O come, O come, Emmanuel. Amen.
One of Tyler’s interests is linguistics and the etymology of words. She often shares insights about where words come from and why we use this word instead of that other word. It’s a helpful reminder that our words shape our understanding of and interaction with the world. In the same way as the colors of the world around us impact our mood, the implications and sounds of the words we use impact us in profound ways. Consider time. Is time something we use, waste, guard, or spend? It might sound small, but how we speak about time changes our relationship to it.
Well, in the Church, we don’t use any of those words for time. Christians do not use or spend our time, we keep time. Time is not ours and we don’t know how much or how little we have. Instead, like a musician, we keep time. Believe it or not, and I wouldn’t fault you for not believing it, I was in the Wake Forest University Marching Band for all four years of college. I was the cymbals player. And while I’m not gifted with an innate metronome like some of you are, playing the cymbals really taught me the importance of keeping time, because a cymbal crash at the wrong time really stands out.
Speaking about spending time makes us think, wrongly, that we are in control of time or that time is ours to use as we please. Rather we keep time, meaning that pay attention to and listen for the divine rhythms that we are made to be in sync with. This is why the liturgical year and marking seasons like Advent is so vital to Christian spirituality. The Christian calendar keeps us attuned to story of our salvation and steeps us in a calendar that isn’t about getting stuff done, but rather one that grounds us in the difference Christ makes.
I mention all of this because, as I said last Sunday, Advent is a season of waiting. And how we conceive of this waiting matters. Some Christians think of life as something we endure until we go to heaven after death. If we’re essentially sitting around and twiddling our thumbs as time marches on, waiting for something better to come along, we just might miss out on the tremendous gift of life that we have been given. Time isn’t a use or lose it sort of thing, nor is waiting a passive activity like waiting for a piece of mail to arrive. No, we keep time, moving in tune with the rhythm of the Holy Spirit.
Last Sunday, we waited with the prophets of Israel who remind us that the future is not the result of the past, but rather the future is filled with the not-yet promises of God. Today, we wait with one specific prophet, John the Baptizer. John is the cousin of Jesus – as John’s mother, Elizabeth, was a relative of Mary. Did Jesus and John grow up having playdates, as the window above our altar suggests? Scripture doesn’t say one way or the other. But the ministries of John and Jesus are intertwined in the New Testament. John, as we heard in the reading from Luke, was the one preparing the way of the Lord.
And as someone who is preparing the way of the Lord, John helps us to wait with eagerness and anticipation for the coming of our Messiah. Again, as I said last Sunday, Advent is not a season that prepares us for Christmas. The Jesse Tree, Advent Wreath, and hymns of the season aren’t about reminding us that something happened in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. No, Advent is a reminder that God does new and unprecedented things, and we ought to expect the unexpected when it comes to God. Advent reminds us that we’re still waiting for the fullness of God’s redemption, we still hunger for that day when the wolves and the lambs lie down together, we long for the fulfillment of the prayer “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”
As we wait, John helps us to sharpen our focus so that we’re able to keep time more faithfully. Using our Parish’s identity statement as a lens, there are three things we might say about keeping time with John.
The first is the importance of intentional worship. Instead of a psalm this morning, we had the Benedictus, the song that John’s father, Zechariah, sang after his birth. In the first half of this song, Zechariah sings of God’s faithfulness and the second half focuses on the ministry of his son. And right at the bridge between these two sections, we hear “This was the oath that God swore to our father Abraham, to set us free form the hands of our enemies, free to worship God without fear.” In other words, the purpose of God’s promise and liberation is so that we can worship God. Intentional worship, which we can also describe as being in a right relationship with God, is what it’s all about.
We are forgetful people, and so worship reminds us that God remembers us. God has promised to be with us, to bless us, and to love us, and the way we receive these gifts is to have God at the center of our lives. When we put other things at the center, which is called idolatry, things get out of balance rather quickly. Money, fame, power, success – these things cannot save us; instead they trap us. This is why the Benedictus names that our freedom to worship God is at the heart of God’s salvation for us. By coming to worship, we are receiving the most important gift that God has to offer us – the gift of God’s own self as we receive God in one another, in Scripture, in beauty, and in bread and wine.
