Cathedral Sermons
Advent 3, Sunday 13th December, 2009.
Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20; Philippians 4: 4-7; Luke 3: 7-18
What I would like to do today is to invite you to consider the three readings that the lectionary offers us as if they are grid references on a chart. As if each approaches the question of life in preparation for “God drawing near” and provides with a continuum of behaviour. When we lay these three different perspectives together, they form a fence around a place on the chart. And it is this place on the chart that we could consider on this third Sunday in Advent.
My version of the Advent themes thus far:
1. Stay Alert, pay attention
2. Prepare the way- by purification of life.
3. Know how to recognize what God/Jesus is like: live accordingly.
So now these grid references:
The passage from Zephaniah
Let’s start with a story. A couple of summers ago, for about three weeks, there was a beautiful comet visible in the SW sky. As many of you know, Stephen and I live on Great Barrier Island, and we looked forward to seeing this comet. However for the first week of the opportunity the moon was full and this meant that the stars weren’t so clear. Then it was cloudy… However eventually it came to pass that the conditions were just right. And Stephen and I and some close friends left the house at 10.30pm: lifejackets, 12 foot dinghy, careful boat trip to where we could view the expanse of the SW sky. Penguins talking in the background. Dark water underneath us. Silence.
And there, as if a magnesium firework had exploded across thousands of miles of galaxies, was this amazing sight. Brilliant. Beautifully still. With that particular white light of the stars.
It was awesome. Created a sense inside me of scale, immense: tiny. We fell silent.
The four of us sat in that dinghy for 15 minutes or so…the only sound was the penguins and the silently blazing sky, then cold drove us home.
This reading from Zephaniah comes to us from around the middle of the 7th Century before the birth of Christ. This passage paints an iridescent picture of God as the “warrior King” who seeks to bring humanity to righteous behaviour and into close relationship. So Israel understands this God to be full of steadfast loving-kindness, and utilizing all of life to teach and develop righteous behaviour through life experience.
However this passage is also furnished with a kind of brilliance because of the contrasting ideas, as well as the empathic language for human experience
• Judgments fall away, enemies are turned away
• God rejoices, we are renewed in God’s love
• The most marginalized will be rejected no longer.
And for Israel when all these changes are experienced and the warrior king is in your midst, the might and beauty of God revealed will cause all to fall silent in awe.
So the first grid co-ordinate is that of a God who causes this response in you or me: a justice-making-awesome-God.
Then we have the passage from the letter to Philippi:
“let your gentleness be known to everyone”. This is about our human expression and interior world. Trust in God for your daily needs…”in prayer and grateful supplication approach God.” And as a consequence, we will experience peace. That peace will act as a guard to protect our relationship with Jesus. (I hope that you have sometime experienced this.) That amazing moment, when perhaps you or I have done something that might have been lonely or difficult, or we have made a life changing decision, and this process involved lots of thought and weighing up different perspectives perhaps that kept us awake at night….
And then when it has been completed a tide of simple interior quiet washes over us…the complexity drops away. This feeling does not have its genesis in the thoughts or decision immediately before…That “peace which surpasses all understanding”.
I think that this passage speaks of a key element of discernment: we need to know when we reach “true north”. Then we can set our compass again for the next bit of the journey.
So another reference grid co-ordinate: gentleness allowed to show, trust, gratitude, and supplication leads to peace.
Then this perplexing passage from Luke:
Imagine being part of a group of excited pilgrims. Walking together into the land away from the city…to find a man whom everyone is talking about…
And when we get there, he doesn’t welcome us with open arms and tell us about love…oh no, he shouts…calls us a brood of vipers, tells us not to rest in our relationship, uses violent language about axes and fires…
He has a real rant!
But when all of us are paying attention, and wondering how we might need to behave in this new life…he calms down…and reminds us about simple justice: share, act fairly, don’t bully.
So here we are, you and me, within these co-ordinates on the chart, waiting for God to dwell amongst us. Where are we again?
1. Remembering a God who remembers us…experiencing awe in the presence of the justice-making-iridescent God.
2. Finding true North- that peace which surpasses understanding- gentleness showing through, trust, gratitude and prayer.
3. How might we behave? Share, act fairly, don’t bully.
Passage from Isaiah sung by the choir as a psalm today:
“Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”