Today in the readings we have more messages of comfort
but with a different focus on the bleakness of the human condition.
This year that “bleakness of the human condition” includes a pandemic
that has now taken over one and a half million lives worldwide.
Usually the focus for th Sunday in Advent
is one of repentance and forsaking our sins,
which, you have to admit, has been a perennial Advent theme.
Typically we may repent and feel remorse,
but in all truth we rarely forsake our sins.
Sins, the common every day variety sins,
tend to become embedded into habit patterns
which are doomed to be repeated.
The kinds of sins I am thinking about here are not the text book sins,
like theft, murder and adultery,
but the more endemic, flying under the radar, kind of sins,
so that without thinking we once again put our foot in it:
for instance, all the ways we subtly put down others,
diminishing them to make ourselves look better,
often without our even realizing what we just did;
or being indifferent to another’s needs,
or persisting in behavior that isolates us from others,
or showing our lack of faith in God
by trying to make ourselves good enough all on our own
so as not to need being saved, thank you very much.
Such is the spiritual condition of humanity,
and the scripture lessons for today address that.
Sin makes deserts out of our lives.
With the pandemic as the looming problem,
why am I dwelling on these kinds of sin?
Because they will really trip us up in the days and weeks and months ahead.
We are not spiritually prepared for the long haul
if we slog along in bad habits.
They will undermine us
and contribute to the stress and anxiety, frustration and anger
that assault us as we continue to try to find our way
through this dark time.
We need these word of comfort from today’s readings
so that we can be fortified spiritually.
So, we have three readings from three prophets,
each with their message of repentance and preparing the way for salvation:
Isaiah,
Peter, writing in a prophetic manner in his second epistle, and John the Baptist.
In the collect for today we asked God to give us grace to heed their warnings,
so … let’s do that.
Isaiah, chapter 40: God is speaking comfort to a people decimated by defeat,
by the destruction of the center of their religion – the Temple,
and by exile.
“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her
that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.”
Now that is all over.
Now it is the time to prepare the way for salvation.
And a voice cries out in the wilderness,
make a straight highway for our God.
Remove every obstacle, no up hill and down, no rocky uneven ground.
God comes straight through everything that would block the way.
And God’s glory shall be revealed. It will be all glory.
And all people shall see it together,
a vision of blinding glory and presence of God.
A voice says, “Cry out.”
And the prophet Isaiah responded, “What shall I cry?”
How does one respond and communicate
such a vision of God coming in glory?
What is the glory of a human being
in comparison with the glory of the Lord?
It is like the transitory glory of the short life of a flower.
In comparison all people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it.
God but breathes upon us, breath which gives us breath and life,
and in comparison with God’s timelessness,
that breath of life is but momentary.
Surely the people are grass – grass that withers, flowers that fade –
we are terminal, everyone of us.
But the Word of our God will stand forever.
Such is the comfort that God speaks to the people,
the good tidings to be proclaimed.
God comes – with might, with an arm that rules, a strong arm,
the symbol of power.
And with that power of God comes reward and recompense.
And that strong arm will gather the lambs and carry them in his bosom.
Now Peter, his prophetic message:
“The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness,
but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish,
but all to come to repentance.”
Why?
Because there is this day coming, the Day of the Lord,
and it will be the end of life as we know it.
Now, before we all go off on various ideas about the Second Coming
or God’s judgment on all humankind,
and leap to theological conclusions, literal or symbolic,
consider this:
that what follows in Peter’s letter
is a description of what happens
for each individual
upon face to face encounter with the Living God.
Consider it personally:
“the day of the Lord will come like a thief” - suddenly and unpredictably.
As in an encounter with any catastrophe
it is like the elements dissolving, melting in the experience of the crisis.
If not a literal process,
this is certainly a spiritual process that will occur for each of us.
For some who are lucky,
they will get knocked off their horse and blinded like Paul
and they will repent and be saved
and nothing will be the same for them;
all the elements of their previous lives melt away.
So to make it easier on yourself, prepare for the Day of the Lord, Peter says,
by leading lives of holiness and
“strive to be found by him at peace.”
The promise is that in the kinds of crises we find ourselves in,
like this one here with the pandemic affecting us all in different ways,
that we will wake up, be aware of our salvation
and no longer bound by patterns of behavior and attitudes
from that morass of subtle sins,
we will greet with joy the appearing of Jesus.
That is the message of comfort from Peter.
Now, the Gospel reading and John the Baptist:
What would Advent be without John the Baptist,
and his call from the desert to prepare the way of the Lord!
John the Baptist appears on the scene out of the wilderness,
out of the desert across the Jordan river.
He is a wild looking man with strange clothes and strange diet.
He tells us of a different kind
of preparation for Christmas and for Christ's coming
than trimming the tree and gift buying.
Sometimes it takes a wild man
to come in to our own figurative deserts,
the internal desert of the soul,
for us to become aware of that spiritual wilderness.
Sin makes deserts out of our lives.
So John the Baptist, echoing the cry of Isaiah,
calls us to repentance and confession of sin.
And here’s the Good News:
John baptizes with water, but the One he is announcing,
whose Advent we are preparing for,
is Jesus, the One who will baptize us with Holy Spirit – and with fire,
the fire that purges and cleanses
and enlightens us and energizes us,
that we may greet with joy the appearing of Jesus our Redeemer.
There is promise in all this talk about sin and repentance and Jesus coming.
Isaiah addressed people displaced from their homes,
John the Baptist, people oppressed under a foreign military rule,
and Peter addressing people facing persecution for their faith.
They all have words of comfort and hope.
It is helpful to remember these stories of faith from the Bible,
and to speak to them again and again,
and to explore our own situations in light of these examples.
Too often, I fear, suffering people just quietly give up
and silently drift away from church.
They and we need that connection with, identity with
the Gospel hope such as Isaiah or Peter are placing before us.
They, and we, need to hear a message of hope,
not the pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by kind of hope,
but the Gospel story of God's mercy and saving grace and loving kindness,
like the words Isaiah spoke to the exiles.
This kind of hope grapples with all the negative stuff,
and faces up to the suffering which is universal,
so that negativism and grief and disillusionment
do not end up siphoning off all that is positive, joyful and hopeful,
or obscuring from view the tremendous love of God for all of creation.
Our hope is based in God's love for us,
a love so profound that God became one of us,
and was born in Bethlehem
just so that the times of grief and loss,
the desert experiences of pain and isolation
-- like what we are experiencing now --
can be overcome through and dissolve away in
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