My friends, it is good to be here, thanks be to God.
It is, indeed, the Second Sunday of Advent. We have lit the second candle in the wreath, we have said the collect together, and listened to the lectionary which provides us with the teaching for this Sunday of the Church calendar.
And I want to reflect with you on the lectionary for today from a point of view inspired by paradox, by our discovery of new truths hidden in what are, by all accounts, contradictory realities.
Paradox, to put it another way, enables us to find truth in complexity.
So let us look at it.
In the traditional setting of each of the four Sundays of this liturgical season (Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love) today is the Sunday of Advent concerned with peace, and more specifically so, the peace which we know in and trough our hopeful waiting, our expectation of the coming of God, fully into our humanity, incarnated of Mary the Virgin, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
This is also, one could say, the Sunday of John the Baptist, because the symbol and reality of a prophet, and archetypically so a John the Baptist-like prophet, colors throughout our Lectionary for today.
So, this is a Sunday of Advent concerned with peace, and also a Sunday when the lectionary emphasizes prophecy, and prophets.
And this is our first paradox today. This apparent contradiction between our speech about ‘peace’, and what we understand about prophets and, specifically so, John the Baptist.
‘Peace’ is not something we necessarily associate with prophets. Certainly not our most common understanding of ‘peace’ as the uneventful, the calm, the conflict-free.
And, almost by definition, prophets are not cuddly, peaceful characters.
Prophets speak by the command of their convictions, the fiery conviction of the voice of God, addressing our failure to live as His children, as human beings commanded and made to love and grow in that love.
Indeed, prophets rise the highest, and fiercest, in times and places of injustice, human degradation and rampant inequality.
This is why, in our Christian tradition, we deem as prophets not only John the Baptist, but also every man and woman who, whether from our own Christian standpoint or not, has risen and still rises to the challenge of denouncing what is not just, and pointing to what are the signs of the justice of God.
In our first lesson, Malachi speaks about a long awaited messenger, and also of the longing of Israel for the coming of Him who would announce the Lord and lead them to repentance, so the sun of righteousness would once again rise over their heads, and their lives, as the chosen people of the Lord.
This image of the sun of righteousness also appears in the Gospel of Saint Luke, in the Song of Zechariah, which we have sung as the Psalm for today.
This is the song of a father who is both exultant for the gift of a child, and caught up in prophecy himself, about the life that his son, John the Baptist, is to lead.
In this song, the notion of a messenger and prophet from God is developed at length. The song of Zechariah speaks about both the message of the prophets of old, and that of this new prophet, this new messenger.
Prophets stand firmly on the historical concreteness of their time and place, their context, speaking to and denouncing injustice and everything which opposes the loving will of God.
At the same time, prophets project their preaching and ministry, to the future of restoration, of straightened paths, of the full manifestation of the power of God to reshape Creation, after that same will of life, justice, and peace.
And here is our second paradox, carefully developed by Saint Luke in the gospel lesson we have heard today.
In the first half of the lesson, Saint Luke, the historian, goes to great length to locate, with precision, the calling and ministry of John the Baptist.
This is no mere chronological exercise, but an affirmation of the historical character of the mission of John the Baptist, as well as a recitation of names of people who then represented the powers that be, those who stood for the powers of the kings of the earth, so to speak.
But, right after this careful drawing of the historical and political context, Saint Luke, the Theologian, moves onto a poetic, moving, and powerful rendering of the preaching of John the Baptist.
Saint Luke the theologian, then, goes on to elaborate on the divine connotations of the ministry and preaching of John the Baptist. And it all stands in contrast to the recitation of the names of the powerful we have heard before.
And by all accounts, the link between these two sections, the historical and the theological, is the statement to the effect that ‘the word of God came to John son of Zechariah’.
As we are told in the gospel, the word, the command of the Lord, came to John the Baptist, so he would go and proclaim the coming of the Lord, prescribing a baptism of repentance, a throughout preparation for receiving that sun of righteousness coming to meet them in their human history.
