The 3rd Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 61:1-2A, 10-11 | 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 | John 1:6-8, 19-28

Grant your faithful, almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet Christ with righteous deeds at his coming so that, gathered at his right hand, they may be worthy to possess the heavenly kingdom.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

Last week, I went to a doctor to have my eye operated on. The issue really was not my eye, but the muscle that held my eye was not functioning very well, and so I was having a real problem with double vision. And without glasses, I saw, very distinctly, two of everything, and then it was amazing that this operation, which was not that difficult on me ⎯ it took just one day, and without glasses, I saw absolutely one vision where always I saw two. And somehow it just really impacted me. I don't know why. I don't know whether my brain had to make an adjustment or whatever, but all of a sudden, I felt different. I just thought, “There’s something in me that’s changed.” And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that one of the things I continually do, especially as one who’s been ordained since Vatican II, every Sunday I work with an Old Testament and a New Testament, and there’s always this sort of separation that I have in my head about them. One was like, well, one was for when we were living then. The new one is for us now. The Old Testament is wrong, and the New Testament’s right. Always there was some division, and I think what’s happened, if I can just use this operation as a kind of metaphor, I feel like something has come together. And it’s going to sound maybe strong because ⎯ I’ll try my best to tell you how I feel about the Old and New Testament, and it goes like this. They’re both correct. They’re both timed perfectly for the people who listened to them, and even though we might say, “Well, all the people have already listened to the Old Testament. They’ve worked with it, and they’ve got that down. Now they move over to the New Testament.” No, because people keep entering into this world over and over again, and we always begin with the kind of Old Testament understanding of right and wrong. That’s how we learn as children. We all go through this process.

What’s beautiful about the process is it begins with a lot of logic, and the Old Testament is very logical and pretty much understandable for the brain. And we see that, if we do the right thing, we get rewarded. If we do the wrong thing, we get punished. It’s pretty simple, and many people need that very simple thing to hold them steady in the work that God has given them. Choose always to do what is right. Choose never to do what is wrong. But we know that that keeps us in pretty much of a childlike state, and if you listen attentively to the readings of this beautiful Sunday of Advent, it’s so clear that one of the big changes that happened from the Old Testament to the New Testament is who’s in charge, who is doing the work. In the Old Testament, it seems clear. It’s up to us to always choose to do the right thing. Otherwise, we lose our connection with God, and the New Testament is all about God changing us, doing something within us, clothing us in an image of a bridegroom or a bride connecting with this beautiful creature called God. And he’s there to say, “I’ve come to give you something that you’ve longed for forever, and this thing that I long to give you is my presence. I want to enter into you. I want to marry you. I want to be a part of you, and when I’m in you, it’s like a force of growth and transformation, and you have this power in you.”

It’s clear in the New Testament. We are anointed like Jesus was anointed, and that anointing is the ability that we have to do something that the Old Testament does not talk about at all, and that is an intention of transformation ⎯ an intention of transformation. The Old Testament is about doing what is right and being punished if you don’t, and there’s some value in that for a lot of people. But then we move into something that seems so radically different, but maybe it isn’t so different. And that is that we now believe that there is a power given to us by God, who will then live within our hearts, and in that presence that he has given us, there is power. And instead of simply condemning those who do wrong and honoring those who do right, we’re invited into a very different relationship with sin, that sin becomes an opportunity, an opportunity for those of us who understand the fullness of God’s message that our response to sin can change the world. And the change is from the Old Testament to the New Testament, even though in many ways, the Old Testament still works. But rather than demand justice and demand retribution and making everything fair when something goes wrong, we’re invited to have a very different response to sin, a very different response to our own faults and weaknesses. They are the opportunities that God has given us, in the New Testament, to respond to these things with a healing force. The indwelling presence of Jesus is like the presence of Jesus in the world, and when Jesus was in the world, he had this wonderful power of knowing that there were things in people that kept them from living the life that they longed to. They couldn’t see the truth. They couldn’t hear the wisdom that was there. They couldn’t get to where they should be or do the work they were called to do. So many miracles were therapeutic, and we can see this incredible gift given to this human being called Jesus. And then he looks at us in saying, “Listen, the reason I came into the world is so I can give you this gift that I have. I want you to feel it entirely, spirit, soul, body. I’m preserving you blamelessly in this world so that you can be a healer, a transformer, a source of life for those in darkness, not telling them that they now will be punished, but they can be transformed, the intention of transformation.” It seems not to be at odds with everything in the Old Testament to me now, but it seems to be just the fullness of what we need as a people who are drawn into this promise of creating the kingdom of heaven here on this planet, here on this earth.

And so it has something to do with the idea of baptism, because that’s the gospel theme. And I want to go back to the baptism of Jesus, because it is the moment when, I think, we could say Jesus became fully aware of what his ministry was going to be. Jesus was always the Son of God. There’s no doubt that that was always there, but the interesting thing about his baptism was something happened to him. And maybe it was just for the crowd. Maybe it was also for Jesus when the voice of his Father from heaven was audibly heard to say, “This is my beloved Son. My spirit is now in him. I have anointed him to be me on this planet, to be my healing power on this earth,” incredible promise. And we know that we too are baptized like that, and John’s baptism was really basically reminding people that they needed to change, and it was up to them to make the change. The baptism of Jesus was something radically different. It was the pouring of a power into us that makes such a difference in terms of how we live our life. Can I be free of any kind of justice and retaliation and demanding somebody give me back what they took? Maybe, but there seems like there’s some part in the world that that still operates, but then at the same time ⎯ and it’s like it’s different, but it’s the same. You look at the person that you might have asked to return what they have taken, but at the same time, you long for the whole experience for that person to be something that you anointed as God’s presence in this world, also look at that person and want them ⎯ nothing other than want them to change, to see, to understand what they’ve done. To turn away from it, to be that kind of anointment, to have that anointment, to have that ability in this world is a beautiful, beautiful complement to a world of justice.

It’s not justice or mercy. It’s justice in mercy, both together. That’s the key. How often I have tried to somehow figure out how they work together, and I just feel like now it just makes total sense to me. We need both. We need justice. We need mercy. We need to correct one another when we do something wrong. At the same time, we need to love one another in our brokenness and believe, through that love that we have for each other, people change. People are made new. People enter into a new beginning. That’s the theme of this whole wonderful season of Advent. A change has come. It doesn’t take away the old. It enhances, enriches, enlivens it so that it becomes filled with hope, growth and change. I pray that blessing for me and for all of us, amen.

Father, you have made all things one.  You’ve brought unity into a world that seems so separated and divided.  Bless us with the wisdom of our hearts to see this oneness.  Our mind is mostly comfortable with either/or, right or wrong, but there’s so much more than that.  Bless us with wisdom, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.