Advent 2C. 19 December 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Baruch 5:1-9 Take off the garment of sorrow and affliction and put on the robe of righteousness.
Phillipians 1:31-11. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God
Luke 3:1-6 All flesh shall see the salvation of God.
God all merciful and all compassionate, grant us the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.
As I said last week, Advent is a season for communal and institutional reflection and repentance, for collective atonement and reparations. Our readings for this second Sunday in Advent are so full and big with calls for repentance and reparations; it is almost as if they are pregnant with possibility. The prophet Baruch and the evangelist Luke are both reminding their hearers about the words of the prophet Isaiah. And Luke draws a picture of John the Baptist that is just like the prophet Jeremiah, consecrated before he was born, and just like Elijah by the Jordan in the wilderness. Luke also has already explained that John’s work was so closely related to Jesus’s work, their purposes were so akin to one another, that it was as if they must have known one another before they were even born.
Jeremiah, John, and Jesus all predicted judgment at the end of the age, proclaimed God’s saving grace, and announced that God’s salvation, the rescuing health of God, was available to everyone who repented, that is, everyone who turned away from separation from love, everyone who turned toward Love. Our prophets and evangelists were pleading with people to close the gap between people at home and people in exile; between people in the city and people in the wilderness, the wasteland; between the ecclesia, the Church, and the prison. Our lessons today are all about a call from the Holy One to make a way where there is no way; to remove the stumbling blocks; to flatten the mountains and fill the valleys, in other words, level the playing field; to make access easier for folks who are struggling, because the Holy One is coming.
The Holy One is coming. That is the message of Isaiah and Jeremiah spanning from the middle-to-late 8th century to the 6th century before the common era. That is the message of John the Baptist, the Apostle Paul, and Luke the Evangelist in the beginning, middle, and end of the first century of the common era. That is my message to you right now in the twenty-first century of the common era. Here is a Word of God for all people for all time: the Holy One is coming. Watch and pray, yes, and let’s get the place cleaned up! Last Sunday our Deacon Bob Greiner shared this from Henri Nouwen: “The Lord is coming, always coming. When you have ears to hear and eyes to see, you will recognize him at any moment of your life. Life is Advent; life is recognizing the coming of the Lord.”
It seems to me that endings in the world, in our worlds, are easier to spot than the comings of the Lord. But if we are looking only in worship for the coming of the Lord, or a word of God, our view is much too narrow. No wonder we can’t recognize it. The coming of the Lord is in the wilderness; the word of God is on the streets. Some of you will remember common-cathedral founder and former Emmanuelite, the Rev. Debbie Little, who wrote about her own expanding field of vision, about how she got from the Church to the street. She wrote: [1]
I wanted to learn about God, and I wanted to learn what it is to be a servant. I wanted to get closer to people on the street, to help, to understand, to learn, and to see what it means to love your neighbor.…What did the Hebrew prophets mean, what did Jesus mean, when they said if you really want to move closer to the heart of life, to the heart of God, get closer to th[ose who are] poor?
Debbie’s words remind me of what Archbishop Desmond Tutu has famously said, that every church should be able to get a letter of recommendation from those who are poor in their community.
From the way Luke the Evangelist tells the story of John the Baptist, it’s clear to me that he wanted his hearers to know that communities or institutions are made up of individuals with a common purpose. He also wanted his community to know our God is not a trickle-down God, but a bubbling-up God. Right after this passage, in the part we will hear next week, John the Baptist spells it out for the people: if you are moderately well-off, if you have two tunics and you have food, share your resources with someone who doesn’t have enough. Luke writes: [2]
Even tax-collectors came to be baptized and they said to him, ‘Teacher what should we do?’ and [John the Baptist] said to them, ‘Don’t collect more than you were assigned to. If you’re in the military, don’t misuse your authority to coerce or threaten others with violence or extortion. Turn away from loving power and turn toward the power of loving.’
