Penelope Bridges
Fifth Sunday of Advent
Penelope Bridges
Some of the most beautiful language in the Bible comes from the prophets. If you are going to preach a tough message, it helps to wrap it up in poetry. Baruch paints a picture of the happy ending for God’s people, and in the Canticle we hear the words of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, who also looks forward to an era of peace and joy. St Paul writes with affection to the Christians in Philippi, holding up a vision of the coming of God’s Kingdom, and John the Baptist arrives on the scene quoting familiar and comforting words from Isaiah. Four messages of hope. And God knows we need hope in these challenging times.
In the midst of all the prophetic heavenly visions, St. Luke locates his story firmly in the real world, specifying exactly when John started his ministry. As we move through this year C of our three year lectionary, we will see that Luke is a methodical author. He says at the beginning of his Gospel that he is going to give an orderly account of the life of Jesus, and right from the start he makes it clear that these supernatural events happened in all the brokenness and ordinariness of our world. Our faith, Christianity, is a real-world religion. It rests on the foundation of Judaism, a truly earthy religion that values the physical and the fleshly. The Gospels teach us that Jesus came into the world to transform the world, not to rescue us from the world.
For centuries the church focused the attention of its faithful on the heavenly reward, on the life to come, instead of on the conditions of this life: in a world where life was fragile and survival depended on unrelenting physical labor, people needed that vision to give them a reason to carry on and a way to face death with confidence. Moreover, in a rigidly hierarchical culture, and given that the church was an Imperial institution from the 4th century on, it also suited those in positions of power in both church and state to distract the masses from any thoughts of changing this world and possibly threatening the status quo.
For us in the developed world today, life is generally pretty comfortable. We have antibiotics and modern medicine; we have labor-saving devices; many of us are fortunate enough to live long lives and even to have leisure time or years of retirement that allow us to reflect on the state of the world and discern how we might be called to work for change. Luke’s real world story may have new resonance for us.
So, what do we see in the real world today? Economic inequality increases day by day. People are demonized for the views they hold, for the people they love, for their positions on bodily autonomy. The CEO of a major healthcare company was gunned down on the street this week, apparently by someone whose inner frustration turned to murderous rage. Governments are blowing up schools and hospitals in the Middle East. Gangs are running Haiti. The population of Sudan is starving to death. Eastern Europe is in danger of a spreading conflagration.
Even within our own families and communities, political differences have created estrangement, because we have come to believe that your political leanings tell me what kind of person you are. We are torn apart by differing worldviews. And this is the world that Jesus is coming into this Christmas, a world as conflict-ridden, unjust, and heartbreaking as the one he came into in the 15th year of the emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis, Lysanias was ruler of Abilene, and Annas and Caiaphas held the position of high priest.
In the back of our Prayer Book there’s a section called the Catechism, or an Outline of the Faith. It is a series of questions and answers about God, Jesus, the Church, Scripture, the sacraments and the Christian Hope. [BCP p845 ff]. I want to think for a moment about two of those questions and answers.
First, what is the mission of the Church? The mission of the church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
Second, what is the Christian hope? The Christian hope is to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God’s purpose for the world.
The mission of the church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. If we are not working towards unity, we are not doing the mission of the church. We call ourselves the Cathedral for the City. This city is a diverse community, and there are plenty of people here who don’t share my views on social issues like the environment, the economy, immigration, or transgender rights. That doesn’t mean that they are monsters, and it doesn’t give me the right to regard them with contempt. In fact, if I allowed myself to get to know some of them, I might find some new friends. After all, what if I’m wrong?
As the leader of this faith community, how can I model the church’s mission of seeking unity with all people? How can I encourage all of you to do the same? How can we be the Cathedral for the WHOLE City? How can we further the mission of unity in our immediate environment?
Maybe that second Q&A can help us here: The Christian hope is to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God’s purpose for the world. As people of hope we are to live in confidence and fullness of life. We are to live fully into this world, as messed up as it is; not to throw up our hands in despair or retreat into a safe bubble, but to wade out into the mess and muck of disagreement, injustice, and pain, carrying hope with us like a lamp in the darkness. We are to invest ourselves in this world, in the institutions that strive to make things better for all people and especially for those who have no voice or power to help themselves.
The Catechism refers to God’s purpose for the world. Oddly enough, I can’t find where the Prayer Book tells us what God’s purpose for the world IS. Richard and I had a conversation about that, and we decided that the purest distillation of God’s purpose for the world must be in the creation story, where God set the human beings in the garden to live in community, to live in peace with each other and with creation, and to participate in the economy of nature, in which nothing is wasted or lost and life is abundant and infinitely good.
If that is God’s purpose for the world, and that certainly seems to be reflected in the mission of the church for unity, then let’s find ways to take steps to complete that purpose. Let’s bring hope to the world around us. Let’s work to undo the estrangement and polarization that are so wounding. Let’s do what we can to build relationships, to reach out in love and compassion, to move past politics and focus on the humanity that we see in each other. And let’s do as today’s Collect advises and heed the words of God’s messengers the prophets, who call on us to both rejoice and repent, as we look with eager expectation for the coming of Jesus, the one who will make all things new. Amen.
