Third Sunday of Advent, Year B

Guest homily by Malcolm Heath

 

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Psalm 126 or Canticle 3 or Canticle 15
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28

I don’t know if you know this, but I came through those very doors for the first time about 5 years ago.  I think it was 5 years ago last Sunday, in fact.

I don’t honestly recall what led me through, only that I needed to come to church.  That sort of thing happened to me every year at Advent.  That year, 5 years ago, I listened, and as it turned out, I stayed. 

Why?  Because I was looking for something when I came in there.  I think at the time I would have called it solace, perhaps.  Or a connection with my past, since I had grown up in an Episcopal church.  There may have been other reasons too.

But the reason why I stayed, and why I still stay, is because I hear in the words of our Lection a radically different way to look at the world.  

I find it interesting that amid all that wonderful imagery if restoration and healing in Isaiah today, of celebration for fortunes and joy returned, the Prophet proclaims that this, too, is “the day of vengeance of our God”.

Can it be possible that the day of vengeance he speaks of is the very same day that the captives will be given liberty, that the oppressed will hear good news, and the

broken hearted will be healed?    

Can it be that they are one in the same thing?  That God’s Vengeance is actually the healing of the world?

That is a crazy, upside down way to look at things. 

The psalm says that when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, “we were like those who dream”.  It can seem crazy, amid all the darkness and suffering around us and in our own lives, to believe, or even hope, that some day things will be better.  It’s a crazy dream. 

It’s a crazy dream that can only be sustained with a lot of hard work.  The epistle says that we are to “test everything” and “always rejoice”.  Things eventually will be different. 

  

To me, that combination of practice and attitude, of questioning and always looking for the crazy dream, is what we’re called to do today.  We rejoice in the coming of the Lord, but we also know that it means that everything will be different, everything will be crazy and upside down.   The gospel hints at the fear that the powerful in Jesus’ time must have felt when this crazy man John, down by the river, started preaching that everything would be different soon. 

Because, let’s face it, no matter what your age, no matter how much money you have, no matter how much you don’t like where your life is right now…Change is scary.  Change is frightening. 

And God is promising change.

I didn’t realize that he was promising me change, when I walked through those doors. I didn’t know what I was getting into.  I suspect that Mary didn’t know what she was getting into either, when she said her great Yes to the angel that appeared to her.   A poor woman, nearly rejected by her bethrothed, pregnant with a child that wasn’t his,  and facing a hard life with no respite.  And yet, somehow, she took a risk, and said that she believed in change, in God’s vision of a future where things would be different – although she couldn’t imagine how. 

So, I rejoice today.  I rejoice, though, in the same spirit of wonderment and I think, fear, that Mary rejoiced with.  That crazy jump though to God’s world, where the hungry can be fed, and the heartbroken, healed.