by CCW | 20 November 2011 14:42
The Sunday Next Before Advent – proxima ante. What a lovely conjunction of prepositions, those little words that give direction and position to words and ideas in their relation to one another! With the word ‘next’, we have a sense of continuity, as in a series where one thing follows upon another, next being what follows in sequence. With the word ‘before’, we are alerted to the beginnings of something new; in this case, the season of Advent. This Sunday, with its double prepositions of next and before, signals a transition. It is a time of endings and beginnings; a time, too, of renewal.
The endings and beginnings all turn upon one thing: our life in Christ. “Come and see,” Jesus says here in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, as part of the dialogue of question and answer with two of the disciples of John the Baptist who, as it turns out, are about to make a transition and become the disciples of Jesus. “What do you seek?” Jesus has asked them, having turned to them as they were following him after hearing John the Baptist’s remarkable pronouncement about Jesus as “the Lamb of God.” They had replied, oddly it may seem with another question, “Rabbi – Master, where dwellest thou?”
Jesus’ question and statement are the first forms of direct speech by Jesus in John’s Gospel. “What seek ye?” “Come and see.” The first question; the first command. There is something profound and wonderful in these words. They speak at once to the whole pageant of our lives in faith – seeking ultimately what God wants for us which is to be found in our coming and seeing but also in our abiding with Jesus. This has been, we might say, the nature and purpose of the Trinity season. Yet, there is the Advent theme, too, signalled here, at once by John the Baptist, who points out Jesus to us, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” and in the simple but profound moment of Jesus turning to the disciples of John to ask them, “what seek ye?” Advent is about our turning back to the center of our lives but only because the center has turned to us. “Then Jesus turned.”
One of the great psalms of the Advent, Psalm 80, puts this in the form of a prayer that captures with increasing intensity what we really seek. “Turn us again, O God;/show the light of thy countenance, and we shall be whole.” The intensity is increased not only with the repetition of the refrain but also by changes to use of the vocative, calling out to God, “O God,” then, “O God of hosts,” and finally, “O Lord God of hosts.” God turns to us to turn us to him in Jesus Christ. He is “the Lord our Righteousness,” as Jeremiah puts it. The rightness or the right order of our lives is found in our being with God. In the Christian understanding, this is only because Christ is our righteousness, the one who makes us right with God, the one in whom “we shall be whole.” “We have found him,” Philip says, “of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
But only because Jesus has turned and finds us following. And only if we are following him can we find him and be with him. It is the project of our lives, the constant turning to the center of our lives, to the one who has turned to us.
The teaching of the law and the prophet, Philip is saying, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. This is a fundamental feature of the Christian understanding. Jesus is identified here in this Gospel passage as “the Lamb of God,” as “Rabbi or Master,” as “the Messiah,” “the Christ,” the anointed one, and as “Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” All true but in different ways which relate to Jesus as the center of our lives, as the one in whom our humanity finds its truth and salvation because he is God with us.
Unlike most of the gospel readings at Holy Communion which have been appointed to be read for centuries upon centuries upon centuries, this one has been used only in Canada and only in the last fifty years. The ancient gospel passage for this Sunday for more than a millennium and a half, was the story from John’s Gospel of the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness, a story which we hear as well in mid-Lent. Why would it be used on The Sunday Next Before Advent? Because of two things. First, the theme of the gathering up of the fragments from the wilderness feast, and secondly, the response to this miraculous sign which Jesus did, “This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world.”
Something is made known about Jesus in terms of his coming, his advent to us, as it were, and something is made known about the purpose of his coming for us, our being fed and nurtured by him who is “the bread of life.” Ultimately, too, the image extends to the gathering up of the fragments of our lives into their fullness and truth in Christ. He is the center of our lives who not only turns to us but does so that we may be gathered to him and find our truth in him. Once again, the Trinity and Advent themes are present in counter-point, each informing and turning back upon each other.
We turn to him who has turned to us. Advent is about that turning of God to us so that we can turn to him and be found in him. He comes as light and life to gather us out of the darkness of our sins and sorrows. Such is the holy joy of Advent, the holy joy of our life in Christ.
The joy is that we can begin again, turning to Christ who is our beginning and end, Christ who is the center of our lives. This is the great Christian message, the message of hope and joy, the message of grace and forgiveness, the message of truth and salvation. We have a center to turn to because Christ has turned to us. God comes to us that we may come to him. Such is Advent and such is our life in faith, our turning to him who has turned to us.
Fr. David Curry
Sunday Next Before Advent
November 20th, 2011
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2011/11/20/sermon-for-the-sunday-next-before-advent-2/
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