The Lord is at hand
Advent reaches a high note of expectancy just as the questions of the Advent season come to a kind of crescendo on this The Fourth Sunday in Advent. Both Epistle and Gospel open us out to the “bountiful grace and mercy” of God coming to us in the quiet waiting and watching of Advent.
“The Lord is at hand”, Paul proclaims in his Letter to the Philippians and there is in this a wonderful sense of joy. “Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say, Rejoice.” God is the Lord and as God he is always at hand, always present, always near. Such is the truth of God. Such, we might say, is the simple “givenness of things”, as the novelist and modern reformed theologian, Marilynne Robinson, so wisely notes. The simple “givenness of things” is about the truth of God in whom all things have their being and their meaning. To be open to that realization is our joy which contrasts completely with the despairing nihilism which sees reality as something into which we are simply thrown, “the thrownness of being”, you might say. As if life and human experience were but an empty nothingness, altogether meaningless and without purpose or understanding. Such a view is utterly dogmatic and narrow. We need the questions of Advent to awaken us out of our various dogmatic slumbers, to awaken us to the divine gift of a world given for thought and delight.
The questions of Advent are more about us, about our understanding of God whose truth and majesty is eternal and as such is always with us. It is you and me who absent ourselves from the idea and the presence of God.
Advent prepares us for the radical Christian understanding of God being at hand, always near and always coming to us. That Christian understanding focuses primarily upon the coming of Christ and as such upon the meaning of God with us in the great defining term, “Emmanuel”, which means God with us. This morning we will sing the greatest of the Advent carols, the Veni Emmanuel, a 12th century medieval carol which enlarges in rich and wonderful scriptural terms the meaning of Christ as Emmanuel, God with us.
The Gospel for this day is known as the Record or the Witness of John. It abounds with questions. They are all questions about John the Baptist. “Who art thou?” the Priests and Levites from Jerusalem ask him. There is a kind of urgency in the question. “I am not the Christ” he replies, answering in the negative to what is clearly being assumed in the question. The question signals an expectation about the coming of the anointed one of God, the Christ. “What then? Art thou Elijah?” they ask, referencing one of the great and unusual prophetic figures of the Old Testament who became associated with the expectation of the coming of the Messiah and who was thought to have ascended into heaven. It is, again, a powerful association that signals something of the strangeness of John the Baptist. To this question, he simply answers, “No.” “Who art thou?” they ask again, “that we may give an answer to them that sent us.” And then comes one of the more intriguing questions that speaks directly to us in the quietness of Advent. “What sayest thou of thyself?”
All these questions are about John the Baptist but in the light of questions about God and Israel, about God and the world. What, then, is the witness of John? Well, it is notabout himself. It is notabout our preoccupations with ourselves for that is the way of darkness and despair. Christmas is not about calling attention to ourselves in our neediness and in our desire to control. John turns all the questions about himself into a witness to Christ, culminating in the last phrase of the Gospel reading. He sees Jesus coming unto him and says, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” He points us to Jesus, to “the Lord [who] is at hand,” present and always coming unto us.
About himself, he states that he is only to be understood in relation to the Lord. “I am,” he says, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord,” quoting “the prophet Isaiah.” It is a famous statement. Vox clamantis in deserto. The world is a desert, a wilderness as a result of our separation of ourselves from God the Creator in the story of the Fall. But God does not forsake his creation but seeks our redemption. A way, a path is made for the Lord in the wilderness of human sin and darkness. John the Baptist is the last of the prophets and, as Jesus said in last week’s Gospel, “more than a prophet” because he stands on the threshold of the fulfillment of all prophecy. What is that? Simply the insight into the presence of God with us now in the intimacy of Christ, now in the image of Christ as the Lamb of God. It is an image of sacrificial love.
We have not exhausted all the questions about John the Baptist. In naming his role and mission as the one sent to prepare the way of the Lord, the Pharisees then ask,“Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” These are all questions that relate to a sense of expectancy about the coming of a Messiah, a Saviour, but with all of the ambiguity about what that might mean. Something political and worldly? The triumph of one nation, one party, one tribe, over others? John’s answer once again turns us to Jesus Christ and to the meaning of his advent, his coming. John’s ministry is the preparation for that greater coming, a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He points us to Christ and awakens us to what we truly seek and need, the forgiveness of sins. “Behold, the Lamb of God”, he says.
That is the point of the darkness of Advent. It awakens us to the need and the desire for the healing light and grace of Christ, the one whom John identifies as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” an image concentrated for us in our liturgy in the words of the Agnus Dei and in the Gloria (which we will sing again at Christmas). Such words highlight that “the Lord is at hand.” His truth and presence are always with us. What is needed is our being prepared to behold him and to take delight in his truth and grace. Such will be our Christmas, our being with Emmanuel who is God with us. Like John the Baptist, it will be a matter of our witness in receiving him as Lord and Saviour, our Emmanuel.
The Lord is at hand
Fr. David Curry
Advent 4, 2018