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Sermon: The Second Sunday in Advent Year A - 5th December 2010
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping 8:30am
Readings: Isaiah 11:1-10 Psalm 72:1-7, 18-21 Romans 15:4-13 Matthew 3:1-12
Today we hear from two prophets though they are both telling about much the same thing. We need prophets. Prophets have a special insight. Prophets can explain the world to us. Prophets can help us understand what is going on. Prophets show us how to live in this world. When Isaiah gave his prophecy he spoke at one of the lowest times in Israel’s history – about 500BC. In fact, it was so bad there was no Israel any more. Israel had been wiped out by the Babylonians and all the citizens had been taken off into exile.
And its at those times people want to know where is justice in this world. Isaiah had experienced a world turned upside down. He had seen innocent people endure the worst of suffering. He had seen the people of God trampled under foot by pagan armies. He must have wondered what sort of a God would allow such evil in the world. And why would God allow his own people to suffer like this. When tragedy strikes we want to know why? We want to know where we can find God. And we wonder what he is doing.
We look at the mine disaster in New Zealand and we are left with that question of why? When I watch “A Current Affair” it is not uncommon to hear people demanding justice. Yet they don’t know where they can find it. People take others to court in the hope they can get their justice but it rarely happens. So what can Isaiah say? What is the way out? What does God have to offer.
And Isaiah begins with a gardening story. “ A shoot from the stump of Jesse” Jesse was the father of David. David had been promised an everlasting kingdom. But that dynastic tree had been chopped down by the Babylonians. But God had not forgotten his promises. Though the tree had been chopped down, a shoot will rise up. But this new king will be different to anything the world had seen before. In a world searching for justice, this will be it. This new king has title upon title laid upon him. Notice how he is described. He will have wisdom and understanding and counsel and knowledge. He won’t need to rely on what he sees or hears as you normally would in a court of law. Rather he will speak with justice and righteousness and faithfulness. In a world gone very, very wrong, he will put the world to rights.
Then we have all this amazing imagery. “The wolf will live with the Lamb” and so on. In other words, it is a picture of peace. It is also a picture of God restoring his creation. Further on, Isaiah speaks of the nations coming to the King’s place of rest. What was it that God did at the end of his creation? He rested. This new King will provide a place of peace and rest. And at that point he will gather all the nations and all the people of God to himself. This is a glorious promise but it wasn’t fulfilled in Isaiah’s day. For a people that had lost everything, they were given this wonderful promise. For a suffering people, the message was that God had not forgotten them. He still had plans for them. They still had a great hope. But when would these promises be fulfilled?
And so we come to our second prophet. John the Baptist appeared preaching a message about the Kingdom of heaven. But when we hear that we may think he means a Kingdom in heaven. But John means a kingdom on earth with heavenly qualities. He is calling on people to prepare for the coming of that Kingdom. He uses that often misunderstood word, “Repent!” When we hear that word we assume that we must be doing something really dreadful and we must stop and change our ways. But really repentance is about examining our lives in the light of new information.
John was saying God’s Kingdom was coming and we must be prepared for that. We must examine our lives in the light of this new and special event. There had been others who had spoken like this before John, and there were certainly others after him. This message was a very popular message in those days. Israel had been looking for a re-establishment of God’s kingdom. And here came John, dressed as a man from the dessert. After all, it was in the dessert that Israel had met with God and he had given them his law. So it is no wonder that John’s message was popular. He preached the very message they wanted to hear. No wonder they lined up for baptism so they could present themselves as the cleansed and renewed and purified people of God, ready to follow wherever their new king would lead.
But as John’s preaching continued on it becomes a little confusing. What is he talking about? John seems to have taken his theology from Isaiah, and often in that book we have the two ideas of justice and judgment brought together. Israel saw themselves as suffering unjustly and so they longed for a day of justice. But, of course, to have a day of justice you must have a day of judgment. And to describe this scene John uses a farming analogy. Firstly, he refers to the cultivation of fruit trees. And good farmer will go through his orchard to inspect his trees at the harvest. He is looking for the trees that bear good fruit and the trees that are sick and non-productive. He has his axe with him and he will chop down those sick and unproductive trees. This is judgment day in the orchard. This allows the productive trees to thrive and it protects them from disease.
John’s second analogy is the grain harvest. The wheat is separated from the husks by the process of winnowing. The wheat is gathered into the barn while the chaff is burnt off. For many reasons this is good farming practice. But again it is an image of judgment discerning the wheat from the chaff. No doubt, John is meaning that when the king comes, his people will need to demonstrate the fruits of repentance. So we have here a blessing and a warning. The coming king comes with the Holy Spirit and with fire. For those bearing fruit, they will be blessed with the spirit of God. That may seem strange to us, but in the Old Testament we learn that all of God’s blessings to us come by way of his Spirit. So the gift of the Spirit is a short hand way of describing all the blessings of God to us. But of course the other side of the picture is for those who do not show the fruits of repentance. And like any good farmer, the king will make his judgment and they will suffer the consequences.
As we enter this season of Advent, our readings confront us with some big ideas. John’s message is that the king is coming and we need to wake up and be prepared. Because when Jesus arrived and began his teaching, it was so new and so radical. It was nothing like what people expected. Even John was at a loss. While in prison he sent a message to Jesus asking, “Are you the promised one, or should we expect someone else?” The crowds were heard to say, “We have never heard teaching like this.” And this is the same struggle we face today. The teaching of Jesus is at such variance to the world we live in. We are forced to straddle two conflicting realities, the world that confronts us, and the new life and the new hope we have in Jesus. Advent, like Lent, is a time of preparation. It can be a time for us to think, and pray, and meditate upon the wonderful new thing that happened when Jesus came at the first Christmas with his wonderful message of love, and acceptance and forgiveness.