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Sermon - The Second Sunday in Advent (C) - 6th December 2009
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7, 8 & 10am
Readings:Luke 3:1-6
There are some songs that define an era. Today’s popular culture is obsessed with music. Certain songs evoke memories both happy and sad. They have the ability to transport us back across the decades to the days of our youth. With music we can recall the sounds and sights of a previous generation. In the Anglican Church in Sydney there is one song that has the ability to transport us back to the 1950’s, one that has summed up a whole theology that was to influence Sydney churches to the present day. It was virtually the theme song of the 1959 Billy Graham crusade, “Just as I am.” – with each verse ending with the line “O Lamb of God, I come, I come!” It’s a song that focuses upon the individual and their response to God and their decision to come to God.
But how central are those ideas to our faith? What do we actually find in the Bible? There are some references to coming to God. We have Psalm 95, “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving” and so on. Or we have Jesus’ words “Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
But we are in the season of Advent, and here the teaching goes in the other direction. Advent is not about our coming to God. Rather, we have a far more frightening prospect of God coming to us. We have the coming of Jesus at the first Christmas and with that coming is the reminder that Jesus will come again. It is a very different way of understanding God. The “Just As I Am” approach has God waiting in the wings, hoping that one day he will get the call, when we have decided to come to him. But Advent teaches of a dynamic God who calls the shots. The Advent God decides when he will come to us. It was God who decided when to send Moses to Egypt to rescue Israel. It was God who decided the right time to build the Temple in Jerusalem. It was God who decided when Israel’s suffering should end and they could return from their exile in Babylon.
This is the God who rules the universe and so it is no wonder he has power over the lives of men and women. This is the message of Advent – “Your king is coming!” It is a preparation for the Christmas event. But it is not so much about Santa, or gift-giving or the birth of a child in a manger though those things have their place. The message of Advent is about the coming of the King. And with Advent, for us, we look both ways. We look back to the first Christmas event and then we look forward to the Second Advent – the return of the King and the Day of Judgment – judgment indicating the way in which Christ’s kingly authority is expressed in our world.
During the Medieval period, in churches, it was common to paint the walls with Bible stories and images. One favourite theme that was painted in many churches was generally known as “The Doom”. It was a picture of the Second Advent with the return of Christ as the Judge of the living and the dead. One of the most famous examples is the end wall of the Sistine Chapel.
And there is another at the church of St Thomas a Beckett in Salisbury, not far from their great Cathedral. The church has a great arch above the sanctuary and painted on that arch is “The Doom.” Can you imagine coming forward for communion Sunday by Sunday and being confronted by that alarming painting. During the Reformation the painting was white-washed over. About a hundred years ago, the painting was re-discovered and about fifty years ago it was fully restored in all its glory.
Christ is the central feature with heaven on one side and hell on the other, with people being assigned to either one or the other group. Of course, they are there to face their doom. But surprisingly, unlike the Sistine Chapel, that is not the main emphasis of the painting. Rather, it is Christ who dominates, sitting over the earth as King, as ruler of all his creation. The message is, as you come to church, as you participate in the sacraments, you are confronted with the King of this world, the Son of God.
One unique feature of the painting is that Christ is presented as bare-chested – naked from the waist up. It teaches us two things. First it reminds us that the Son of God truly became flesh and dwelt among us. This is the God/Man image. Second it reminds us that he is ruler of earth just as much as ruler in heaven. Jesus is the God/Man king of all creation.
And its because kingship is such a central theme of Advent that we have this curious reading from Luke’s gospel. Its one of those readings we dread getting, specially if a Bishop is present. How do you pronounce all those names? “Iturea,” “Traconitis.” They sound like skin diseases. And what is a “tetrarch” anyway? These opening verses seem to be such a distraction and they seem so unrelated to what comes next. For those of us who don’t like history, they are verses we may prefer to gloss over. For those like me, with a fascination for Ancient History, we can be so caught up with these verses and Luke’s desire to provide an historical account that we can miss the theological point Luke is making. Its true that these verses are valuable in fixing in time the events Luke is recording. Its true that Luke is making the point that what he is describing really happened in our world and within our space and time.
But I think that Luke wants us to go deeper than that. These men that Luke names, Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip and Lysanias were the most powerful men of their day. Their power was absolute. For them, human rights abuses were just daily business. No one could oppose these man nor the power they wielded. Yet when Luke wrote his gospel, not one of these men was still alive. By then, they had already been consigned to the pages of history. As great as they might have been, as powerful as they might have been, they had already succumbed to the frailty of human flesh at the time of Luke’s writing.
And as he lists the names of those powerful men they are a reminder of the transitory nature of human power, that no matter how great a person becomes, it never lasts – it never lasts. It reminds me of that great poem by Percy Shelley – Ozymandias.
It concludes with those words - "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Then the poem goes on - Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
And so Luke provides for us a contrast between human power and the power of God. He moves from this statement of temporal power to the words of John the Baptist as he quotes from Isaiah 40.
Isaiah is not describing the end of Israel’s exile in Babylon. Rather, just as they returned to Jerusalem so he looks forward to the day when God himself will return to the city. The story is told in royal language. In ancient times as a King travelled around his dominion, the roads were prepared so that he could travel easily. But Isaiah uses grandiose language. The paths are made both straight and level. Every valley is filled in. Every mountain and hill are made low. And of course you can see exactly that as you travel on the freeway from Sydney to Gosford. Every valley is filled in. Every mountain and hill are made low. The crooked roads are straight, the rough ways are smooth.
And why is the highway being prepared – its because they are preparing the way for the Lord. This is God coming at last to his people And finally we have this enigmatic phrase, and all mankind will see God’s salvation. Now in my Bible it looks like it is part of the quote from Isaiah, but you won’t find it there. It either comes from John the Baptist or Luke himself. But the phrase is given no explanation. It is left open and vague. And in a sense it needs no explanation. Rather, it is in the context of God returning to his people – a reconciliation between God and the people of God – that is the salvation – it needs no further explanation.
Imagine, you are a lone yachtsman or woman in the middle of a vast ocean. During the night huge waves have battered your tiny boat and left you capsized. You’ve activated your emergency beacon but your radio is gone. You sit on the wreckage hoping that someone has heard your distress call…. The hours pass by…. a thousand frightening thoughts crowd your mind…… how will the story end…… And then you hear the beat of the blades of the rescue helicopter. Salvation has come. You don’t need the details, you’re just overwhelmed that your long wait is over.
In a world of chaos, in a world hungry for power, Israel wondered where to find the God of all creation. Where was their God? Until a lonely voice in an animal skin began to preach in the desert, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Their king was coming, their salvation was at hand. This message, this advent season, even the doom painting, all remind us again of the true king, the one who deserves our faith, our trust, the one who gives us true hope for the future. As we celebrate this advent season, let us be refreshed and revived by this hope and that our king has come and he will come again. Maranatha – come Lord Jesus!