A sermon preached by the Rev’d Natasha Woodward
at the Church of All Saints, Orpington
Sunday 13 December 2009, the third Sunday of Advent, year C
Readings: Zephaniah 3.14-20; Philippians 4.4-7; Luke 3.7-18
Advent is a time of expectation.
Our lives and relationships are full of expectations. I heard on the radio the other day the story of a daughter who didn’t fulfil her father’s expectations. The daughter is Patricia Scotland, who, after coming from the Caribbean at the age of 3, grew up as one of 12 brothers and sisters in Walthamstow. She became a lawyer, at 35 the youngest person to become a QC since William Pitt the younger. She is currently the chief government lawyer – and leaving aside a recent scandal when she failed to photocopy a document – throughout her career she has done a great deal of good for all sorts of people, work particularly inspired by her Christian faith, and which has resulted in a long list of awards and accolades. She did not, however meet her father’s expectations – he had hoped she would be a physicist, thinking this would be a good career, as her also thought it would be important for her to be able to leave this country, in case things got difficult for black people here. In one way – she most definitely did not meet her father’s expectations – she became a lawyer not a physicist. But in so many other ways she exceeded them, never needing to run scared from this country, because in her work she was changing this country. This father’s expectations were not met, and this was no bad thing.
In the years before Jesus was born, people expected a Messiah, a saviour. There were a lot of expectations around about what this saviour might be like. The nation of Jews, had been occupied and invaded so many times that one could easily lose count – and so among Jews there was an expectation that the saviour of the Jewish people would be a military and political leader – someone who would get rid of the occupying powers, and finally make it so that Israel could be its own nation at last. When Christ, the true Messiah came, however, he was not this kind of leader, he did not meet the expectation that he would be one who could run a military victory – so far from it that he himself died a shameful death.
There were other expectations about what Jesus might do : today we hear something of John the Baptist’s expectations. We have the words reported to us in Luke’s gospel today “one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Well, there is a lot of metaphor and indirect speaking here, but in the context, where John has been incredibly critical of people and told them they must live better lives, it does rather sound like John is expecting the Messiah to be one who will gather the good people together, and get rid of the bad people – put the wheat into the granary, and the chaff onto the fire. Now this is undoubtedly an oversimplification, but it could be what John and his followers expected – that the coming of the Messiah would be about good people being separated from bad people; and so in the mean time you had better behave if you want to end up in the granary rather than in the fire! If this is what John thought – and certainly, even if it isn’t what he thought, it is what different people have thought at different times – well, then, Jesus must have been, if not a disappointment, then at least a surprise to him.
John clearly had some doubts about Jesus – for later on he sends a message asking Jesus “Are you the one who is to come?” And Jesus’ response to this question is fascinating – powerful and moving. Jesus says “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them...” (Luke 7.22)
Well..... this Jesus is not a man who is in the business of destroying sinners. His business is to help them, cleanse them, heal them, bring them to new life. Even John did not anticipate the real new thing that God would do – that God, in Jesus – would recognize sinfulness, and yet still welcome sinners. John – or perhaps it was his followers - got the first half of the equation, but not the second.
John was preparing the way for Jesus in calling people to repentance. He was helping people to realise that maybe they weren’t as good as they thought they were, and he gave them pointers on how to be better people. For example, if they had more than enough food they were to share, if they had two cloaks they were to share, if they had power they were to use it fairly, if they had enough they were to be satisfied with that. Really simple: John was asking people to realise that they were not as good as they thought they were – that is what it means to call to repentance.
John was doing this to prepare the way for Jesus. He may have thought he was doing this to prepare them for God’s judgement, so they’d end up on the right side in the end. But, as it turns out, this repentance was not in advance of God’s judgement, but in advance of God’s forgiveness. The people were to become aware that they weren’t as good as they thought they were, and to try to live better lives, not in order to pass some test, but so that they would be able to recognize God’s goodness in being able to forgive. In welcoming sinners and helping outcasts, Jesus did not fulfil the expectation that the Messiah would destroy sinners, just as he did not fulfil the expectation that the Messiah would lead a military revolution.
Life is full of expectations, whether it is expectations of other people or ourselves. It is not surprising that we also have expectations of God. We are always tempted to think we know what we want from God, what it is that God should give us. But if God really is God, and not some idea we have created, then God will not do what we expect. We cannot predict what God will or will not do, what we can do is wait for God, offering ourselves in trust, confident in his forgiveness.
In the words of Paul’s letter to the Philippians:
“The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let you requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” [Phil 4.5b-7]
Amen.
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