ADVENT II 2019

El Greco -- John the Baptist

• Isaiah 11:1-10  • 
• Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19  • 
• Romans 15:4-13  • 
• Matthew 3:1-12

​Purple is the traditional colour for the Season of Advent. Increasingly, however, blue is used as an alternative. This reflects a significant change in thinking, a change embodied in the Revised Common Lectionary. In part Advent is like Lent – a penitential season -- hence the colour purple. In part, though, it is also an anticipation of Christmas. So while our thoughts should indeed be focused on the great, if awesome, themes of sin and redemption, they must also be related, somehow, to the joy of Christmas.
​

---

In the Revised Common Lectionary this twofold aspect of Advent is reflected in the fact that the Gospel for the last Sunday in Advent begins the Christmas story and so switches our attention from death to birth. This is not a mere concession to the contemporary world in which Christmas services are held well before Christmas Day. Rather, it recognizes just how closely the Second Coming and the Incarnation are connected.  The Gospel for today, the second Sunday of Advent, reflects this. John the Baptist challenges his hearers in the fiercest language -- "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” – urging them to repent because “the kingdom of God is at hand”. This is the stuff of the Second Coming. But then, almost immediately, he turns their attention to Jesus’ First Coming, when he tells them that “one who is more powerful than I is coming after me”.
      The fact is, ‘First’ and ‘Second’ are temporal terms, whereas God is eternal, a Being in whom there is neither ‘before’ nor ‘after’. Consequently, although from a human perspective, Incarnation and Judgment are necessarily separated by time, they are two sides of a single divine act. The ‘baby in the manger’ who comes to save the world is also ‘Christ in his glorious majesty’ who comes to judge it. Unfortunately, the popular version of ‘the Christmas story’ is so focussed on the homely cuteness of the baby, it defuses the challenge with which his birth presents us. We have become so comfortable with it all that its strange mystery escapes us.

Geertgen -- The Tree of Jesse

​     The Old Testament lesson from Isaiah predicts the coming of a Messiah, springing from the ‘Tree of Jesse’. That Messiah is the baby born in Bethlehem. He it is who will inaugurate Isaiah’s vision of the ‘holy mountain’ where nothing is hurt or destroyed. Yet he does so, only because 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’. This doesn't resonate very well with Christmas lights and Nativity plays, and fits rather better with 'hellfire' preaching. Yet this is nonetheless the ultimate message of Christmas.

---