John the Baptist

Gaudete Sunday – “that deep shiver of gladness” – CS Lewis

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This Sunday is Gaudete Sunday, yes, the one with the pink (sorry, rose) candle!

The point of the rose candle is to stop us in our tracks, it’s supposed to stand out and make you go, ‘why’s that there?’ just as the reading from Isaiah set for this Sunday says “the desert shall rejoice and blossom” (Isa 35:1). Blossom in the desert would make you sit up and take notice. Gaudete Sunday is all about taking notice of the signs of the coming kingdom, the glimmer of light in the darkness.

I don’t think I can encapsulate the mood of Gaudete Sunday any better than CS Lewis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He uses the appearing of Father Christmas in the land where it is ‘always winter and never Christmas’ as an allusion to the appearing of John the Baptist in the wilderness. Here is an extract:

“Didn’t I tell you,” answered Mr Beaver, “that she’d made it always winter and never Christmas? Didn’t I tell you? Well, just come and see!”

And then they were all at the top and did see.

It was a sledge, and it was reindeer with bells on their harness. But they were far bigger than the Witch’s reindeer, and they were not white but brown. And on the sledge sat a person whom everyone knew the moment they set eyes on him. He was a huge man in a bright red robe (bright as hollyberries) with a hood that had fur inside it and a great white beard, that fell like a foamy waterfall over his chest.

Everyone knew him because, though you see people of his sort only in Narnia, you see pictures of them and hear them talked about even in our world – the world on this side of the wardrobe door. But when you really see them in Narnia it is rather different. Some of the pictures of Father Christmas in our world make him look only funny and jolly. But now that the children actually stood looking at him they didn’t find it quite like that. He was so big, and so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still. They felt very glad, but also solemn.

“I’ve come at last,” said he. “She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last. Aslan is on the move. The Witch’s magic is weakening.”

And Lucy felt running through her that deep shiver of gladness which you only get if you are being solemn and still.

fatherchristmas

 

Sermon Advent 2: The Prophets 8 Dec 2013, @leedsminster

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Here is a sermon I preached on placement at Leeds Minster at Choral Evensong on the second Sunday of Advent 2013.

1 Kings 18:17-39; John 1: 19-28

Advent is for many of us a lost season in the church calendar. It is set aside as a season for waiting and hoping, for meditating on the coming again of Christ. And yet we live in a society where the concept of delayed gratification is a quaint one – something we used to do, but not any more now that we can buy something with the click of a mouse one day and have it appear on our doorstep the next. Advent for the city dweller is a season of busyness and noise. Apparently, people that live in cities are exposed to over 3000 advertising images a day. Take a walk from here to the Trinity centre and your senses will be overloaded by signs in shop windows, blinking Christmas lights and even advertisements that move, screaming for your attention. Which message does your brain focus on? What is going to grab your attention?

 

This is the second Sunday of Advent, when we focus on the prophets. We had two wonderful readings that are all about the question ‘what is a true prophet?’ The story of the prophet Elijah versus the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel presents to us the great battle in which we are always struggling. Whose voice do we listen to? Who is the true God, the true Lord of our lives?

 

A true prophet is a clear signpost. A true prophet points to God, not themselves, as the source of life.

 

In the showdown on Mount Carmel there is a tremendous difference between the false prophets of Baal and the true prophet Elijah. The prophets of Baal are characterised by their great number – 450 of them versus Elijah – imagine this church full at the carol concert. They are characterised by their ungainly limping around, by their violent noise and shouting at their god and of course by their over dramatic cutting of themselves. The prophets of Baal all focus on themselves: ‘I’m making the most noise, I’m bleeding the most for the cause, god, look at me, look what I’m doing for you’.

 

Elijah in contrast focuses on the LORD. He builds an altar that is a reminder that his God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob using twelve stones for the twelve tribes of Israel. He reminds himself of who he is and who his God is. He then asks others to pour water on the altar 3 times, all the time he is directing attention away from himself and onto the LORD God. He puts beyond all doubt any sense that what is happening has anything to do with him as a prophet – he steps aside and God’s fire rains down and consumes all – through no effort of his own. No noise, no shouting at God, no cutting of himself. It’s not about him, it’s about the power of his God, Yahweh.

 

A true prophet is a clear signpost. A true prophet points to God, not themselves, as the source of life.

 

 

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It is not a surprise then that the Pharisees wonder if John the Baptist is Elijah returned! John is always pointing to Christ, his Lord. There is a famous painting called the Isenheim altar piece by Grünewald that depicts, rather unusually, John the Baptist standing next to the cross at calvary and pointing with a long bony finger to Jesus. This is John’s constant posture as a prophet, he points to Christ.

 

There is a big difference between an advertisement and a sign. Our road signs in Britain are written in lower case lettering. This is because it takes the brain longer to process words written in capital letters. And of course, we all know now that if you use capital letters in an email or a social media update it is perceived as shouting. Some signs are too cluttered for you to be able to process as you drive past. As we drive around this city we have to be alert to read the signs that will help us to find our destination – we have to filter out the noisy, shouting adverts for the clear sign to take us home.

 

A true prophet is a clear signpost. A true prophet points to God, not themselves, as the source of life.

