What must we do?
Third Sunday in Advent: 17th December, 2006
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Advent is not just the time to prepare for Christmas. It is also the time of preparation before Christmas. Our readings from Scripture and our hymns that are particular to this time, point us in that direction. Together, contrary to all the indicators of great change and disruption around us, our readings, our preaching and our music continue to proclaim a place of hope and great joy very close to us. So, for two thousand years the Church has offered this particular time in the year. We are waiting. What we have experienced so far, is only just the beginning.
Right now all this is given a certain edge at a time when we are all already aware that the times are uncertain. Where could we start? The bushfires continue to burn in the High Country and Gippsland. It is a time when our country is in the worst drought in generations, and the summer has only just begun. Internationally there are wars and rumours of wars. What might the New Year bring? The readings that are set through Advent, actually speak of uncertain times like these, and they urge us back to God.
Advent then traditionally engages the big themes, the basic issues of meaning, direction and purpose. This is so, even as so much conspires against much of an engagement with matters of life and death or heaven and hell, or with the consideration of the underlying fragility of much that we would assume to be solid.
We need sufficient personal self-awareness to assess, to balance and to discern. We need sufficient spiritual openness to be able to hear and see, spiritually speaking, when the issues are again placed before us, in the liturgy, in the Scriptures, in prayer; even in the intervention of a good friend, or in response to what life has thrown in our direction. Any or all of these is possible.
But a basic reconsideration and a reassessment of what is important and what is not – what is lasting and what is not – this sort of process is what the readings and themes of the season of Advent are quite clearly intended to assist us with.
Even though the times are uncertain, yet there is assurance and hope. That is the Advent proposition. Some things are found just not to be as important as they formerly seemed to be. And other things very much more so. Many things in our world are uncertain, or breaking down, or under threat. Yes, this is true. But even so, this season is urging us towards an understanding of living that places all this in a context of a growing sense of assurance and hope.
Advent certainly demands a change of gear and pace. Advent is potentially about revolution, upheaval and change. Advent is about promise and expectation and judgment. It is certainly not about comfort and complacency. In these Advent themes we find pointers to the central message of good news and the hope for an ever-changing world.
Today's gospel for this third week of Advent again has its central focus on the confronting figure of John the Baptist. In the day-to-day context of ordinary lives there is the anguished cry of those who are searching for God; They beg of John to tell them: "What must we do?" How need we change the way we live?
Luke's vision of a community of faith living out the gospel priorities is later to be clearly described in Acts. But meanwhile here in today's gospel there are some clear imperatives. John called all sorts and conditions of people to a radical conversion of their lives – so today we have a sort of representative list. Perhaps we can find ourselves somewhere in here. If God is to be invited into the centre of a life, what is it that needs to give space?
A Christian has an obligation to share with those who lack. So if you have two tunics John says, give one to someone who has nothing. The same with food. And if you are in the position to make personal profit through corruption – like a tax collector in those times – do not do it. If you have the strength or the position to be able to extort through violence or intimidation – like one of the occupying army – do not do it. This is a social gospel; a radical vision of a community of faith, indeed a radical revisioning of a whole society.
The people who hear this message start to put it into the context of all the old prophecies of a promised One; a Messiah. The expectancy grows, but John makes it clear that he is not the One who is to come. As compared to him, John says in that striking image – he is not even worthy to undo the strap of his sandal, as a slave would. Something, someone so much more wonderful is coming. John is preparing the way. John is the encourager. John is the builder of a community which in its own life will show the evident signs of the presence of the God they claim to worship.
So it has to be that Christianity has much to say and do about the issues of this world as well as those of the next. All aspects of life – the way we live with and care for each other, our family life, our economic life, our values, our ways of organising ourselves – all the way to matters of life and death, war and peace. These issues are inescapable if we are to take Scriptural passages like this gospel today in any seriousness.
Furthermore, these are not only matters that are appropriately considered privately. These are matters that fundamentally colour our life together, corporately. The values we hold and honour, because of our awareness as a community of the story of our salvation, mean that we have no choice.
So faith and trust in Jesus Christ really does mean working hard at a different way of looking at the world and of living. According to our gospel this morning, Christians and groups of Christians have an obligation to speak out and to reach out, in order to work towards positive social change. That will mean working to end injustice. That will mean works of charity and mercy. That may mean opposing the powerful. It will mean praying for peace, when all around there are cries of war. John the Baptist's message for us today as Luke presents it is that we need to look and to work at our whole social context, as a fundamental part of the preparation that is necessary, before Christ is truly with us and in us.
We are challenged to think again of some of those well-known parables, particularly those in Luke, which so brilliantly capture the human condition, and human frailty. We are challenged again to consider the Lord's definitive summary of the Law – traditionally read at the beginning of each offering of the Eucharist – love God, love neighbour as yourself. This, Jesus says, is how to shape your living and your believing, if you would be my disciples.
Advent reminds us of the new starts that are ours for the taking. It reminds us that our spirits and our hearts need to prepare and be prepared. The gift that is available is 'God with us'. The prophets spoke the promise, John the Baptist threw out the challenge, and Mary made it possible. The time is once again near at hand. Can it yet make a difference to us?
The Lord be with you.
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