Second Sunday in Advent, 11:15 Worship Service
THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. PHILIP, ATLANTA
THE  REV. CANON TODD D. SMELSER, PREACHER

A vision of hope is perhaps what truly defines the season of Advent.  An emphasis on preparation or repentance is no more than ornaments on our liturgical tree.  They, and all other expectations of this very crowded and complex time of year, hang solely on the promise that one day, the final freedom, the final justice; the final and lasting peace of God will be given.  Without a vision, there is no hope.  Without hope, there is not really much to live for.  The life of exile becomes the familiar and accepted life.  Ones’ days are spent in just enduring.  Perhaps this is why the season of Advent appeals to those who are not happy with the status quo.  For under the glitter and the extravagance of this season, deep down in the soul, if we are honest, we are searching for a new reality, and a context of deep relationship with that which we call holy.

Every Advent we are confronted by John the Baptist, son of Zechariah the priest, who gives a whole new understanding to being a P.K.—preacher’s kid.  John did not only rebel against his father’s religious politics—he may have even been a first century dropout.  He may have even joined the pious opposition, the Essene puritans.  This devout community with drew to the desert, the wilderness, near the Dead Sea 150 years earlier, in protest against the Maccabean takeover of the high priesthood.  There they developed a ritual life of their own, independent of the Temple in Jerusalem.  Like John the Baptist they too became “a voice crying out…in the desert prepare the way of the Lord.”

The Essenes practiced ritual bathing and participated in a common meal, which of course the early Christians would reinterpret as baptism and the Eucharist.  But unlike the Essenes, who were content with maintaining ritual identity within the enclosed community, John seems to have looked to a larger public, sharing the prophet Isaiah’s hope “that all humankind shall see the salvation of God.” 

Luke writes that “the word of God” came to John in the wilderness.  The Word of God came to a nothing son of a nobody in a godforsaken place.  Not to the high priest, not to the rules, not to Caesar, who thought himself divine.  But to John, who was on nobody’s Christmas list.  Brazilian educator Paulo Freire has observed that the oppressors and rulers are incapable of developing a utopian vision because their goal is simply to perpetuate the present order from which they benefit so fully.  They oppose all change because it might lessen their power or prestige.  No wonder God once again chose one of the least of them to bear his message.

What John, and before him the prophets Baruch and Isaiah, seem to offer is that holy and life-giving vision of what God intends for the future.  There is the promise of salvation portrayed as the gathering of the oppressed and scattered exiles to live together again as God’s people in covenant relationship.  All of those journeys over the high mountains and into the deep hills are now leveled out, so that Israel may walk safely with her God.  There is also the liberating message of hope that the suffering will eventually end—the pain will end—the slavery will be over—and the people will be restored and they will walk in peace and justice with their Creator once more.

The repentance that John preaches in Luke is not about a private forgiveness of sin.  John’s call is for the whole community, for the rebuilding of all the people of God.  His preaching is not lofty and philosophical, but direct and clear.  Repentance means returning to righteous living—to right relationship with God and one another.  It’s about practicing justice, and loving freely, of sharing what we have with others, of living peaceably with our neighbor, of being good stewards of all that God has given us.

I could not help but think about the opening passage in Luke’s Gospel in which he provides a microcosm of the imperial order of the Roman Empire.  At the top of the pyramid stands Tiberius Caesar, a figure so important that time was reckoned from the beginning of his reign.  In our own day, especially in light of the Iraq Study Committee’s report to the President, this might read:  In the sixth year of the reign of George W. Bush, 43, when Sonny was Governor of Georgia and Shirley was ruler of Atlanta, during the high priesthood of Katherine, the Word of God came to John in the wilderness of the streets of our city.

This little prelude challenges me to wonder what message the prophet is proclaiming to us here in this Advent of 2006.  We know by the sights and sounds that the holiday season is in full swing.  The newspapers are stuffed with ads, the cards begin to arrive, the credit cards come out of hiding, the parties begin, the baking, the buying, the busy throngs at the malls, and all the invitations—to sing along with the Messiah, to party while waiting for the Messiah, to push ourselves into stressful collapse as we perhaps overlook the Messiah.  Unlike the glitzy invitations and the well-intended open houses and holiday gatherings, there is the stark and weighty invitation of John who walks into this wilderness and says “Just a minute.  What is going on here? Haven’t you forgotten something?  The Church’s season of Advent is not about waiting for things or social events—it is about waiting for Jesus, the Messiah—waiting together as the people of God.  I am not here for your parties or your presents, John might proclaim.  I am here to invite you into right relationship with God—to take a long and deep look at who you are, and the journey you are on, and the vision of where you are going.  I am here to help you get ready—to prepare the One comes after me, of whom I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.

This past Wednesday in the New York Times, there was a disturbing article with the headline; Study Finds Wealth Inequality is Widening Worldwide.  A study of the world’s population and assets found that the top 1 percent of the world’s population accounted for about 40 percent of the world’s total net worth.  The bottom half of the world’s population owned merely 1.1 percent of the globe’s wealth.  The widening gap between the global haves and the have’ nots continues to grow.  “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low.”

Advent exists to remind us that one day there will be another Advent—the coming of our God—the day of the Lord when the world will know true justice and peace and when perfect love will reign supreme.  The day of the Lord when millions will not go to bed hungry at night; the day when children will not die every three seconds of preventable and treatable diseases; the day when all women will get proper pre-natal care and when medications will be available for those who need them; the day when all children will have clean water to drink.  This, for me, is the vision of the prophet.  For what began in the manger did not end even with the resurrection; for God’s redemptive work persists even now, and God will not rest until sin, disease, disaster and death are conquered, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.