Advent 2 Year A 12/4/2022
Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
The season of Advent is a time of preparation.
Most Americans prepare for the holidays…
with lights and gifts, cards and good cheer.
But the Church reminds us in this season to also prepare…
spiritually.
What does this exactly mean?
How do we prepare spiritually to receive the coming of our Lord Jesus.
Today we have lit the second candle of Advent.
It is the candle representing peace.
Peace is a major theme of Christmas…
We know the angels declared to the shepherds on the night of Jesus’ birth:
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
(Luke 2.14)
The preparation in Advent is preparing for this peace.
This is one of the ways that we spiritually prepare in advent.
In our Old Testament reading from the prophet Isaiah,
He declared:
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.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
Strong words…
Declaring the advent of Jesus Christ…
Full of…
Judgment…
Righteousness…
Not the sort of sermon themes we are accustomed to hearing in our modern Episcopal church…
But judgment and righteousness…
Are actually things we crave.
Things we deeply long for.
Because we all want justice.
We don’t want to see violence, slander, and hostility go unpunished.
We want to see the evils of war, racism, abuse, and greed accounted for.
We want justice…
And this is what the prophet Isaiah is declaring.
When Jesus comes, he will bring a swift hand of justice…
The terrors of this world will be undone…
The world will be made right.
Evil will be no more.
The peace of Christ Jesus will reign.
In the second coming of Christ Jesus…
All of creation will have justice…
All of creation will be set free…
All of creation will be made right!
As St. Paul declares in Romans 8.19-21:
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay
and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
We and all of God’s creation are waiting for the words of Isaiah to be fulfilled…
As Isaiah said:
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
This is imagery of peace…
Because the justice of God through Jesus Christ has been fulfilled.
This is what our creedal faith points toward:
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We prepare for the coming of the Lord by participating in the justice of God.
We prepare for the coming of the Lord by declaring his peace in the midst of a broken world.
We prepare for the coming of the Lord by the joyful expectation we have of his coming again in glory.
God is coming to set this restless world at peace.
Now we find another way to prepare and pursue peace in our Gospel reading.
In Matthew we are introduced to a man named John.
He was a peculiar fellow…
Which is why Matthew tells us about what he wore and what he ate.
But Jesus says this about John:
Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist…
(Matthew 11.11)
For Jesus, John was the greatest prophet!
He was the one who prepared the way for the Messiah.
And in our reading…
John the Baptist has another tough message for our ears…
He declared in our Gospel reading a baptism of repentance.
Repentance!
It means to turn around and walk the opposite direction…
180 degrees.
The people that went to the river to see John confessed their sins and were baptized as a sign of repentance…
A sign of change!
They wanted to be right with the Lord…
To stop living a life of sin as the Old Testament law declared.
To repent and change their ways.
Peace comes when we are right with the Lord Jesus.
When we change our ways, turn, and follow Jesus.
The lessons from scripture teach us today that the way we prepare for the advent of the Lord…
The coming of the Lord is by repentance.
And as we turn from our own ways and cling to the way of the Lord,
we can with joy expect the coming of Jesus.
Without repentance we probably are very concerned about the coming of Jesus.
But by his grace…
Through confession…
Through the sacraments…
Through the prayers…
Through reconciliation…
Through penitence…
We prepare for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The theology of our church is in our prayer book.
The Book of Common Prayer is 85% scripture.
As the late scholar J.I. Packer says:
The Book of Common Prayer is the Bible arranged for worship.
It also contains what we believe,
how we pray,
how we practice our faith.
The whole book is a confession of our faith and belief.
And so, when we get to the prayers, anthems, and prefaces we find the rich theological tradition of our Anglican Communion.
The seasons of the church have certain prayers…
Teaching the theology of our church.
The proper preface for the season of advent…
The preface that the priest says during Holy Communion is this:
Because thou didst send thy beloved Son to redeem us from sin
and death, and to make us heirs in him of everlasting life;
That when he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world,
We may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing.
(BCP 345)
The goal of our theology is that we are in right relationship with Christ Jesus.
So that we can truly worship him.
When Jesus judges the world…
We rejoice without shame or fear.
You see the advent of Jesus brings peace.
Both of them.
Both advents…
Both the first and the second coming of Jesus bring peace.
The first advent…
We call Christmas…
The first coming of Jesus…
Brings peace.
He came to defeat sin and death.
He came to live and to die so that we might live through his death.
And it was that death on the cross that made the way for us to be redeemed and to have peace with God.
In the first advent of Jesus…
His death and resurrection paved the way of peace.
In his death and resurrection, we can have peace.
Not living under guilt and condemnation… But living in newness of life.
The second advent…
We usually refer to this as the second coming of Jesus…
Brings peace.
He is coming again to judge the world in his righteousness…
This is not a scarry thing for us who believe…
Because he comes to bring justice…
To set the world at rights…
To establish his reign…
His reign of peace…
That will be everlasting.
Today…
This week…
As we spiritually prepare for the coming of our savior…
May we work to turnaround the injustices in this world…
May we also repent… turnaround… the areas in our life that are not of God.
So that when Jesus comes…
At his advent…
We may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing…
Living in the peace that only Jesus brings.
Amen.