3rd Sunday of Advent: Cycle A 22-23
THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Isaiah 35:1-6a, 10 | James 5:7-10 | Matthew 11:2-11
Oh God, who see how your people faithfully await the feast of the Lord’s nativity, enable us, we pray to attain the joys of so great a salvation and to celebrate them always with solemn worship and glad rejoicing through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever, amen.
The season of Advent is all about being awakened, and this third Sunday of Advent is a very interesting Sunday, because it talks so blatantly, clearly about the joy that we should be having when we imagine the unfolding of life around us. There was a woman, lived 600 years ago. Her name was Julia of Norwich. She was outside of London, and the interesting thing about her life is that she became so amazingly clear in describing the world as God has created it in a way that created joy inside the hearts of everyone. And joy isn’t necessarily being super-happy and ⎯ I don't know, but think of joy not so much as going around and being in a party mood. But joy has something to do with wellbeing, a sense of all is well, and that’s the very quote that Julia of Norwich is most known for. “All is well, and all will be well.” And she lived during a time in the world where it was not anything good ⎯ well, it was good in some ways, but there was a lot of bad in there, similar to the bad things that are happening to our world. There was a plague at the time where 30 percent of the people in Northern Europe died. Think of it, 30 percent, and then the pope ⎯ there were two popes, and the church was in chaos. And so the church wasn’t doing very well. There was this enemy, called the Black Plague, destroying people, and yet she’s a woman who preached so clearly and so succinctly that we should be people of optimism ⎯optimism.
Maybe that’s what we need today. We’ve been through our own kind of plague, COVID, and now other things are coming up. It’s the season of flu. It’s the ⎯ other respiratory diseases are there. So we might be looking at this world and saying, “This is just a mess. This is terrible, and maybe this is the beginning of the end. Or maybe we’re being punished for our sins.” And one of the dangers of Christianity is basically oversimplifying this whole thing. This life we’re living is a mystery, and we’re here to become, to evolve, to grow, and this growing, this becoming is never over, never complete, because it’s tied to our very existence. We’re supposed to be engaged in things that are difficult, painful, horrible, and we’re to grow through them. We’re to become through them.
So let’s look at these readings from that perspective of what it is that we’re supposed to be engaged in that’s mysterious, that is hidden, that you have to really have a way of seeing that is not logical and easy to describe and impossible to prove. But the first reading I love, because it’s all about this incredible promise from God that there is this thing that he longs to create inside of you and inside of me, and it’s called abundance and glory. And there is something about the glory of God that you have to believe in. The glory of God is man, the human race, fully alive, fully awake, fully alert and then somehow feeling that all is well. And so you see images of, “Be strong. Don’t be afraid. Strengthen your hands. Strengthen your hearts, and open your eyes. Open your ears to hear the truth, to see reality, and then you’ll be alive, leaping like a stag. And you’ll be able to sing.” Nothing about that ⎯ those are all images of a beautiful promise from God that we are in the process of becoming who we’re called to be through a process that doesn’t, at times, feel or look or sense like good things, but they are there for a purpose, and they have meaning. And they change us, and we grow. So what’s necessary in order to be in a place of peace in the midst of chaos? Patience. “Be patient, my brothers and sisters,” James tells us. And realize that it’s like this earth, that is a good image of who we are ⎯ think of the earth, the ground as redemptive, the redemptive love of God, and we are the plant. And our roots go deep into this promise of God that he isn’t going to save us, he is saving us. It’s a dynamic, living thing, and he saves us through the difficulties and the pain that we endure. And then the rains come, which is forgiveness, and then we’re in this process of becoming.
There’s another passage of scripture that talks about the farmer goes out. He looks at everything, and he doesn’t see it changing. And then he comes back a week later, and oh my God, it’s changed so much. I love that image of, if you’re thinking about, “I don’t see something happening right now,” but if I look back over six months of my life, I can tell you from my own standpoint, there has been a darkness that absolutely has led into light. So that’s the promise, that we will live in the light, and the patience is what we need to be engaged in. And then we realize that this God who has come has come with an incredible gift, and the incredible gift is vindication ⎯ vindication. We’re no longer held to what we’ve done that’s wrong. We’re freed and recompensed. Everything is paid. Our debts are paid.
