Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent, 4:00pm Choral Evensong
“In the path of thy judgments, O Lord, we wait for thee;
thy memorial name is the desire of our souls”
Two figures dominate the spiritual landscape of Advent. They are John the Baptist and Mary, the Mother of our Lord. Together they illuminate something of the meaning of Advent for us and especially so on The Third Sunday in Advent which focuses on the ministry of repentance of John the Baptist and on the theme of gaudate, rejoicing, imaged in the rose candle of the Advent Wreath, reminding us of Mary’s role in salvation. The one points to Christ; the other carries the hope of the world in her womb. Nothing can come to birth in us unless their complementary yet contrasting attitudes to Christ are realised in our lives.
Advent is the season of penitential adoration. We are reminded of the darkness and the light. There is the darkness of sin by which we are less than ourselves. There is the light in which we find ourselves. The truth of our humanity is to be found in the truth of God. We have to say ‘no’ to the darkness in order to say ‘yes’ to the light.
The repentance that John the Baptist calls us to is not about a guilt trip – more beating up on ourselves or feeling sorry for ourselves. It is, instead, an honest recognition of the mystery of sin and the honest recognition of ourselves as sinners. It is captured in our confession of sin in its eloquent honesty that “we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep”, that “we have followed too much the devices and desires our own hearts”, that “we have offended against thy holy laws” in “thought” if not in “word and deed”, that “we have left undone those things which we ought to have done”, that “we have done those things which we ought not to have done”. Who isn’t caught up in this net of understanding? The conclusion is inescapably obvious that “there is no health in us”. We are not perfect and complete. It may be, as Shakespeare put it, that “there is something rotten in the state of Denmark”, but, more importantly, there is something rotten in us, in you and me, I am bound to say.
