by CCW | 23 November 2025 10:00
In the senescence of the year comes Christ the King, striding across the barren fields of our humanity to gather us into his everlasting love (with apologies to T.S. Eliot). What is that coming? It is his Advent, his coming to us as beginning and end and so this Sunday with its wonderful collocation of prepositions – next and before – marks an ending and a beginning, a time of transition which concentrates for us the deeper theological meaning of Christ’s Advent. It is now and always.
T.S. Eliot captures something of this in his poem East Coker of the Four Quartets. It begins with “in my beginning is my end” and ends with “in my end is my beginning.” Such is a kind of circling around and into the mystery of God in the Advent of Christ.
There is the gathering together of all of the scattered and broken pieces of our lives to their wholeness and end in Christ and there is our beginning again to embark upon the pageant of Christ’s Advent towards us in Word and in flesh, in judgement and mercy, in grace and glory, that accomplishes the redemption of humanity. The challenge for us is to enter once into the radical meaning of God coming and being with us.
For centuries upon centuries, the Gospel for this Sunday, which was always the Sunday Next Before Advent regardless of the number of Sundays that preceded it, was John’s account of the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness, a reading also used on the Fourth Sunday in Lent. There the emphasis was on the theme of refreshment and of God’s Providence in providing for our humanity in the pilgrimage journey of our lives. “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” What was gathered up were twelve baskets filled with the fragments from the wilderness banquet, a basket for each of the twelve tribes of Israel, on the one hand, and for each of the Apostles of the Apostolic Church, on the other hand. But here, read on this Sunday, it marks the greater theme of the gathering of all things to their unity and truth in God; in short, the end and purpose of our humanity as found in God, “that nothing be lost.”
That theme of the gathering in the wilderness complements the equally ancient reading from Jeremiah which looks back to the Exodus journey where the Lord through Moses brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt and to the Davidic kingship in which the tribes of Israel were united but both moments now seen by Jeremiah in the impending Babylonian captivity as the hope and promise of the return of Israel. Yet in the Christian understanding, “rais[ing] unto David a righteous Branch” echoes Isaiah’s prophecy about the Messiah, an allusion or prophecy about Christ, “the Lord our Righteousness”; in short, a judgement and restoration theme.
The 1962 Canadian Prayer Book makes one of very few changes to the ancient ecumenical and eucharistic lectionary with the reading from John 1 in place of the traditional reading about the feeding in the wilderness. John the Baptist, looking upon Jesus, says to his disciples “Behold the Lamb of God.” Thus the Lord our Righteousness is the Lamb of God whose sacrifice for us is our life, especially as concentrated for us in the sacrament, the means of his being with us. The disciples hearing John’s words now follow Jesus. In a way it is the gathering up of all of the moments of law and prophecy. John the Baptist, as we will learn in the pageant of Advent, is “a prophet and yet more than a prophet” because he is the messenger of God sent to prepare thy way before thee.
Here the Baptist points to Jesus just as Jesus later will point to John and to the purpose of John’s ministry which is entirely about the radical meaning of his advent or coming to us. It is really all about the constant gathering of all things to God and especially ourselves. But how?
“Jesus turned.” Such simple and yet such profound words. That turning of Jesus to the disciples of John signals the whole meaning of his advent now and always. Jesus turns to us and turns us to him. And why? For our redemption and joy which depends upon both judgement and mercy.
The introit psalm for this Sunday captures these two sides: “Turn us, O God our Saviour, / and let thine anger cease from us./ Wilt thou be displeased at us for ever?/ and wilt thou stretch out thy wrath from one generation to another?” This conveys a strong sense of our awareness of our own sinfulness. “Wilt thou not turn again and quicken us,/ that they people may rejoice in thee?” Thus out of sin and judgment comes life and joy. To speak of God’s wrath and anger is to use human speech for God about ourselves. It is not about attributing to God what belongs to human emotions or passions, such as wrath and anger, but rather the reverse. Lancelot Andrewes notes that where we find affections or passions attributed to God, “our rule is ever to reflect the same affection upon ourselves which is put upon Him; to be jealous over ourselves, to be angry or grieved with ourselves for that, which is said to anger or to grieve God”. In other words, it concerns us, not God, in our turning away from God and then our being turned back to God
Advent is really about two turnings: God’s turning to us and our turning to God. “What seek ye?” Jesus asks the disciples of John. His question draws out of them the universal longing of our humanity to abide in the very truth which defines our being; to know even as we are known. But that can only be realized by God’s turning to us. Yet both motions, our turning to God and God turning to us come from God. God works in us to return us to the purpose of our creation which is by definition more than what we can achieve on our own. Christ’s invitation is to come and see what God seeks for us, now and always. It is found in his turning to us upon which our turning to him depends.
In that twofold turning is the gathering up of all things; all the fragments and broken bits of our lives and world are gathered into their truth and wholeness in the one who is “the Lord our Righteousness,” the one whom we behold as “the Lamb of God.” Ultimately his turning to us is his sacrifice for us in his love for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. No greater turning. No greater gathering. If we have hearts how can they not be both stirred and shaken, moved in the desire for God? Such is the union of our seeking and God’s turning, God working in us and we in him. It is the antidote, the only antidote to the emptiness of our souls, and the nihilism of our culture. We find him in whom we are found.
Fr. David Curry,
Sunday Next Before Advent, 2025
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2025/11/23/sermon-for-the-sunday-next-before-advent-15/
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