Romans 15.4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
+ So, do
you want to feel good on this Second Sunday in Advent? I feel this good this
morning. I feel really good this morning.
It is my
birthday today. I’m 44 years old. I’ve just this past week kicked the diet soda
habit. I’ve been ordained for ten years. My twelfth book of poems is due to be
published in March. I am in the end
process of finishing a new book—a book of short fiction. I
am very fortunate to be in charge of a rapidly growing and expanding congregation
of eclectic, visionary prophets who are leading the way into what the Church of
the future will no doubt be. I have a great mother. I have great friends and family
and colleagues.
So, I’m
feeling very good and very thankful this this morning.
But do you want to feel good this morning? Do
you want to remember something that will warm the cockles of your hearts (I don’t
know what cockles are or where they are, but it sounds nice to have them
warmed).
OK. So, let’s
go back. Let’s go back to when we young and innocent. Let’s go back to this
time of the year when we were kids. We have just turned on our big 1960s 1970s
1980s console TV.
And what do
we see? We see a blizzard, people pushing their cars from snow drifts. We see
newspaper headlines coming at us: COLD
WAVE IN 12TH DAY and FOUL WEATHER MAY POSTPONE CHRISTMAS.
Then we see
the credits: RANKIN/BASS PRESENT
There’s Sam
the Snowman, voiced by none other than the great Burl Ives, who proceeds to
sing the title song.
RUDOLPH
THE REDNOSED REINDEER.
You
feel pretty good right now don’t you? And no, this is NOT a Christmas sermon. I
heard a Christmas sermon last Sunday at the Cathedral on 1 Advent, so I am
making clear: this is NOT a Christmas sermon!
Well,
this past week I was reminded of this wonderful Christmas tradition after our
own James Mackay posted this Facebook update:
As a child, and even today, sometimes, I could identify with the Island
of Misfit Toys.
The
Island of Misfit Toys is that magical place where all the misfit, slightly off
toys went. A place where the toy train
has square wheels on its caboose, or the cowboy who rides an ostrich, or a
water pistol the quirts jelly. I
responded to his post with this:
If there was an Episcopal Church on the Island of Misfit Toys, I could
be the Priest and you could be the organist. It could be called St.
Rudolph's-in-the-Breech. Or the Church of the Holy Fools of Christ.
I
think the Island of Misfit Toys is a great analogy of what the Kingdom of God
is like. Probably some pop theologian has already made this connection somewhere.
A kingdom built up not of the perfect,
the best, the brightest. But a Kingdom built up of Misfits,
thought misfits made perfect in the eyes of God.
Well, this
morning in our Gospel we are encountering the person who probably could’ve been
the Prophet on the Island of Misfit Toys. Just imagine: St. John the Baptist on the
Island of Misfit Toys. I think he’s
actually fit in pretty well, though would scare those poor toys. He’d really scare poor Charlie-in-the-Box.
In this
morning’s Gospel, we are faced with this formidable figure of John the Baptist.
There is no getting around him. There he
is—loud and, excuse me for saying, but he sounds a bit crazy to me and I’m sure
to a few of the people who heard him. The
impression we get from Matthew is of someone we probably wouldn’t want to meet
in a dark alley. He comes across to us
through the ages as a kind of gnarled mountain man. He is dirty. He is not very well mannered. He is shouting strange words and prophecies.
He is frightening. I would probably
guess his hygiene wasn’t that great. And,
no doubt, he may have smelled.
Certainly it would be difficult for any
of us to take the words of a man like this seriously. Especially when he’s saying things like,
“prepare, for the Kingdom of heaven draws near” “the axe is being laid to the
root of the trees” and “the chaff will be burned in an unquenchable fire. “
Somehow, in the way John the Baptist
proclaims it, this is not so much hopeful as frightening. It is a message that startles us and jolts us
at our very core. But this is the true message of Advent.
Like John the Baptist and those who
eagerly awaited the Messiah, this time of waiting—this time of hope—can be almost
painful. When we look at it from that perspective, we see that maybe John isn’t
being quite as difficult and windy as we initially thought. Rather his message
is one of almost excruciating expectation and hope.
Hope.
It’s something we all feel occasionally,
but it’s something we very rarely ever discuss or personally examine.
Hope.
What is
hope in our lives? What do we honestly
hope for? Or do we? Do we hope anymore?
I think we
do. I hope we still hope. I don’t know
if we necessarily name it as hope. I
don’t know if we articulate it as such. But
I think we all live with a certain hope. Because when we think for one moment about
having no hope, everything suddenly seems bleak and horrendous.
Now to put it in its proper context,
maybe the only thing we hope in anymore is God. Of course, if that’s all we hope in, I think
we’re doing pretty well. But even then,
I don’t think we ever really think about the hope we might feel. Hope for us,
as Christians, is a matter of confidence. It is a matter of believing that no matter how
fractured and crazy this life gets, there is the promise of newness and
fullness to this life. And, as this
season of Advent promises us, it is also a matter of waiting for Christ to come
in glory.
Like John, we are waiting in joyful
hope for our God to come to us, to appear to us as one of us in Jesus. As we know, waiting, even in hope, can be
excruciating. It can be more difficult
than anything we can possibly imagine.
So, what do
we, as Christians, do with this hopeful waiting? This season of Advent offers us a time to slow
down a bit spiritually and to look long and hard at our lives as hopeful
Christians. It is a time for us to
prepare for God’s coming to us. It is a
time for us to shed some of those things that separate us from God. It is a time for us to find a place in
ourselves, if no where else, in which we can go off and be alone with God. A place in which we can wait for God
longingly.
In Advent we can fully express our
hope. Because, we are hoping. We are looking longingly for God to come to
us. So, yes, John’s message in the
wilderness is a frightening one at times. It is frightening because the Light he is
telling us is coming to us can be frightening, especially when we’re used to
the darkness.
But it is
also a message of hope and longing. It
is a message meant to wake us from our slumbering complacency. His is a voice calling us to sit up and take
notice.
The kingdom
of heaven is near. That Kingdom of
people like us here at St. Stephen’s, misfits, people on the fringe, people who
swim against the stream, people who step outside the expected boundaries of the
world a bit. That Kingdom is near. In fact it’s nearer than we can probably ever
hope or imagine.
So, let us be
prepared. Let us watch. Let us wait. Most importantly, let us hope. For this anticipation—this wonderful and
beautiful hope—is merely a pathway on which the Christ Child can come to us
here in our darkness and appear before us as one of us.
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