While John the Baptist was in a particular middle of nowhere at the Jordan River, his voice is now clear in everyplace that is wilderness, wasteland. Wasteland is the place of formation for God’s people; a place of disorganization and dispute; of loss, grief, surprising beauty, and even intermittent joy; of vulnerability and dependence on God: in other words, a long spiritual journey. Here is a word of God for our particular place on our particular spiritual journey as a community, as an institution in 2021. Here is a word of God for all people, for all time in all places, for all kinds of nobodies in all kinds of nowheres, for all flesh. The claim that all flesh will see the salvation of God is offered as a prayerful, poetic word of hope in each situation of despair. Theologian and translation blogger Mark Davis writes, “Its meaning may lie not so much in how it is fulfilled in any given moment in time, but in how true it is in every moment in time.” [3]
Very early in my ordained ministry, with Debbie Little as one of my mentors, I realized I did not want to be a part of the problem in the institutional church. (Turns out, that’s not so easy.) I am thankful for the witness of Emmanuel Church for more than a century and a half of offering hospitality to people who are desperate for the restoration of their dignity. When I speak with someone who is shivering and hungry, I’m so happy I can invite them into our parish hall for something warm to drink and eat. I’m so happy that, if they want, they can learn to make the coffee and help serve the food and extend hospitality to others. When I speak with people who are struggling mightily with addiction, I’m relieved to be able to invite them into one of the dozens of 12-step meetings that take place at 15 Newbury Street. When I notice someone who is lonely or grieving, I can invite them to Café Emmanuel, the weekly lunch and entertainment program for LGBTQ elders and allies. When I make art on Monday evenings at the prison at South Bay and one of the incarcerated artists asks if there’s an art program they can participate in when they get out, I’m so happy to tell them, “Yes! common art! And it’s a lot better than the art program in prison!” Many, maybe most, of the artists donate a portion of the proceeds of the sale of their art. I know one who gives 25%! These artists teach me so much about faith in the mystery called God, and so much about generosity and dignity. And now Emmanuel Music is extending our shared hospitality with a new program of open practice called Musical Sanctuary on Thursdays mid-day, soon to expand to the Boston Public Library. This latest offering of hospitality and care is in its seedling state; all the details aren’t yet worked out, but I believe the generosity and beauty will take root in the fertile soil that is Emmanuel.
Nothing about this work is easy or cheap. Whether or not you have the good fortune to be present during the week for any of these grace-filled programs, your prayerful support and your financial support week after week make this work possible. This is a way that we, together as a religious institution, as a parish, repent, turn toward God, turn toward Love. That is the call of Advent: turn toward God; turn toward Love; turn toward Joy.
It seems to me that this echo of a word of hope from the prophets has to do with being called to immerse ourselves in repentance. Baptism is immersion. The word baptize and immerse are synonymous in the New Testament. What does it mean to immerse ourselves in repentance? It means to change. Repentance is not about being sincerely sorry, regretful, or ashamed. Repentance is about changing: turning and returning to God, returning from alienation to reintegration, from estrangement to reconciliation, remembering our citizenship in the Realm of God. What does it mean to immerse ourselves in forgiveness of sin? It means to give ourselves and others a future. It means freeing ourselves and others to move forward. It’s not easy, and we need a lot of help, but the cost of not doing it is so much greater than the cost of immersing ourselves in forgiveness.
Our scripture compels me to ask, what further repentance and repair, what change are we being called to on this winter morning? What forgiveness of sin might we be immersed in today? What way are we being called to prepare? What garment of sorrow and affliction can we take off so that we can put on the robe of right-relationship that comes from God? What needs to be leveled or cleared or smoothed so that all flesh will see the salvation of God, the fullness of joy that is very near. To get ready for the coming of the Lord, without defiance or despair, is to experience the joy of relieving the burdens of those who are oppressed and realize that our own burdens are relieved in the process. We experience the joy of demonstrating that suffering will not have the last word, in us and among us. Suffering will not have the last word.
So to paraphrase the words of Paul in his letter to the Philippians, which we heard earlier, this is my prayer: that our love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help us to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ we may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness – in other words, the harvest of right-relationship that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
[1] http://commoncathedral.org/background/
[2] Sarah Ruden’s translation of The Gospels (New York: Random House, 2021) pp. 174-5.
[3] D. Mark Davis in his blog entry for this week in “Leftbehindandlovingit.”