catholicism 101 -- part 1 of 8

The following is the outline of the first session of our current Sunday School series at Holy Cross.  The subject of the series is Catholic Christianity, what it means to be a catholic Christian, to believe catholic beliefs, and to worship as a catholic.  The following is the outline of the discussion from Sunday January 20.  The series runs until Palm Sunday (through - and including - Sunday, March 9).  We meet between the Sunday masses, beginning at 9:30 am.

CATHOLICISM 101

Church of the Holy Cross

January 20, 2008

Part 1

God’s Covenant / God’s People

I. God created the world out of love.
a. He endowed man with a free will, because he wanted to relate to man in love, not servility.
i. Therefore man was endowed with the ability to reject God.
b. Man rejected God. This rejection poisoned the world. (Cf. Gen. 3.9ff)
c. God was not willing that sin should be a definitive ruining of the world.
d. This history of the human race is a history of God’s patient love following humanity, despite our rebellion (cf. Gen. 3.21) – God from the beginning pursued us with love, encouraged us to return to him, and promised a definitive restoration.

II. Early on God deals with individuals and families – the Patriarchs.
a. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.

III. With Abraham things change somewhat:
a. Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by him… (Gen. 18.18.)
b. This is the people of Israel. you are a people holy to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. (Deut. 14.2.)
c. Israel is God’s “ecclesia” (Greek), or “Church”. (cf. Acts 7.38.)
d. To Israel God revealed the moral law (Exodus 31.18),
e. the right to approach God by sacrifice (Leviticus),
f. the divine blessing (Exodus 6.7), and most importantly:

IV. The promise that God himself would bring about a definitive restoration for the whole world from the midst of Israel – that God himself would come from among them as a vindicator, to undo the brokenness of the very creation by the power of mankind’s sin in the beginning. This promise is not just for Israel, but for “all nations” – the “gentiles”. (Psalm 96 vv. 3 & 10, Is. 11.10, Is. 49.6, Is. 66.19, Jer. 16.19, Zechariah 8.22, Mal. 1.11).
a. Malachi 3.1 et seq: "Behold, I send my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? "For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver…”
b. And Malachi 4 ***
i. Note the promise of Elijah. And see what Jesus says about John the Baptist (Matthew 11.14 passim): …if you are willing to accept it, he is Eli'jah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

V. Then there is the advent of the promised Salvation, the birth of Jesus: But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir. (Gal. 4.4)
a. We are made heirs of what God promised to the descendents of Abraham:
i. And I will dwell among the people of Israel, and will be their God. (Exodus 29.45)
ii. I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart. (Jeremiah 24.7)
iii. Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant [“new testament”] with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31.31ff)
iv. Jesus said: Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. (Mat. 5.17)
v. And St. Paul writes: I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin…. Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles…. if the dough offered as first fruits is holy, so is the whole lump; and if the root is holy, so are the branches. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. (Romans 11 passim)
b. The whole purpose of God’s choice of Israel, and their receiving of his self-disclosure (his word, his law, his commandments), was to prepare the way for Jesus – the eternal Word made flesh, and his work – the work that saves us from the world’s brokenness-through-sin.
i. the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. (Galatians 3.24)
ii. The revelation of the Old Testament is completed and fulfilled in the New Testament.
iii. The old sacrifices are completed and fulfilled in the sacrifice of “Christ our Passover” – the Lamb of God. (cf. Jn. 19.14)
iv. The moral law revealed in the Ten Commandments is completed and fulfilled in the “Beatitudes” – the Sermon on the Mount (Mat. 5, and Luke 6)
v. The Levitical priesthood of the Old Testament, descended from Aaron, is completed and fulfilled in Jesus, our “Great High Priest” (Heb. 4.14) and the spiritual descent of Christian priests of the “apostolic succession”.
vi. Israel as a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19.6) is completed and fulfilled in the “royal priesthood” of the whole Christian Church: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2.9)
vii. The old sign of circumcision, as the means of incorporation into the old covenant, is completed and fulfilled in the sacrament of Holy Baptism by which we are made members of the new Covenant in the flesh of Jesus, members of the “one Body” of Christ (1 Cor. 12.13, Col. 2.11-12).
viii. In short: All of the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, are fulfilled in the Body of Christ, and in his work: the reconciliation of humanity with God, who had desired us and sought to be with us since our initial rejection of Him and the ensuing brokenness of the world and of human relationships. It all comes to a head and a fulfillment in Jesus – his proclamation, his action, and his person. And this proclamation, action, and the very person of Jesus, is perpetuated in the world down to the present in the Catholic Church.

the baptism of our lord -- january 13 2007

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

 

Have you ever wondered WHY Jesus was baptized?  After all, we say in the creed “we believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins”.  If baptism is FOR the forgiveness of sins, then why was Jesus baptized?  The Bible says that he was without sin (Heb. 4.15).  And John appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1.4).  So what is Jesus doing being baptized?  WE are the ones who need to be cleansed by HIM, and yet here he is presenting himself among the crowds of people conscious of their own guilt, seeking to be cleansed from sin.

 

People down through the centuries have come up with a number of ideas about this question.  Most of them are wrong.  When this question first occurred to me, I asked a priest about it and he said he suspected that Jesus really didn’t know what he was doing, but that his identification with us – confused earthlings that we are – meant that he shared our confusion:  confusion about our calling, about what the right thing to do might be in a given situation, and so forth.

 

But this way of answering the question of why Jesus was baptized does not do justice to the depth and profundity of what is being revealed in this passage.  This passage isn’t supposed to make us feel warm and fuzzy because a really important guy was once just as confused as we are.  What it shows, rather, is the renewal of creation:  it shows the way OUT of the confusion and chaos and fear that stand at the center of human life.

 

To the ancients, water, particularly large bodies of water, were a dark and mysterious force, a symbol of danger and death – though always charged with the possibility of deliverance and life.  The Holy Spirit had brooded over the waters of the primordial chaos, and out of it God had spoken order.  The world had been destroyed in the waters of the flood, and Noah and his family had been delivered through their obedience to God’s command to build the ark.  The children of Israel had passed through the waters of the Red Sea and been delivered from the armies of Pharaoh, who was seeking to perpetuate their bondage and slavery.  Through the agency of Moses, God had divided the waters of the Jordan which stood in the way of Israel’s entry into the land of promise, and the children of Israel passed into their inheritance on dry land.

 

Up until the baptism of Jesus, God had delivered his people FROM the waters of the deep.  It is as though God rebuked the disorder of the primordial waters when he spoke the dry land into existence.  It was a divine action of separation and division.  So too was God’s dealing with the waters of the Red Sea.  Israel was delivered precisely because they DID NOT go into the waters, but passed over miraculously on dry land (Exodus 15.19).  And at the end of Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness, when they are poised on the very edge of the land of promise, the waters of the river Jordan stand in their path not as an efficacious sign of God’s boundless mercy, but as a hindrance, as the final obstacle to their taking possession of their inheritance – and again God must intervene; pushing the water back so that the children of Israel do NOT pass through the water, but enter the land ON DRY GROUND (Joshua 3.17).  Going down into the depths of the waters meant death.

 

But with Jesus’ baptism, God does something new.  John has the same reaction that many Christians have to Jesus’ presentation of himself for Baptism:  “I need to be baptized by YOU, and do you come to ME?” (Matthew 3.14).  Jesus’ response seems a little mysterious: “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” then he consented (Matthew 3.15).  The key to understanding Jesus’ answer is in the word “righteousness”.  In the Jesus’ world, RIGHTEOUSNESS is man’s response to the Torah.  To be righteous is to accept God’s will, and so to “fulfill all righteousness” is to accept God’s will TOTALLY.  (Cf. Benedict XVI in “Jesus of Nazareth”)

 

When we think of Jesus accepting the will of the Father, our thoughts inevitably turn to the night before he suffered, when he is at prayer in the garden of Gethsemane.  His prayer that night is “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, NOT AS I WILL, BUT AS THOU WILT” (Matthew 26.39).  Jesus fulfills all righteous by doing the will of the Father, and the Father’s will is done, and all righteousness is fulfilled, with the death of Jesus on the cross.  Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan therefore prefigures his crucifixion – where he does the will of the Father, and so fulfills all righteousness.  That’s why Jesus refers to his death as his “baptism” when he asks the sons of Zebedee: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”

 

Jesus stands on the banks of the Jordan, accepting the will of the Father, for our redemption.  At his baptism, our Lord shoulders the weight of chaos – of the darkness and rebellion and fear at the center of human life – the Lord of life plunges into the depths of it, and he rises up from it victorious.  “And behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3.16-17).

