Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent
admin | 24 December 2017“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”
We have come full circle from The Sunday Next Before Advent to The Fourth Sunday in Advent and indeed, largely by way of John’s Gospel. With the repeated acclamation by John the Baptist about Jesus as “the Lamb of God,” the Advent themes of expectation and longing for the redemption of our humanity reach a crescendo of intensity and excitement.
Today’s Gospel is known as “the record or the witness of John” and it presents a parade of questions and counter-claims about John the Baptist and the Christ. The repeated question about “Who art thou?” being asked of John is turned to the one who comes even on “the next day.” This year the very next day is Christmas Day.
It is a rich collection of images and ideas that this Sunday presents for us to ponder. “There was evening and there was morning, one day” we read in the Genesis story of creation. So now, too, it seems. Sunday for Christians is the Sabbath day because of the Resurrection of Christ, a day to ponder the mysteries of God in creation and redemption. Today is the last Sunday of Advent heralding the wonder of Christ’s nativity and yet today is also Christmas Eve. The next day is Christmas itself. All of the themes of the Advent are concentrated in the intensity of the questions belonging to the witness of John and are concluded in his statement, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” The intensity of the questions in the Gospel are complemented by the note of expectation and joy in the Epistle reading with its strong exhortation to rejoice, for “the Lord is at hand.”
“The Lord is at hand” means that God is with us, our Emmanuel, in the one who comes after John, the one who is worthy, it seems, of our attention and acknowledgement. We contemplate the mystery of God in Christ Jesus in whom alone we find peace. “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Christmas is not a game, a human invention, a figment of our imagination. No. It is about the wonder of God’s engagement with our humanity opening us out to peace and joy and love and hope. It passes human knowing because it is fundamentally about the motions of God coming to us in the humanity of Jesus. It does not negate the activity of our reasoning but gathers it into something more than all of the machinations and manipulations of an instrumental reason which seeks only to dominate and destroy.
That has been a large part of the pageant of the past century in spades. A dark world which is frightening and fearful when we forget God and forget the meaning of his coming. “In nothing be anxious,” Paul says to us in our anxieties and fears. For “The Lord is at hand” and indeed, “the next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
It is a rich Scriptural image that looks back to the Passover, to the sacrifices that belong to the liberation of the Hebrews from Egyptian oppression by God and to the recalling of that deliverance in the ritual commemoration of the Passover in the Jewish tradition that is taken up into the meaning of the Christian eucharist as well. Thus The Fourth Sunday in Advent grounds the mystery of the Advent and Christmas in the defining events of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ as well as the defining events of ancient Israel.
It is all a kind of circling about and around and into the mystery of God and it reaches a kind of crescendo of expectation and excitement today when we simply wait upon the mystery of God with us in the birth of Christ. The lessons of Advent prepare us for its meaning more than anything else. Not just the event but its significance. The ‘why’ of Christmas is shown to us in the pageant of Advent. There is the wonderful mystery of God, the counter to all our vanities and the follies of human reason and experience considered in itself. And in the Christian understanding, there is greater mystery of God with us in the intimacy of Christ’s holy birth, the mystery which becomes our joy and wonder.
But only if we will behold what John sees and proclaims. Something is required of us, not the busyness of Christmas in the folly of thinking that we can make Christmas. No. What is required of us is to behold the one who comes and let the mystery of God in his being with us move our hearts and minds with love and peace, with joy and hope. This day brings us to the day of all our joy, the day of human redemption, the eve and day of Christ’s holy birth. Rejoice and be glad. But above all, behold.
“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”
Fr. David Curry
Advent IV, 2017