Sermon for the Sunday Next Before Advent
admin | 21 November 2010“Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts; / Show the light
of thy countenance, and we shall be whole”
It is, to my mind, a most intriguing scene. It belongs to the beginning of John’s Gospel and yet we read it at the very end of the Christian year. It is the first scene in his Gospel in which Jesus speaks directly. Quite apart from the miracle of John’s Prologue, which speaks to us from the eternal heights of heaven, as it were, and which we will hear at Christmas, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God”, this is the first scene in which Jesus comes out of the background and into the foreground of the Scriptures. But has he been in the foreground of our lives in this past year of grace?
The prophetic finger of John the Baptist points to Jesus directly. “Behold the Lamb of God,” he says, twice actually. The first time is just before our gospel reading here. It is followed by the Baptist’s profound reflection upon the meaning of the one whom he sees and whom he has pointed out. He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” something we hear and pray repeatedly in our liturgy. The second time is followed by Jesus stepping out into the centre which he is and around which everything turns. John points him out to us again with the words: “Behold the Lamb of God.” In some sense the ministry of John the Baptist is already fulfilled even as it seems it has only begun. As he says in a related passage, Christ “must increase but I must decrease”(Jn.3.30) He gives place to him who is “the Alpha and the Omega” of our lives and who must have his increase in us.
The witness of John the Baptist is all the more remarkable because it points to the Revelation of God in our very midst. As he says, “I myself did not know him; but for this I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel”(Jn.1.31). And again, “I myself did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (Jn.1.33).
John the Baptist came “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” but he himself is not the forgiveness of sins. He prepares the way – the way of our repentance – for the one who is the forgiveness of sins. He prepares the way for the one who baptizes, not only with water, but also with the Holy Spirit of God. Only God can forgive sins. John the Baptist points to the one who is at once the Revelation and the Redemption of Israel, indeed of all mankind. The fulfillment is all in Christ.
But there is no fulfillment merely in naming our need. John the Baptist points to the Revelation of God and the Redemption of mankind, but our salvation actually depends upon God’s turning to us and our being turned to him. There is the motion of God towards us and the motion of God within us. The whole truth of our lives is about our coming to him who has come to us.
In a way, this gospel speaks directly to the conflicts and the confusions of our contemporary world. The conflict is between an “existential Christianity” which argues that experience determines the truth of doctrine and an “essential Christianity” which argues that doctrine determines the truth of experience. The first results in a kind of atheism since God is collapsed into the human experience; for instance, into the issues of the day where often only one point of view is permitted and allowed. This absolutizing of the finite betrays the Incarnation. With “existential Christianity,” there is really no Word that addresses the human condition and redeems it. But here in this Gospel we see both the desire for that Word of redemption and the miracle of its turning towards us. Only so can we be made whole, our experience as grounded and measured in the teachings and presence of Christ. Such is “essential Christianity” which emphasizes the priority of doctrine in Scripture and Creed which we are then challenged existentially to embrace and make our own.
We come, after all, to the end of another year of grace to take account of the quality of our being with him. How well have we journeyed with Christ in this past year of grace? Not what has happened to us simply, but what have we done in the face of each and every circumstance? We come to an end only to find, perhaps, that we have scarcely begun. And if so, what is there to do but begin again with renewed intent? Or we come to an end only to find, perhaps, that we have become mired all the more in our usual besetting sins, that there has been no progress at all, no increase of grace in us, it seems, but only the recognition of the greater darkness of our sins. And yet, to know that and to feel compunction for it is itself an illuminating grace which portends a greater and a renewed intent. What is to be done except to begin again?
For the year runs out in hope. Advent, too, is the season of hope, the hope of our beginning again in him who has turned to us so that we might turn again to him. It is signaled in the Collect for this day: “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people…” This Sunday is commonly known as “Stir Up Sunday” precisely on the strength of that big, little word in the Collect.
And if it should be that there have been the mighty triumphs of grace over sin in your life, then, God be praised. But don’t stand still. Begin again with him whose grace has had its way with you. Come and see what more he has in store for you.
We can begin again because he has turned to us. “Then Jesus turned.” John the Baptist points to Jesus who has his back to us. In the paradox of the Old Testament, God is both revealed and not revealed, at once seen and unseen. There is the passing-by of his glory as Moses is placed in the cleft of the Rock; we see only the backside of God, as it were. But “then Jesus turned.” God turns to us and shows us his face in Jesus Christ. In that turning we are stirred so that we may be made whole. God turns to us in Jesus Christ so that he might speak to us face to face. His first utterance in John’s Gospel is to ask a question, “What seek ye?”
Advent is the season of questions. Our seeking is our desiring, the stirring up of our wills. Prayer articulates our desire for God. It is totally our desire and yet it is also totally God’s desire in us. Here Jesus’ question draws out our desires. Ultimately, our desire is to be with God. “Master, where dwellest thou?” the disciples and we ask, too. Prayer is our desiring to be with God and prayer, too, is our abiding with him. His turning to us is, ultimately, the meaning of the “Word made flesh [who] dwelt among us.” Such is the Mystery of the Advent that brings Christ to us and us to Christ, the Mystery of Christmas.
“Come and see” is Jesus’ first direct statement to us. God’s turning to us stirs us up to turn to him. It is our work and it is his work in us, his stirring in us, if we will but let him. And such, too, is our abiding in him who is our beginning and our end. Advent signals the hope of our turning to him yet again in repentance and in joy, come what may. “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people” as the Collect prays. It complements the prayer of the Psalmist.
“Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts; / Show the light
of thy countenance, and we shall be whole”
Fr. David Curry
Sunday Next Before Advent, 2010