 

Jesus is the true Jonah, the servant of God who is NOT delivered from the depths, but who plunges in, who stands on the deck of the storm-tossed ship and says “Take me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you” (Jonah 1.12).  The Lord was not baptized in order that he might be cleansed from sin, but that he might renew creation, that by descending into the dark waters of chaos and fear and rebellion against God, he might sanctify the water itself, and make it efficacious for our cleansing.  Whereas the ancients saw in the seas the dark and powerful forces of chaos, we who are in Christ now see in the water the sign of our redemption.  We see that the power of fear and darkness and rebellion has been broken for us – that because Jesus entered into the depths, the depths have now been sanctified (cf. Remigius and Augustine).  We may now rise cleansed from the same water that Jesus entered, burdened with our sin.  And we may now rise to life victorious from the same death which Jesus suffered for our sake.

 

Jesus was baptized not because he was unsure of himself, but because he was quite sure.  He came to do the will of the Father – and the Father’s will was that we should be delivered from all that burdens our souls:  from all the confusion and darkness and sin and chaos of life in this world.

 

Therefore let us pray.

 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

…and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him.

Its too bad we no longer have the great antiphons from the old Daily Office.  They are available in various places (the English Office, the Breviary), but they aren't a standard part of the Daily Office in the Book of Common Prayer.  They were "reformed" away.  Here, for example, is the old antiphon on the morning canticle "Benedictus" (Luke 1.68-79) aka "the song of Zechariah" for the Epiphany --

"Hodie caelesti sponso juncta est Ecclesia, quoniam in Jordane lavit Christus ejus crimina : currunt cum muneribus Magi ad regales nuptias, et ex aqua facto vino laetantur convivae, alleluja."

or rather:

"Today the Church has been joined to her heavenly Spouse, for Christ has washed away her sins in the Jordan; the Magi hasten with gifts to the royal nuptials, and the guests are gladdened with wine made from water, alleluia."

What a beautiful expression of the mystery of the Epiphany!  You could spend years unpacking the mystical content of that antiphon.  Note, for example, the references to the nuptial aspect of the Incarnation: that in Christ, divine nature and human nature become "one flesh" in the person of Jesus; that we are guests at the banquet.  Note too the oblique reference to Ephesians 5.25 et seq:  "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word..."

What sublime mystery!  We should bring back the antiphons to our office, at least as readily available options.

sermon for the first sunday after christmas, december 30 2007

The image above is the shrine at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the actual spot where tradition says the Word-made-flesh entered the world.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”

 

I believe today’s Gospel lesson is the straightest talk in the Bible about who Jesus is.  These few sentences of God’s revelation speak most directly about what’s going on with and in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  Its as though the Holy Spirit calls a time out in the course of the Biblical narrative, sits us down, and says “Look, here’s what’s going on.  Here’s the skinny.  No more prophetic figures.  Nor more opaque witness to God’s plan.  HERE IS THE WAY THINGS ARE.  In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was with God, and the Word WAS God….”  This passage in John’s gospel is a glimpse behind the curtain of the universe.  In this passage we catch sight of what God and his relation to the universe.

 

These are beautiful, powerful words.  They are words full of mystery.  When I was at Yale, I had a very dear friend named Robert.  Robert was a professor of Political Philosophy at the University.  He was a Jew and an atheist.  But in the course of his work, he became interested in how Christ is meant to be a representative of God to the people, and of the People to God.  And pursuing this interest, he fell in love with the passage from John’s Gospel which we have just read.  He read it over and over, savoring the rhythms of its tropes in the King James Version:  “and the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not… and of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace…”

 

In the middle of Robert’s research and his meditations on this passage, he developed an aggressive brain tumor.  Over the months it became clear that he would not survive, and he moved back to England, where he had grown up, to die.  Shortly after Robert moved back to England, my dear friend Muffin, whom some of you have met, had a layover in London on her way to Africa, and she went to Cambridge to visit Robert.  During the course of their visit, Robert asked to receive the Sacrament of Baptism.  He renounced Satan and all his works, and declared to Muffin that he believed in Jesus, and Muffin poured water over his head in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  A day or two later, Robert died.

