Sermon for Second Sunday of Advent at St Georges
Lectionary Readings for the Second Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 40: 1-11
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.
A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.’
A voice says, ‘Cry out!’
And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand for ever. Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’
See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.
Psalm 85
Lord, you were favourable to your land;
you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
You forgave the iniquity of your people;
you pardoned all their sin.
Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,
for he will speak peace to his people,
to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,
that his glory may dwell in our land.
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.
The Lord will give what is good,
and our land will yield its increase.
Righteousness will go before him,
and will make a path for his steps.
II Peter 3: 8-15a
Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed. Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.
Mark 1: 1-8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,”’
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’
Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent
I thought I had an ace up my sleeve for this sermon today. As many of you know, the lectionary portions out all (almost all) the verses in the Bible and links together an Old Testament, Psalm, Epistle, and Gospel reading for each Sunday of the year. The idea is that this set-up prevents any preacher from falling back on her or his favourite and well-worn passages for a Sunday sermon. You have to deal with the interesting passages, the difficult passages, all the passages there are, over a grand sweep of three years: Year A, Year B, and Year C. The other nice thing about preaching according to the cycle of the lectionary is that whether you are Anglican, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, or Methodist—-you are preaching from the same set of texts on the same day, together. And everywhere. You can write your aunt in Canada and compare notes on the sermons you each heard this morning! So I kind of thought that I had preached on the second Sunday of Advent before, and lo and behold, I found the sermon that I preached on this very Sunday four years ago, in 2017, at All Saints’ Anglican Church in Rome. Aha! I thought. I have a busy week ahead—I’ll pull this one out of the cupboard and use it again. I read it over. It was about “Actively Waiting in Advent.” Rats! Clare just preached on that last Sunday.
Can’t go there. So here are some fresh thoughts from me for this Second Sunday in
Advent.
If the passage that we are given today from Isaiah sounds familiar to you—-Comfort
Ye My People—-it may be that you are playing music in your head, the famous tenor
solo from Handel’s Messiah. The words of the entire first part of the Messiah are the
prophecy of the Messiah’s coming, taken mostly from Isaiah, followed by the
annunciation and birth of the Christ Child.
Isaiah is the Old Testament book for Advent, for sure. Some of the most beautiful
poetry in all the Bible is in this book, a book of prophetic hope. We read it as a book
that contains what points toward—-what prefigures—-the future, the advent of the
Messiah.
It is interesting to put verses together from Isaiah that Christians have read as
Messianic prophecies: they have become embedded in our consciousness.
Here are five:
Chapter 7 Verse 14
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child
and shall bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.
Chapter 9 Verse 1
The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, By the way of the sea, beyond the
Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: The people who sat in darkness have seen a great
light, And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned.
Chapter 9 Verses 5 and 6
For all the boots of the tramping warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Chapter 11
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
and Chapter 53 Verse 5
But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. *****************************************
Why stop with only what we’ve read this morning? There is an untold richness of beauty and truth ahead of you, in this book of Isaiah—-go home and read it all!
I am always saying that, I know….
For now, if we take only one word from this passage set for us for today, what about that word, comfort? I need comfort in these times—-we all need comfort, in these times.
In the American South the great comfort food was fried chicken—-your grandmother’s, preferably—-with biscuits and gravy and squash and black-eyed peas and sliced tomatoes and fried okra and various berry pies and iced tea and lemonade, usually spread out on a table in the shade for a church picnic on a Sunday out on the lawn after the church service. As children, we would always stuff ourselves full of everything and then go run and play. I don’t know how I did that.
For some people in a time of a pandemic, comfort has come in the form of food, (or drink, or a lot of series on Netflix). The problem is, that comfort food doesn’t last. The food that comforts us here is the bread and wine of the eucharistic meal that is set out before us—-the symbols of our faith. And here we are, come together again— thankfully—-to receive these gifts that have been given to sustain us through these times. This is the food that lasts.
We come in faith, we come in hope. We have made sacrifices to be here this morning. We could have gone other places, done other things. But to hear these holy words of Scripture and to partake of this holy meal—-these are the things we know will sustainus, through to the end of this time, and other times. This is our ultimate comfort, a comfort that is real. What Isaiah proclaimed for Israel in ancient times and the verses of Isaiah that Matthew quoted as he set down the birth—-anticipation and fulfilment—-this comfort is ours, now.
That need for comfort has always existed for human beings, from long before Isaiah. A great unsatisfied longing, a longing for healing, for righteousness, for peace, for wholeness, for restoration. For the nation, Israel, certainly, but also for individual human beings.
The joyful news for Christians is that we know that the Messiah has come, and is here, and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. The comfort of this news is also that, as Isaiah proclaims,
“the Lord will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.”
Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled all the words of the prophets and all the longings of the people of the earth, He who was and is and is to come.
As we celebrate this Advent, this drawing nigh, of the Christ Child, may we be comforted by the assurance of our faith, even as we look ahead to the birth of a new age, when the Lord will come the final time, and enfold us, and all things, in Himself.
Amen
The Revd Dana English
St. George’s Campden Hill, London
December 6, 2020