Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent, 2:00pm service for the Atlantic Ministry of the Deaf

admin | 27 November 2011

“Then Jesus turned”

Advent Sunday marks a time of renewal, a time of endings and beginnings. There is the Christian tradition of reflecting in the season of Advent on the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell and Heaven. And there is the idea of God’s coming to us in Jesus Christ, which marks the beginning of a new year of grace. The great Advent Collect or prayer captures both these sensibilities: Jesus’ coming , ”visit[ing] us in [the] great humility” of his humble birth in Bethlehem; and Jesus’ “com[ing] again in his glorious Majesty” as Judge and Redeemer.

These endings and beginnings all turn upon one thing: our life in Christ. “Come and see,” Jesus says 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 is the nature and purpose of our Christian lives. The Advent theme is signalled here 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. 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.

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.