Sermon for the Sunday Next Before Advent, 10:30am service
“Then Jesus turned”
As images go this one is particularly significant. The idea of turning is provocatively before us in the Lesson from Jeremiah, in the gradual psalm, in the Gospel reading from John, and most poignantly in the baptism of Kaitlyn Jacoba Marilyn this morning. The turning is twofold: there is God’s turning to us and there is our turning to God, the turning of our hearts and minds to God. “I will hearken what the Lord God will say:/ for he shall speak peace unto his people and to his saints, and unto them that turn their heart to him,” as the Psalmist puts it.
Today marks a turning point in the Church Year, a time of transition from one year to the next, a time at once of endings and beginnings. It is captured in the way this Sunday is designated, The Sunday Next Before Advent. Times of transition provide the opportunities and the occasions for renewal; they recall us to the radical nature of our spiritual beginnings, to the radical idea of God’s turning to us. “Turn thou us, O Lord, and so shall we be turned” is our prayer. In a way the whole pattern of the Church Year signaled in the readings of Scripture recall us to the idea of Revelation, God makes something known about himself and about us. Because of that we can begin again.
The lesson from the prophet Jeremiah recalls God’s turning to Israel in exile in Egypt and in Babylon, to the idea of God delivering Israel from bondage and captivity. “The Lord liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt” prompts the idea of a greater marvel in the eyes of the prophet, the idea of God delivering “the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all the countries whither I had driven them.” The prophet looks to God to redeem and restore Israel and “they shall dwell in their own land” rather than living as exiles. More than the obvious political overtones that have become such a troubling part of the long twentieth century, there is a profoundly spiritual principle at work here, namely the theme of God’s righteousness as providing the true basis for our dwelling safely as a community. The passage looks to God raising unto David, meaning the house of David, “a righteous Branch,” a King who shall reign and prosper. It is a prophecy about the Messiah, the coming of the anointed one, a prophecy which Christians interpret as fulfilled in Christ and in the inauguration of a new kingdom that is first and foremost spiritual, not political, the idea of dwelling with God in Christ.