This was not a call to retreating from the world, to ignore the realities of our history, not even the realities of our brokenness and sin –but, instead, John preaches that those in his time, and even you and I, are meant to address those realities while also aware of the closeness and immediacy of the coming of the Lord. Hence the baptism to be sought, and the road to be built.
But how do we actually set ourselves to accomplishing, or at least, to participating in the accomplishment of these things?
As we are led to pray in our collect for today, the mission of John the Baptist was, and remains, to inspire the people of God, ever anew, to welcome the Messiah.
We ask that we, ‘ministers and stewards’ of God’s truth, may have our disobedient hearts turned to Him, so we may give a good account when Christ shall come again to be our judge.
This is no small feat, to be inspired to welcome the Messiah, since we already know how unexpected is the presence of Jesus, both in our lives and the life of the cosmos, the whole created order.
We believe that Jesus inhabits everything that has been created, because He was there when it was all created, from the glorious and beautiful to the seemingly ordinary and bare.
We proclaim our belief that Jesus comes to us in our neighbor, even in our seat neighbor this morning, but also in those with whom, while our neighbors, we just don’t seem to get along.
We proclaim, in essence, that Jesus is the peace from on high, and that Jesus comes to us and to all of Creation, to gift us all with that peace, which in itself announces, and embodies, the new creation, the new world, wrought by the coming of God.
But, you and I are understandably caused to find this proposition, while encouraging and uplifting, also a bit contradictory.
In Advent, a season which precedes the arrival of the Prince of Peace, in a time of the year when we relate ‘peaceful’ more with warm summer evenings than with, whatever we have outside today for weather, how to, already, speak about ‘peace’?
In our own personal and communitarian struggles, of all sorts, and dilemmas, challenges, some less pleasing than others, and some which are just painful to bear, how to speak confidently about ‘peace’?
When we experience, in one way or another, the persistent ruling of war, conflict and injustice in our world, how to speak with any precision about ‘peace’?
And here is our third, and final, paradox from today’s lectionary.
There is a beloved hymn which speaks precisely to this paradox of our being called into the peace of God, while still being called to be witness of that peace, in this world. "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me."
John the Baptist, in his preaching, launches us into imagining and embracing the possibility of a world healed by God, reshaped by God, in which we know peace, first and foremost because of the divine action in Christ.
At the same time, the preaching and witness of John the Baptists draws us into understanding and living in the understanding that God will not bring this peace into Creation and into our world, despite ourselves, but because of ourselves and, more importantly, with our collaboration.
And it is at points such as this where our Christian faith and specifically so our Advent proclamation departs so dramatically from any sense of bland satisfaction over the Christmas season to come, its yearly objectification through sales and symbols of the market.
Here, we begin to concern ourselves with where, and how, to find, and to be found by this Messiah proclaimed and foretold by John the Baptist, every year afresh, and how to grow towards that peace that the Messiah brings, both here and now, and in the last day.
This is why we persist in our speech and belief in ‘a last day’, ‘a day of judgement’.
Not because we believe in a vindictive, rule-obsessed God, but because our efforts, our hopes, our faith, will be brought to their fullness, their complete, perfect, divine fullness, when we shall meet our Maker, at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, and in the Last Great Day.
Such is the peace we know through the witness and preaching of John the Baptist, and such is the peace we know through every woman and man who have stood as prophets, messenger, living symbols of the urgent and loving call of God to be His children, rather than our own, self-centered creation.
We know this peace, not detached from the world and its joys and troubles, but deeply, confidently immersed in history, in our individual concreteness, and should I add, immersed in the history and individual concreteness of our neighbor, our links of love, service and growth with those for whom we are called to be that peace, in and out of time.
And we know this peace also in the knowledge that it shall prevail over any earthly power, any earthly kings, because the justice of God goes well beyond that of any human ruler.
And we know, and are further empowered by this peace from on high, in the confidence, the tranquility, that God works not in spite of you and me, but expecting, encouraging, and blessing, our common work and efforts towards that peace.
Let peace begin with me
Let this be the moment now.
With every step I take
Let this be my solemn vow.
To take each moment
And live each moment
With peace eternally.
Let there be peace on earth,
And let it begin with me.
Thanks be to God.
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