Dreaming dreams and seeing visions
Advent 2: 9th December, 2007
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Advent is a wonderful time for dreaming dreams and seeing visions. It is a time of hope and expectation. It is a time to reconsider and to review. It is a time to prepare for something better than what is. It is a time to recognise that help is at hand and that our own resources do not need to be enough. It is a season when we honour the fact that God so cared for the health and the salvation of this world in all its complexity through the whole line of great prophets, to the last of them in John the Baptist and then through the example and witness of a young woman named Mary, giving birth to the Christ Child in Bethlehem in Judea. It is a message for all the generations. A message that is not only gently beautiful, but full of confronting challenge — no more so than in today's gospel.
Today our gospel focuses on John the Baptist. "A voice cries in the wilderness: Prepare a way for the Lord, Make his paths straight." (Mt 3:3) Our gospel includes angry words — for there is no other way to interpret 'you brood of vipers'. Those who do not produce good fruit will be put to one side just like trees that are fruitless. There will be sifting just like the sifting of the grain from the chaff. We are people who are being urged to make some hard choices and it is a hard and wild figure of a man that the city people are coming out in great crowds to hear. That is how our gospel for this second Sunday of the Church year continues.
The readings throughout also declare this Advent season to be a time that is exciting and renewing. There would be reason enough even if all this was about was to make a good preparation to celebrate God's wonderful gift to us at Bethlehem - the enormous reassurance that comes to us in the knowledge that God is with us in this world and in this life, alongside us, born of a woman as we all were, knowing our hopes and our fears. That would in itself be a good reason year by year to make good preparation for the end of December. But for instance our first lesson this morning from the first part of the prophet Isaiah is much bigger than that. Our Old Testament lesson starts with the promise that 'A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots' (Is 11:1) and Christians certainly see this as referring to Jesus of the house of David, son of Jesse, to be born in David's town. And this vision moves on to a glimpse of the Kingdom when 'The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid... 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'. If only.
This is because Advent is not just the time to prepare for Christmas. It is also the time of preparation before Christmas. Our readings from Scripture and perhaps especially our hymns that are particular to this time point us in the right direction. My favourite Advent hymn for instance is the stirring 18th classic that we sang last Sunday: 'Lo he comes in clouds descending'. That hymn is one of anticipating triumph and wonder and eager awaiting. It is, contrary to all the indicators of great change and disruption, still proclaiming a time of hope and great joy that is very close to us. That is the way this final coming together of all things at the end of time is described.
So, for two thousand years there has been this particular time in the year when it is made clear that we are waiting. And what we have experienced so far is only just the beginning.
Therefore this immediately becomes a question of how we are to choose to live our lives. It is strongly suggested to us that the day-to-day meeting of immediate needs and desires is not enough. The bigger perspective includes God.
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? It is two weeks after a federal election that resulted in a change of government. Even now the final results are not entirely clear. It is a time when our country is still suffering from the worst drought in generations, and a frightening bushfire season once again looms. This remains a time of international uncertainty and threat. What might the New Year bring? What might happen next? The readings that are set for Advent, actually speak to uncertainties like these, and they urge us back to our relationship with God.
Advent then, traditionally engages the big themes, the basic issues of meaning, direction and purpose. It urges an engagement with matters of life and death or heaven and hell, with the consideration of the underlying fragility of much that we would assume to be solid. Most of us would remember the parable about the rich man who spent his considerable energies accumulating a barn full of material things and did not, it seems, concern himself with much else. Those material riches were of no use to him when one night he suddenly and unexpectedly died. Huge wealth will not buy hope or happiness — or heaven. This experience could be upon us at any time. That is of course true at the very least in that none of us can know when we will be called to our Maker. That could indeed be suddenly and unexpectedly. So let's not be caught napping.
We need sufficient personal self-awareness to assess, to balance and to discern. What is actually important. What is not. We each need sufficient spiritual openness to be really able to hear and see, spiritually speaking, when these big issues are again placed before us; in the liturgy, in the Scriptures, in prayer, by a good friend or in our own process of reflection on what life has thrown in our direction. Any or all of these is possible.
Even though the times are uncertain, yet there is assurance and hope. That is a fascinating proposition. Some things are found just not to be as important as they formerly seemed to be. And other things very much more so. Some goals and objectives no longer seem to be life defining, or that which gives meaning to a life, in the way that they had previously. Some structures previously depended upon, ways of trying to understand the world, may be seen to have lost their strength and importance. The Advent challenge is certainly to work out first and second level priorities. 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 yet in a context of a growing sense of assurance and hope. 'Consider the lilies of the field', the Lord reminded those who were consumed by second level anxieties.
Advent certainly suggests 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. These themes are altogether too heavy to have a hope of dominating even an Australian Christian's December. But they are also too important to be completely abandoned. For in these Advent themes, we find important pointers to the way for each one of us to be able to receive the central message of hope for an ever changing world, that that Child was to grow up to teach and to live.
The Lord be with you
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