Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent
“He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light”
We will hear these words on Christmas Eve in the great Gospel of the Incarnation. But today, on The Fourth Sunday in Advent, we hear precisely about that one who is “sent to bear witness of that light” without whom we can hardly understand anything of the mystery of Christmas. The Gospel today is known as “the record” or “the witness of John”, the witness of John the Baptist who points us directly to the meaning of Christ’s coming. “Behold the Lamb of God,” he says, “which taketh away the sin of the world.”
In the darkest time of nature’s year, we look to the light, but it is not the light of nature that concerns us so much as the light of God’s Truth and Word. That is the greater light which “shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not”. Light overcomes darkness and not the other way around. The darkness is more than the longest night of nature’s year in the winter solstice which falls in the middle of this week, this longest week in the longest possible Advent season, marking the slow, slow turn towards spring. No. There is the far greater darkness of human sin and evil countered by the far, far greater light of God.
The readings for today are centuries old. They signal a sense of expectancy and heightened anticipation. The darkness of sin and judgment already gives way to a sense of joy and gladness. All the questions of Advent, that season of holy questions, reach a kind of crescendo in the Gospel of “the witness of John”, in the intensity of the questions about John which turn us to Christ. The Epistle reading from Philippians, too, conveys this sense of joyous anticipation in its repeated insistence on the notes of rejoicing and peace all of which counter the darkness of our anxieties. In every way, these readings speak to our contemporary dilemmas and concerns. We are, I am afraid, deeply anxious and uncertain, afraid and troubled about our world and day and about ourselves. Yet the winters of our discontent are really always about ourselves.
What these readings highlight are matters of the soul. They speak to the radical meaning of Christ’s coming as redeemer and saviour. That makes no sense at all if we somehow assume that we are all-sufficient in and of ourselves. The awareness of the darkness not only of nature but of human endeavour should provide a necessary reality check on that score. It is ancient biblical wisdom that “it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves”. “We are his people,” the psalmist says, “and the sheep of his pasture.” Therein lies a note of rejoicing as well. “Jubilate Deo”, “O be joyful in the Lord!”(Ps. 100).