 

We need to be the clear sign post that points to Christ. How often are we more like the noisy adverts that point more to ourselves? I need to ask myself, does my sign say ‘look at me’ or does it say ‘look at Him?’

 

The false prophets, the prophets of Baal, are like the blinking, shouting advertisements that bombard us during this Advent season. They say ‘look at me’, ‘buy me’, ‘you need me’. The true prophets of Elijah and John the Baptist are like a clear road sign that makes our road straight, our way through the wilderness clear, that points us home, that home we long for in this season of Advent, our true home when Christ comes again and there will be no more tears, no more suffering, and God’s light will shine forever.

Amen.

Sermon for Gaudete Sunday (Advent 3) – the one with the pink candle

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I had the privilege to preach for the first time at the wonderful St Aidan’s Church, Harehills (my placement church for my theological training this year) today. Below is the text of my sermon.

The readings for Advent 3 this year were:

Zephaniah 3.14-20
Philippians 4.4-7
Luke 3.7-18

Advent 3

Sermon Gaudete Sunday – Advent 3 – 16th December 2012

Today is Gaudete Sunday – we often have a pink candle on this day in the advent wreath to represent it. Gaudete is the Latin word for ‘rejoice’ and on this Sunday the readings are all about Joy. Originally, the first word said at mass on this day was gaudete – rejoice – from that beautiful reading in Philippians where Paul tells us to ‘Rejoice in the Lord always’. But then the gospel reading set for today is a bit strange. Have a think about it again. Is it about joy?

Picture the scene. It’s 2000 years ago. You’re a God- fearing Jew who lives in Galilee. You’ve heard stories of a strange, wild but wise man out in the desert who is bringing some new teaching about God. He is baptising people in water. You decide, along with some friends to make the dangerous journey out into the desert to hear him for yourself, what’s this amazing new message he has? You’ve been walking for a good couple of hours and eventually you find the crowd around this man called John. He’s dressed strangely in rough camel skin and is sitting in silence under the shade of a tree. You wait for something to happen. Looking around the silent, shifting and expectant crowd you notice a few Roman soldiers, their armour glinting in the sun and even some tax collectors. You look down – not a good idea to get spotted by these men. Suddenly, John leaps to his feet, a stern look in his eye and shouts “You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape what’s coming to you?” You’re taken aback. How could he be so rude? Strangely though, you want to hear more. You hang on his every word and so does everyone in the crowd. His teaching is so powerful that you wonder if he could be the messiah, God’s anointed one, the one your people have been waiting for. As soon as this thought enters your mind John says: “I baptise you with water, but one with more power than I will baptise you with fire. I’m not worthy even to undo his sandals, he is coming to reap the harvest, to separate the wheat from the chaff!”

Did you spot the joy in the story? Let’s see if we can find it.

Advent is about expectation – in our reading today it says that the crowd were full of expectation. We, in the run up to Christmas are also full of expectation. Where do you expect to find the presence of God?

John the Baptist was sent by God to point to the coming of Jesus Christ. In today’s Gospel reading, Luke gives us some hints as to what the good news about the kingdom is, some ideas of what to expect the world will look like when Jesus is around.

There are 3 clues in this story. The first is in the kind of people that gather around John. Some people there are Jews – who are pretty confident that they’re God’s chosen people. Then we have two other groups that you wouldn’t expect to be there – some tax collectors – unpleasant individuals who often took more money than they were supposed to in taxes working for the Roman government. The other group are Roman soldiers from the hated occupying forces. These are the people who are attracted to John, not just religious people but other folk, foreigners and outcasts. So the first clue about the good news is that God’s kingdom is for everyone. Every week when I come to St Aidan’s I’m reminded of this fact – we have people here from many nations and backgrounds – and we’re all united by our love for Jesus.

The second clue is in John’s teaching. He tells the people to give to those who are in need and to live in an honest way in order to please God. He doesn’t, as we might expect, tell the soldiers and tax collectors to stop working for the Romans: he’s more interested in the intentions of their hearts. He uses the imagery of growing fruit. John is telling the people that it’s no good going through the motions with God – our lives are made good by the evidence we produce – by their fruit. God isn’t interested in what the world thinks looks good, He looks deep into our motivations. John’s baptism was one of repentance. The word repentance, in Greek, metanoia, means to change your mind or to turn around – to see the world in a different way. Doesn’t John’s teaching sound a lot like the teaching of Jesus?

The third clue about the good news of the kingdom is that something is coming that is even better than we expected. John says, “you think I’m exciting? Wait until you meet the one that comes after me!”

So in a desert, a dry place, a place of desolation we hear a voice bringing good news.. The wise men whose arrival we celebrate at epiphany in January went looking for a king in a sensible place – the palace in Jerusalem. Is that where they found God? No, they found a small child in a small forgotten area on the edge of Jerusalem. If we went looking for God today, would we expect to find him at Leeds Town Hall or would He surprise us by being found in a small, poor area called Harehills on the edge of the city?

Our God is a God of surprises. Here we have found God in a desert place. We don’t always find God where we expect him to be. But he is here with us, God with us, Emmanuel. This is the joy we find on gaudete Sunday.

Today we can rejoice because God’s kingdom is coming, here in the desert place, a kingdom where everyone is welcome, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female  – people who worship a God who can do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine!

Amen