As we wait with John, we do so by keeping time through intentional worship which frees us from falling prey to idols that distract and ensnare. And Zechariah adds that in this worship, we are holy and righteous in God’s sight. This takes us right into the next part of our identity statement: abundant grace. God has declared us to be good and loved, holy and righteous not on account of our good deeds, or the sincerity of our prayers, or our consistency in keeping spiritual practices. No God has chosen to love us because God is love.
Grace is encapsulated in the final verse we heard in Luke – “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” That word, “all,” is one of the most important theological words there is. “All” reminds us that God’s grace and love flow abundantly to us all – regardless of what we’ve done and left undone. This is such a liberating and gracious message – that we aren’t competing with each other for God’s love and that our we don’t have to make ourselves good enough. We are good because that is how God made us. Sure, we make messes and get dirt on us, but nothing can erase the goodness that is at our core. God’s grace is deeper than our imperfections, our belovedness is truer than our sinfulness, and we are not the sum of mistakes that we have made.
This is what we heard in the Collect – that God’s grace helps us to forsake our sins; and in Malachi – that we will be purified by God’s purging love. Mercy is also at the heart of the Benedictus. Zechariah says it is by the forgiveness of our sins that we know of our salvation. Knowing that nothing separates us from the love of God is what allows us to fully worship God. God does not reject us because we make mistakes, we don’t have to clean up our act before coming to God, nor do we have to gravel before God. We are always loved and already forgiven. Full stop. We don’t have to earn our forgiveness, we get to enjoy it.
So we wait with John as the forgiven and beloved people of God, which means that we wait not in fear, but in joyful expectation of what is yet to come from the infinite and abundant store of God’s gracious love. And with this grounding in grace, we are able to be in this world as a different sort of people – we are enabled to be the beloved community.
The fact that the Church is referred to as the beloved community suggests that we are different from other associations and gatherings out there. Indeed, we are made blessedly different because we are loved by God. Because God forgives us, we are bold in being a community that forgives each other. Because God welcomes us all unconditionally, we welcome all to be and belong here. Because God gives in abundance, we can be daringly generous.
Being in the world differently is how John helps us to wait. As a prophet, he calls us prepare and repent. The word repent means to change our minds, to see things differently, to take stock of our lives and rearrange them in assurance of God’s grace, mercy, and love. Just imagine what a life, a community, a church might look like if we had grace, mercy, and love as our core values. And this difference is why John is out in the wilderness baptizing people in the Jordan River.
We tend to think of the wilderness as “out there,” where people go when they aren’t welcome in the city. But that’s not why John is in the wilderness. Luke quotes Isaiah and both are clear – the goal is to get all flesh to see the salvation of God. If reaching the largest possible audience is the goal, why go where the population is sparse? And if your mission is to baptize people, why go to the Jordan River, which is barely deserves to be called a river. It’s a small, shallow, and muddy creek. If John wanted a body of water that was ready for a lot of baptizing, he’d have chosen the Sea of Galilee. There is nothing practical about John baptizing people in the wilderness. But he’s not there to be practical, he’s there to be prophet.
The wilderness is the place where we go through to get from where we are to the promises of God. Wilderness is the path from slavery in Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land. The wilderness is how the people returned home after their Exile in Babylon. The wilderness is where God does new things, making the wilderness a place of hope.
If there’s one thing that the Church can do right now, not for our own survival, but for the flourishing of this world is to be a beloved community, a place of hope, a place where love is the way. People are desperate for a place of belonging, of forgiveness, of comfort, of connection with the divine and each other. And, thanks be to God, by the power of the Spirit, we can do that. We heard in Philippians, “This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more.” It’s a prayer of beloved community, a prayer that God would continue doing in us a new thing. I hope you’ll join me this week in prayer that God would make our love overflow more and more.
It is God’s gift that we are able to participate in the difference that Christ makes. We don’t spend or waste our time aimlessly or hopelessly, rather we keep time as we anticipate the new things that God is doing. John reminds us that intentional worship is at the heart of how we wait so that we are attuned to God’s saving love instead of being tempted by idols. In relaying the promise of our forgiveness and belonging, John grounds us in the abundant grace of God that liberates us from comparing, competing, and earning. And John calls us into beloved community as he points us towards the most excellent way of love which we see in in the One he was preparing the way for: Jesus Christ.
As the Benedictus opens, I’ll conclude: “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, he has come to his people and set them free.” Thanks be to God!
