Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent
admin | 18 December 2016“He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light”
We will hear these words on Christmas Eve in the great Gospel of the Incarnation. But today, on The Fourth Sunday in Advent, we hear precisely about that one who is “sent to bear witness of that light” without whom we can hardly understand anything of the mystery of Christmas. The Gospel today is known as “the record” or “the witness of John”, the witness of John the Baptist who points us directly to the meaning of Christ’s coming. “Behold the Lamb of God,” he says, “which taketh away the sin of the world.”
In the darkest time of nature’s year, we look to the light, but it is not the light of nature that concerns us so much as the light of God’s Truth and Word. That is the greater light which “shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not”. Light overcomes darkness and not the other way around. The darkness is more than the longest night of nature’s year in the winter solstice which falls in the middle of this week, this longest week in the longest possible Advent season, marking the slow, slow turn towards spring. No. There is the far greater darkness of human sin and evil countered by the far, far greater light of God.
The readings for today are centuries old. They signal a sense of expectancy and heightened anticipation. The darkness of sin and judgment already gives way to a sense of joy and gladness. All the questions of Advent, that season of holy questions, reach a kind of crescendo in the Gospel of “the witness of John”, in the intensity of the questions about John which turn us to Christ. The Epistle reading from Philippians, too, conveys this sense of joyous anticipation in its repeated insistence on the notes of rejoicing and peace all of which counter the darkness of our anxieties. In every way, these readings speak to our contemporary dilemmas and concerns. We are, I am afraid, deeply anxious and uncertain, afraid and troubled about our world and day and about ourselves. Yet the winters of our discontent are really always about ourselves.
What these readings highlight are matters of the soul. They speak to the radical meaning of Christ’s coming as redeemer and saviour. That makes no sense at all if we somehow assume that we are all-sufficient in and of ourselves. The awareness of the darkness not only of nature but of human endeavour should provide a necessary reality check on that score. It is ancient biblical wisdom that “it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves”. “We are his people,” the psalmist says, “and the sheep of his pasture.” Therein lies a note of rejoicing as well. “Jubilate Deo”, “O be joyful in the Lord!”(Ps. 100).
There is, however, a greater intensity to the idea of rejoicing through the encounter with the darkness of human sin and wickedness in all of its many and varied forms. It is found in our being recalled to God. That is the purpose of the witness of John. He is constantly pointing not to himself but, as he says, to the one who comes after him “whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose”. It is a touching image of humility which is always about openness to truth.
John’s witness is the counter to the narcissism and the attendant nihilism of our age. It is not about him; it is about Christ. He makes it perfectly clear to the Priests and Levites and to us that his witness is about another. No selfies here. His witness brings us to Christ whom he identifies as “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.”
What are we to make of that? Simply this. No rejoicing without judgment. Our return to a principle is our greatest joy, a joy made even greater through the realization of our darkness. Redire ad principia. A return to a principle, to the principle of our very being and existence, to the principle of the truth and being of all reality, a return to God.
It is all a kind of circling, a circling back to the one from whom we have strayed – ‘all we like sheep as it were – by being turned back to him in his turning to us. In a way we have come full circle. Today’s Gospel actually ends where the Gospel for The Sunday Next Before Advent actually begins at least in our Canadian Prayer Book. It is all about the turning, our being turned to the light which comes, “the true light which lightens every one who comes into the world”, the light of our souls and being.
John points us to the one in whom we find our true peace and joy. Advent is the spiritual counter to all and every form of anxiety and fearfulness. Such anxieties and fears belong to the pressures and stresses of expectations both our own and those of others. The focus becomes all too easily upon ourselves and upon what we want for others to do and be. Such expectations have a way of becoming demands and dictates which destroy any real joy. The pressures and tensions in families become overwhelming. Do we really think that we can make the best Christmas ever? That it is really all about our doing? The deep truth of this day and this week is that we wait upon the motions of God’s word coming to us in the gentle humanity of Christ. Such is the humility of God who reaches down to us not in condescension but in truth and mercy. My prayer is that we may be touched and healed by the gentleness of Christ.
John would remind us about the coming of God’s Word and Son as Light. It can only happen through the awareness of our darkness. All our efforts to make things right so easily end in making things worse. How then to turn again, to turn back to God? The Advent mantra is “repent ye, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand”. Yet that same reality is the basis of our rejoicing, too, “Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice”, for “the Lord is at hand.” The one who comes is “the Lamb of God”, a profoundly sacrificial and sacramental image, the one who “takes away the sin of the world”. This is more than all of the folly of our doings, more than all of the folly of our technocratic hubris that makes us think that we can make things better on the strength and power of ourselves.
We need the troubling darkness of this week to bring us to a kind of thoughtfulness. Mary was troubled in her mind at the angel’s salutation but that lead to her inquiry and to her active role and part in God becoming man through her. So, too, our troubles and anxieties can prompt us to learning about true peace and joy, the very things which Paul and John together teach us about the coming of Christ. In him we find “the peace of God which passeth all understanding”, meaning that it is something that surpasses human knowing. It is something which comes to us from God, not something which we could invent.
The witness of John points us to Christ. Already that is our joy and already that is our peace.
“He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light”
Fr. David Curry
Advent IV, 2016