 

I know Robert’s conversion was the result of his meditation on this passage from John.  He was seduced by its mysterious beauty, and that beauty was for him a springboard to the TRUTH of what God has done in Jesus – that the divine Word, who was in the beginning with God, through whom the universe came into being – that this Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.  And Robert beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.  Robert believed in him, and by him was given power to become a child of God.

 

….

 

God has revealed himself in Jesus.  When we look at Jesus, we look at God.  When we meditate on Jesus, we meditate on God.  When we consider the miracles and healings of Jesus, we consider the power of God.  No one has ever seen God.  But Jesus Christ, the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, HE has made him known.

 

Being a Christian, most fundamentally, means believing what God has revealed in Jesus, and then living out of that belief.  That’s what it means to “live by faith” (Gal. 3.11).  At the end of the day, it means patterning your whole life according to the teachings of the Gospel.  This kind of life is the life of a child of God.  Its what Saint Paul is talking about in today’s epistle reading when he says:  “Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed.”  Because the Word was made flesh, we now know what it is to be given totally to God, because we see it in Jesus.  And WE live for God when we order our lives toward Jesus, when we are oriented toward him, when we make life-choices out of consideration for what he has revealed.

 

Often when we hear talk of “obedience” we think of being governed by rules; we think of  servility or dogmatic legalism.  But that’s not what’s going on here.  The opportunity of living a life for Jesus, patterned on what he reveals, is the opportunity of life IN him, and the life that is in him is eternal.  In him was light, and the life was the light of men.  Life in him is life indeed.  As Paul says in the final verses of today’s epistle, life in Christ, the life of FAITH, means the opposite of servility: it means freedom, it means coming into your inheritance as a child of God, it means no longer living under the threat of divine judgment and retribution.  Life in Christ means being able to call God “Abba, Father.”  God isn’t just God anymore; in Christ he is a benevolent, all-loving, all-merciful, all-forgiving FATHER, who loves us, who seeks us, who provides for us, and who calls us home to be with him forever.

 

Today’s reading from Isaiah speaks in figures about the life God offers us through trust in Jesus.  For in him our vindication goes forth as brightness, and our salvation as a burning torch.  Our vindication is there for all to see, and in him all the authorities of the earth may see our glory.  We are called by a new name, for we are Christians, named for the Christ, which the mouth of the Lord has given.  In him we are a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of our God.

 

In the end, that is the wonderful thing: that God has not only revealed himself in Jesus, but that he has GIVEN HIMSELF TO US in Jesus.  The plenitude of divine grace and truth and light and life revealed in Jesus becomes ours as we become his.

 

Let us pray.

 

Lord we thank you that you have revealed yourself to us in the face of your Son.  We thank you most of all that you have given yourself to us in him.  Teach us and enable us to seek you in him – to give ourselves to him, that in him we might have grace and light and life and glory.

 

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

sermon for the fourth sunday of advent, december 23 2007

This image (to the left) is a 13th century icon of the Prophet Isaiah and the Blessed Virgin.  An appropriate image for the Advent 4 propers.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.  Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel.”

 

Today’s Old Testament Lesson relates a prophecy of Isaiah to Ahaz, the king of Judah.  Ahaz was a young king, and he was being harassed by foreign powers who were marching against Jerusalem to conquer it.  The foreigners were really too strong for him, but Isaiah had been sent by the Lord to Ahaz to reassure and to exhort him to trust in the Lord.  The Lord wishes to tell Ahaz that despite the seemingly impossible situation, despite the doom that seemed to be impending, the Lord is faithful and will not go back on his promise to David.  He will save his people.  In the passage just before today’s reading, Isaiah prophesies to Ahaz, saying:  “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of… the fierce anger of … Syria…” (Is. 7.4).

 

So our reading today comes on the heals of this reassurance, and is a continuation of it.  But in today’s reading we notice something about Ahaz:  he does not really TRUST the Lord’s reassurance.  In the face of the forces arrayed against him, Ahaz, has a very difficult time listening to the word of the Lord.  He looks out and sees that he is vastly outnumbered.  Every day he hears the reports of the enemy’s advancement.  So when the prophet Isaiah turns up with reassurances purporting to be from the Lord himself, they probably seemed to Ahaz like pie-in-the-sky illusions –  in the face of the cold, hard facts with which he was confronted.  The opposition of the world had begun to dominate the heart of Ahaz.  When Ahaz looked out on the world, he saw things through the lens of impending doom.  He looked at the past promises of God through the lens of the opposition with which he was faced.  He looked at his own relationship to the Lord in the light of impending doom.

 

And – annoyingly – when Isaiah’s first reassurance is met with the incredulity of Ahaz, the Lord ups the ante.  Isaiah has told Ahaz something fairy outlandish to begin with:  “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint” – “Do you see all those marauding Syrians out there, headed your way – the ones who are much more powerful than you?  Don’t worry about them.  I have promised to take care of you, and I am going to take care of you.”  And now the Lord ups the ante: “The Lord himself will give you a sign.  Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel” – which means “God with us.”

 

Its as though the Lord is saying “You don’t want to trust me?  Fine.  I will do something indubitably spectacular.  My plan of redemption will bring the Syrian hordes to nothing.  Your lack of trust is beggarly in my sight.  The name of my salvation is Immanuel, because I myself will come among you to save you.”

 

Ahaz was a mere cog in the wheel of the narrative of salvation the Lord was writing, but he could not see past his own circumstances.  His thinking was backward.  He thought his circumstances were the most important.  In the face of the worldly powers with which he was confronted, he stopped believing in the salvation promised by God.  Who knows how things might have been had Ahaz listened to the word of the Lord.  We’ll never know.  HE didn’t listen.  He didn’t trust in God’s power.  Rather, he trusted in the power of his enemies to dominate him.  And indeed he WAS humiliatingly subjected to the Assyrians.  He became their stooge and puppet.  But God raised up other instruments of his will, and the inexorable march of God’s redemption went on – without the help of Ahaz.

 

When we are faced with opposition from the world, in whom do we trust?  Do we trust the Lord to deliver us, to make provision for us, to USE us to work out his own purposes, for salvation and glory?  Or do we believe in the sovereignty of our problems?

 

Whether we are faced with sickness, financial problems, loneliness, or whatever…  No matter what powers of the world stand in opposition to us, even though they may have been brought about by our negligence or sinfulness – no matter what, the Lord calls us to trust in him in the midst of them, to give ourselves into his care.  The Lord promises himself to come to us and to work his salvation within us, and then through us.  And through a process of positive TRUST in the Lord, we are delivered from the domination of evil.  Its not that our problems will disappear like a puff of smoke the minute we decide to trust the Lord – in John’s Gospel the Lord says “I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

 

If we are able to give ourselves to the Lord, to allow his plan of redemption to blossom in our hearts, then we get peace and good cheer in the midst of tribulation.  Being a disciple of Jesus does not mean that you get DELIVERED from tribulation – it means that you do NOT get DEFEATED by tribulation: that you may endure it with peace and good cheer, in the assurance of communion with Jesus, who has overcome the world.

 

We get a picture of this kind of assurance, of this kind of FAITH, in today’s Gospel lesson, with Saint Joseph.

 

Joseph faced trouble.  He was poor.  He was a manual laborer.  But he was a just man.  Suddenly he finds that his fiancée is pregnant, and he knows he’s not the Father.  That’s trouble.  But an angel appears to him and says “Do not fear…”  Do not fear.  And Joseph listens.  How do we know he listened?  Because he OBEYED.  “He did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son, and he called his name Jesus.”

 

Live your life with a heart open to God’s saving work.  Do not fear opposition.  Do not fear sickness, poverty, loneliness, -- do not even fear death.  These things are tribulation that a part of the tribulation that the world brings.  If we allow them to govern us, we will wind up like Ahaz, stooges and puppets of foreign powers, and alienated from the Lord’s salvation.

 

But if we trust the Lord and his promises, we will be like Joseph who was a just man, without fear, and who became the earthly custodian of God himself.

 

Let us pray.  Lord we thank you for calling to us.  We thank you for ordaining us to a place in the unfolding of your salvation.  Teach us to trust you, and to obey you.  And give us peace and good cheer, confident in the victory of your Son.

 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

sermon from the second sunday of advent, december 9 2007

The Scripture readings for this Sunday may be found here.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

“Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees…”

 

Today’s Gospel lesson from St. Matthew presents us the figure of John the Baptist.  St. Matthew tells us that John is the one prophesied by Isaiah, when he spoke of “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”  And Isaiah goes on to say, in the well known idiom of the Authorized Version of the Bible (the King James Version) made famous by the oratorio from Handel’s Messiah:  “And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.”

 

John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets.  He is late on the scene.  The narrative of salvation written by God in the vacillations of Israel’s fidelity has come to term.  The earth is groaning in travail for the fulfillment of God’s promise of redemption. John the Baptist comes on the scene, calling the people to repentance in the lateness of the cosmic hour:  The Glory of the Lord is about to be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together:  for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

 

What was true in John the Baptist’s day is likewise true for us:  the Lord is coming.  The season of Advent is a reminder that just as surely as the Lord HAS come, he is coming again.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat in the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.  The Lord seeks a heart and a volition, a WILL, that is in accord with his own.  “Deep calls to deep in the noise of your cataracts” says the Psalm (42.7).  The sanctity of God seeks itself in us.  It searches for itself in us.

 

You and Jesus Christ are rushing toward one another, through the inexorable pathway of time.  All flesh shall see him, including yours and mine.  Therefore John the Baptist’s message should ring in our ears with some urgency:  Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  We are called not to passive waiting for the coming of the Lord, but to active PREPARATION.

 

But what IS the way of the Lord?  And how do you prepare it?  The way of the Lord is the pathway of the human heart.  And its preparation is training in the sanctity that God seeks in us.  “In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death” (Prov. 12.28).  To prepare the way of the Lord means to make our hearts ready for him.

 

If it came to pass that some immanent person, a dignitary or a celebrity, were coming to your house for dinner, would you not clean the house?  Would you not take care that all was in order, that the dust was swept out, and the dishes clean?  But what does it mean that the King of the Universe is coming into our lives and we do little or nothing to prepare for him?  Just as a physical house needs to be cleaned, so too does the pathway of our heart need to be cleansed and made ready.  The Lord will not force an entry into your life.  He said “Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

 

Behold I stand at the door and knock.  The Lord does not beat the door down.  He seeks an INVITATION to entry.  And many of us withhold that invitation out of shame at the condition of our spiritual houses.  Perhaps in those moments of solitude and silence, when we really think about it, when we are honest with ourselves, we find that we really do not want the Lord to meet us as we are.  There is too much nastiness inside of us.  The pathway of our heart is cluttered, and we are ashamed.

 

Yet the Lord stands at the door and knocks.  And his knocking is the sound of the axe laid to the root of the trees.  When I think of this mysterious saying of John the Baptist, I inevitably think of the Lord’s saying, before he suffered: “now is the judgment of this world, now will the ruler of this world be cast out.  And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (Jn. 12.32).  The judgment of this world, and the axe laid to the root of the trees, are I think the overwhelming aspect of the self-giving of God.  For all things must give way before the radical nature of his love for us, the totality with which he pours himself out to us and for us.

 

And as we are faced with the advent of Christ in our hearts, there are only two possibilities, either our selfishness and our evil desires will get the better of us, and we will ourselves give way to make room for Christ’s glory – OR we will have prepared to meet him, we will have swept our hearts clean of concupiscence and self-seeking, and honed our desires on the quest for the face of Jesus, the Lover of our souls.

 

This is why “in those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  Because repentance is what it is to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight his paths.  To repent is to clear the heart of its attachments to the world and the flesh.  To facilitate the entrance of Jesus, who stands at the door and knocks.  It is to make one’s house presentable for so great a Guest.

 

Christ is coming.  His coming is immanent.  The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.  The question for you and me is whether we will heed John’s call to repentance, so that when the holiness of the Lord seeks itself in our hearts, it will find itself there, and draw us gently into the embrace of the Lord’s peace.

 

Let us pray.  Lord teach us to seek you.  Replace our evil desires with your own holiness, with your own self-gift.  Lord teach us to recognize the sound of your knocking at the door of our hearts, and give us the courage to open to you.  Deliver us from judgment.  Teach us to heed the Baptist’s call and to repent.  Grant, Lord, that we may use this season of Advent wisely, as a time of preparation to meet you when you shall come in glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead.

 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.