Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28
So, at the beginning of Advent we learned about how Advent is about waiting. Us waiting not just for Christmas and the celebrations of Christ's birth, but also waiting for Christ to come again, to bring justice to the world and to make God's kingdom a reality on earth. And last week we learned that Advent is not just about us waiting for God, but about God waiting for us. That is, God is waiting for us to get ourselves adequately prepared before sending Christ so that we will be ready for the big day. And so last week I talked a bit about what preparations God expects us to make - how God expects us to "straighten out" - so to speak - so that Christ can come to us more quickly. Well, today I want to reflect a little more on what kind of preparations it is that we're called to make, and how God helps us to actually carry them out.
So to help us out we've got John the Baptist again this week. Last week he was talking about making "straight the way of the Lord" and we found that that meant repentance, and getting rid of the roadblocks, otherwise known as sins, in our own lives so that Christ could come to us. Well, this week the word associated with John is "witness." "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light." John the Baptist came, not to direct people to himself, but to point people to Jesus, who was coming. By John's actions and by what he said, he hoped that the people who saw and heard him would turn to Jesus, the true Messiah. By his actions and words, he was preparing the people to encounter Jesus, and Jesus' own radical actions and words.
And that is what we are called to do as well. I know that so often we think we are called to be like Jesus, but I wonder if we are rather called to be like John - if we are called to be witnesses and by our words and actions to point people to Christ, rather than to ourselves. Certainly in Advent that is what we are called to do - to prepare people not only for Christmas, but to prepare them for Christ coming again. So how do we do that? How do we prepare others to encounter Christ?
Well, I'm going to depart a bit from the traditional evangelism script and suggest that we don't do it by telling people about Jesus Christ. I mean, sure, if somebody asks you flat out about this Jesus person and why Christmas is so important, by all means go ahead and tell them the story. But I would hesitate to bring Jesus up without asking. And there're two reasons I say this. The first is that in the last century, Christians have not been particularly good witnesses for Christ. That is, a lot of nasty things have been done by Christians in the name of Christ, and people, naturally, have come to associate Christianity and Christ with those nasty things. Residential abuse, pedophile priests, dominion over creation, the oppression of women, the murder of gays, pre-emptive war - these things have all been done by Christians claiming to follow Christ. And Christians who don't agree with them, who find their actions horrific, have in fact been astonishingly unprotesting about it all. So whether we as Christians have perpetrated evil ourselves, or just stood by and said nothing about it, either way we have not been very good witnesses for Christ. We have done a very poor job of preparing the world for Christ to come again.
So that's one reason I would hesitate to prepare people by telling them about Christ. The second reason is quite simple - that telling people is not as effective as showing people. In other words, actions speak louder than words. Rather than using our words - which are beginning to mean less and less every day - to prepare people for Christ, it is far more powerful to use our actions. And the actions that best prepare people for Christ's coming again are actions that best witness to Christ, that best testify to who he is. Actions that show his love, his mercy, his compassion for sinners and outcasts, his desire that all be forgiven, his wish for justice.
This is how we witness to Christ, how we make our Advent preparations. Isaiah says it so poetically in our first reading, when he says that Lord has sent him to "bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour, . . . to comfort all who mourn." We are meant to go out into the world and proclaim the goodness of Christ's reign by helping the poor, loving those who have never known love, working for justice, being with those who are lonely and mourning. Things that seem so obvious at Christmas time, but things which I think we so often forget to do in our hurry to get to the malls for the latest Christmas deals, in our rush to cook the perfect Christmas meal.
But maybe I'm being too hard on us Christians. It's true, there is a lot to do during the Christmas season - there's Christmas shopping, getting the decorations up, planning for all the get-togethers, sending out Christmas cards, connecting with family and friends. And spending money on charity instead of gifts, spending time with the poor instead of friends, writing letters to protest injustice instead of writing Christmas cards, well that all seems just a tad unrealistic, wouldn't you say? A bit too much like a fairy tale, like Santa visiting every single house in the world in one night. To witness the way I suggested, to prepare the world for Christ with our actions instead of our words, well even to me that sounds like a bit too much work.
And it would be if we had to do it on our own. The kind of witness God is asking us to do would be impossible - is impossible - to do by ourselves. Nobody, not even John the Baptist or Isaiah the prophet, could do this kind of work alone. We are, sorry to say it, too self-involved, to addicted to our own comfort levels, too afraid of risk to witness to Christ the way God wants us to.
But we aren't being asked, or even expected, to do this on our own. God is fully aware that the only way we can witness and testify to Christ the way John did is through the presence of the Holy Spirit. The only way we can act on issues of love and justice the way Isaiah did is through the presence of the Holy Spirit. That's why when Isaiah talks about all the things God has anointed him to do, he begins by saying, "The spirit of the Lord God is upon me." I know we don't usually talk about the Holy Spirit during Advent and Christmas - we usually reserve that for Pentecost - but it is only through the Holy Spirit that we can carry out the preparations that God is calling us to. The Spirit that moved over the waters of creation, the Spirit that inspired the kings and prophets of the Old Testament, the Spirit that was with the Word in the beginning, the Spirit that came upon Mary when Jesus was conceived, the Spirit that filled Jesus when John baptized him, the Spirit that inspired the early church to spread the good news far and wide, this same Spirit fills us and moves us to carry out the actions that truly testify to Christ as the light coming into the world. This Spirit is what enables us to prepare for Christmas in a way that witnesses not to the consumerism that grips our culture but to what Christ is really all about.
That's not to say that everything suddenly becomes easy. Now that you know that the Spirit is working in you, helping you with your Advent preparations, I don't expect that you'll walk out the church doors, give up your Christmas tree, and spend the next three weeks working at a soup kitchen. But I do suspect that the next two weeks leading up to Christmas will be a little different for you than before - that the Spirit of the Lord will move you, whether you're aware of it or not, to "witness to Christ's coming and prepare his way." And so in small but very real ways, the preparations will take place, the kingdom of the Lord will come closer, and we will know that our prayer is being heard: "Come, Lord Jesus, come." Amen.
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