis of movies and television shows before we see them. I like spoilers, and my experience of media is improved when I have a sense of where the story will be taking me. I realize that this paints a particular sort of psychological portrait about myself, but, you know, we are who we are.
It is only recently when I’ve wondered if this tendency has something to do with why I am so passionately a Christian. For all the uncertainties and questions and theological puzzles we inherit in this tradition, we know the end of the story. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ after three days in the grave restores the brokenness of humanity to wholeness. We are reconciled to our Creator by the pure sacrifice of his only Son. And those who believe in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. You’d think you would need to read until the end of Revelation to get to the good part, but the spoilers are right there in the Gospels at the beginning. This is my kind of book.
The prophet Isaiah offers us a vision of this wholesome ending in his proclamation regarding the shoot that shall grow out from the stump of Jesse. What shall happen at the arrival of the One upon whom the Spirit of the Lord rests? Well, “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them…They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
This sounds like a lovely ending– a perfectly wonderful gift to those of us who like to know the story is heading. And yet…this harmony and perfection is not yet what we see. Jesus has come. He has risen. And yet hurt and destruction remain apparently everywhere. If the earth is full of anything, it is certainly heartache more acutely than knowledge of the Lord.
The prophecies of Isaiah seemed quite distant from his own 8th century. The people of Israel were at the precipice of another century filled with persecution and terror. This vision of wholesome peace seems quite distant from us. What is more familiar to us than the ways that human beings continue to disappoint one another?
But there is someone who takes our hand. There is someone who stretches back his arms to the prophet Isaiah, and stretches them forward to us, and leads us faithfully, unstoppably toward Jesus.
“Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
When John the Baptist is introduced in scripture, he is introduced in the very same way as the prophets of the Old Testament: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Micah, Haggai, Zerchariah. The text positions John to step into the light as the one who will be the last prophet, the one singing the final hymn of preparation and imminent redemption. He is the bridge between the Old Testament and the New - the one who gathers those of us yearning for the ending across all time and distance and joins us in praise of the God who is soon to come among us in the Word made flesh.
If Mary was the very first Christian, and if Joseph was the second, John is the third, recognizing Jesus and leaping with joy when he is still a baby in his mother’s womb. I love to think of Mary and Joseph as the very first Church - the first group of two or three gathered in His name. And soon, John and his mother Elizabeth are the first to join their little house church.
And so it is John - the prophet between the Old and the New - who takes our hand in this in-between season of Advent. In his call to preparation and repentance, John shifts something for us. He reminds us that we are not meant to put our trust merely in a prophecy, but in a promise.
A prophecy may tell you what is going to happen, but a promise will tell you what you are meant for. A prophecy might inspire a vision of the future, but a promise will begin something right now. A promise signifies a relationship – it solidifies the connection between the one who promises and the one to whom something is promised. It is a bond - an assurance: a covenant fiercer than destiny and nearer than blood.
And herein lies the challenge and the blessing: We cannot know what the end of a promise looks like. We can only trust in the One who is doing the promising. We cannot skip to the final few pages and see who remains alive. But we can put our trust in our Lord whose name is Life.
John reminds us that the years that we are granted are not meant for spending in augury or divination – in half-baked efforts at control or wealth or power. We know what we need to know. Everything we have that is not Christ will pass away. This in-between Advent season is our yearly invitation to encounter this truth not from a place of anxiety, but with a heart of hope. We cannot know what the end of a promise looks like. We can only trust in the One who is doing the promising, and the One who is doing the promising is good and kind. He is all power, all truth, all mercy, all grace. He is all knowledge and beauty, all joy and all peace. He is health and strength. He is Bread and Wine. He is the source of light and life, the fonts from which flows every spring. He is the Sun in the east, the brightness of the snow at midwinter. The comfort in every gentle, tender thing. He is Salvation, sweet and light. He is the morning. He is rest. He is love. He is ours.
Preached by Mtr. Brit Frazier
4 December 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia