Sermons

Second Sunday in Advent

Sunday 9th December at 8am and 6.30pm

Katherine Elliott
Readings: Isaiah 11.1-10 & Matthew 3.1-12

Time for a change.

I wonder if you've ever felt like a change - maybe a change in your day-to-day routine, or a change in your circumstances - in your job, your health, your commitments.
Change can be refreshing and renewing, eg instead of eating a meal at home, eating out at a restaurant with family or friends makes a 'nice change'.
Change can also be difficult, eg the birth of a baby can bring joy but also huge responsibility and tiredness.
Change can bring unwelcome circumstances, eg closure of a village post office. Personal loss can bring painful changes.

Our passage from Isaiah tells of new hope and a new change… the Jewish people had been conquered by the Assyrians and the kingdom of Judah sentenced to exile by the Babylonians… figuratively speaking, the family tree of Jesse, David's father, had been axed down to nothing but a stump. However, Isaiah's message brings hope: 'a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse' (Isa 11.1) 'a Branch will bear fruit.'

Isaiah was referring to a Saviour, a 'Messiah' who would bring both wise judgement and a stable, peaceful, and thriving kingdom. That would certainly be a change of circumstances for the Jewish nation.

John's message of hope and his call to change has a more individual, personal note and it's on his message that I'd like to focus. As he preached in the Judean desert, his message contained an instruction: Turn away from your sins and two announcements: The kingdom of Heaven is near and One is coming who will baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
John's message seems to have struck a chord because many people responded, travelling long distances (from Jerusalem, Judea and the countryside near the Jordan River). Matthew tells us these people confessed their sins and were baptised.

Benjamin Jowett an Oxford theologian in 19th C wrote something similar:
Imagine not infants, but crowds of grown up persons already changed in heart and feelings; their life hid with Christ in God. Losing their personal consciousness in the water of regeneration; rising again from the depths into the light of Heaven, in communion with God and nature; met as they rose from the bath with the white raiment which is the righteousness of the saints, and ever looking back on that moment as the instant of their new birth, of the putting off of the old and the putting on of Christ. Baptism was… the most apt expression of the greatest change that can happen to a person.

We tend to think of baptism being for babies but no, it is for young people and for adults too. It's a public way of declaring that, like those who responded to John's message, they want to have a change; they want to get ready for the arrival of God's kingdom.

Part of that 'getting ready' involved repentance. The Greek word metanoia carries a rich meaning; it not only means being deeply sorry for any way in which we've digressed from God's life-directions but it also involves a change, a complete turn around from one direction to another. Like Jowett writes, it's a putting off of the old and a putting on of the new.

Now many of us here may well have been baptised at a specific time and place but I suggest that the process of change, of turning God wards for his renewing in our lives, is an on-going process. Daily we should have that attitude about us so that when Jesus returns in all his glory we are living life-styles that are pleasing to him. That's how we can prepare a way for the Lord.

We can't make huge changes all at once - in the quietness of our personal times of prayer, we can listen to God for one thing he'd like to do in us and through us - one at a time.

John pointed out that Jesus baptises with the Holy Spirit. God's Holy Spirit will help us as we seek God's change in our lives.

Thomas Aquinas described the Holy Spirit as 'the heart of the Church. It is through the Holy Spirit that all Spirit-animated persons are inter-connected into a living spiritual network.'

I suggest it's as a baptised, Spirit-filled network of people that God calls us to bring hope and change into the lives of each other and our communities.

During this Advent let's turn to god, let's welcome the change he can bring into our lives and as a Church, be ready to prepare a road for the Lord.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay