Last Sunday, December 8, 2013 (full size gallery)
A messy Sunday in terms of weather! Sleet according to Bill Wick began falling in Port Royal at 5:30am. In Fredericksburg it alternated between sleet, snow and just rain. The roads were not bad and not iced over. (That would come just after noon).
Despite this weather we had 29 in church. We still had the lighting of the Advent candles, by two of the Duke brothers. Catherine and Amy exchanged roles, Catherine taking Godly Play and Amy the service. Amy helped celebrate Cherry Everett’s 75th birthday. (Their Christmas celebration was changed to the 16th at 6pm as a result of the inclement weather.
In her sermon, Amy used the metaphor of preparing for a house guest in relationship to us preparing for Jesus. It is not a quick process in any case must be thoughtful. We must prepare ourselves in our heart, head, and soul. We must prepare a room for Jesus. The birth is itself a holy mystery. In our preparation we must sit down and take time for the process, to reflect on our lives. The process is similar what we do in church to focus ourselves to hear God’s word. Each Sunday is like an advent moment. We also always preparing. This is evidence in the words of the Nicene Creed.
We must remember Advent is not only a time of Jesus birth but also refers to a future time when he will come again. In Advent we are looking backward to his birth and forward toward the second coming. We are looking in two directions.
This Sunday the Gospel was about John the Baptist. John does not always paint a rosy picture. "But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! " Baptizing with fire "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
The chaff will be burned away for the real value – the wheat for which food can be made. Amy cited Malachi who talked about burning away the impurities of gold and silver. We burn out our impurities so we can present the best for Jesus.
This is a busy week coming up – Vestry on Monday, "Thrill of Hope" advent class on Tuesday, the ECW luncheon on Wednesday and the community dinner on Friday.
At the heart of the lesson from Matthew for Advent 2, and perhaps its overall theme, is the matter of hope. As Paul writes "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." Related to this is answering ‘What defines a great leader?” In the midst of this we are called repentence. The Psalm also looked forward to a new ruler to establish peace and justice, a desired state of affairs which goes out to help the poor.
From Isaiah’s time there was plenty of needs for this in the corruption 8th centuries before Christ. He defined qualities of the ideal ruler. The ruler should have a spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might and knowledge and fear. The Psalm also looked forward to a new ruler to establish peace and justice, a desired state of affairs which goes out to help the poor.
The key figure in this week and next is John the Baptist. He is both a throwback to an older time and a prophet of the new His call to repentance, to turning back to the way of life to which Israel committed herself in its covenant with God, is like that of Old Testament prophets.
The hope is in the idea of repentence. It refers to a turning away from the past way of life and the inauguration of a new one, in this case initialized by an act of baptism.
Repentance means to assume responsibility for the future and not to be tied to the past. Change is what is important. No one is to be written off as inferior or worthless. Every person matters to God.He warns that being ethnically Jewish, a member of God’s people, is no guarantee of entry to the Kingdom; God shows no partiality (v. 9); he can have other “children”. John foresees a judgment falling on Israel separating the wheat from the chaff, something Jesus also seems to have envisioned as well.