So there’s something about negative things that happen that we tend to imagine that somehow it’s our fault, or especially if we’re at a bad place mentally or emotionally, and we beat ourselves up, because we shouldn’t be this way. And yet we’re told over and over again, “Don’t focus on who is the cause of this, but somehow greet it with some kind of joy, some kind of awareness that it’s so valuable.” And I look at the promise of God coming to us, and there’s something so beautiful about that image of God coming to us. And I don't know if you hear it like I used to always hear it, is that means, at the end of the world, God is going to come. But the truth is God is coming daily to you and to me. He dwells in you. He’s part of you, and he's the only source that I know, in my mind and heart, could possibly give us this sense of wellbeing in the midst of darkness. That’s his gift. That’s his presence inside your heart, this God who became incarnate in the world, and if we believe that miracle, then why wouldn’t we believe the miracle that he could also come into you and into me, not in the same sense that we are becoming Jesus literally. No, but we have within us the same thing Jesus had within him that enabled him to do the most extraordinary things, the miracles, blind see, lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, the deaf hear, the poor feel something like life coming into them. What beautiful images those are about the work of God inside of you and me, and his coming then is there to offset the struggles and the pain and the disappointments and the suffering. And it’s interesting that you listen to that same list in the other reading, and in this reading, he adds two things: lepers are cleansed, dead are raised. Lepers are cleansed is the image of sin is forgiven. The dead are raised is the fact that not simply that we won’t die and go into a nonexistence but will continue to exist. No, he’s talking about, when you feel absolutely empty and broken and sinful and unworthy of anything, that’s a kind of death. And from it, when you surrender to it, when you accept it as a process that brings life, there’s resurrection.
So what are we asked to see? You’ll notice that Jesus, when John the Baptist sends his disciples to Jesus, it’s so interesting, it gives you a sense that John and Jesus both were hoping and longing ⎯ well, I’d say John was hoping and longing for a Messiah and didn’t realize it was Jesus. It was his cousin. It would be hard for him to imagine that, “My cousin is ⎯ the little boy I played with, when I was a young boy, he’s the Messiah.” But John knew it by the words that Jesus spoke, and isn’t it interesting the way Jesus responded to this question. “Just look at what I’m doing. Look at the effectiveness of a God who is in me, making the world so different in terms of our response to it, that we can be different than what we would suppose that we should be because of all these causes.” If things are falling apart, then I’m falling apart. If things are bad, then I’m bad. If things are dark, then I’m in darkness. No, but Jesus’ response is, “Wait a minute. John wants to know who I am. I want to tell you who John is.” So Jesus said, “Look, John, he is the one that sums up the entire Old Testament. He is the one who is the message that has been longed for throughout the whole Old Testament, and that is, ‘I’m sending ⎯ I’m sending God. I’m sending me. I’m coming to you, and I’m going to dwell with you.’” And that’s what John is proclaiming, even though he didn’t realize it was Jesus, but he was proclaiming the most amazing transformation that human beings could experience because of divinity living inside of them. And so when he says, “John the Baptist is the greatest of all the prophets,” meaning the message of the Old Testament, the greatest message of the Old Testament is Jesus, Jesus, God in man, and yet when he says how great John the Baptist and the message is, he’s saying, “That’s nothing compared to a person, you, me, who have this conviction, this knowledge that this coming that we talk about, the longing of God to come back and to ⎯ for Jesus to come back and save us.” No, that isn’t at the end. That’s happening right now to you and to me, and the sign of it, an amazing, amazing optimism. All is well, and all will be well. God bless you.
Father, awaken us to the gift of your indwelling presence so that this promise that you will bring peace in the midst of turmoil, joy in the midst of sadness, freedom in the midst of slavery, all of these promises that you’ve made to us, help them to become part of who we are, not just thoughts that we can go to if we remember them. But just our very being is filled with optimism, and the joy of knowing that we’re participating in the transformation of the human race and becoming more and more like you who made us to be filled with joy. And we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.