Joris Bürmann
4 December 2022: The Second Sunday of Advent
We are now in the second week of Advent, the liturgical period during which we await the birth of Christ which is called Christmas.
Traditionally this season is a season of expectation in the Church, during which joy is mixed with a certain tension born of careful preparation, as when a family or a mother awaits the birth of a child.
In the secularized culture of which we are a part, Advent has become a season of waiting for Christmas, a celebration of conviviality and family. We appreciate this season for its cozy, convivial atmosphere.
Drinking a little mulled wine when it’s cold, watching the little lights twinkle in the early nightfall, eating chocolates under a blanket or even remembering childhood memories that bring back to life the sweetness of home, real or imagined.
In a world around us that is often cold and hostile, these are little comforts.
However, nothing is more different from a cozy Advent than the lifestyle and the message of the Prophet John that we have just heard this morning!
The rough way he dresses, his ascetic diet of only locusts and honey, the harsh words he announces to call his contemporaries to repentance…this really doesn’t seem very cozy: and for good reason! In the first century, many prophetic groups like that of John existed, they lived in a way that was very critical of society, particularly of the established religion centered around the Temple of Jerusalem.
They stood against the castes of the religious and the political bourgeoisie represented by the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Many, like John and his disciples, lived in the desert, a place where, ever since the days of the Hebrews, God not only tested his people but also revealed himself amid their difficulties.
Unlike us, John doesn’t try to escape discomfort, he embraces it; he walks into it and doesn’t hesitate to live out his discomfort on powerful people when they use their comfortable situation to abuse others.
When the powerful and conceited elites come to him in the desert to be baptized and, by so doing, acquire a glaze of repentance while not changing the way they treat others and live in society, he calls them out: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”
With force and vehemence, in the desert, he lays bare the hypocrisy of those who wrap themselves in superficial morals and values, to escape being authentic with themselves, with others and with God.
From his experience of discomfort, of restriction, he is able to see the lack of authenticity of the powers and authorities of his time.
His life makes theirs appear for what they are.
I believe that this is the reason why John is paving the way for the coming of Christ, whose whole life will turn the world upside down, afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
John, just like the prophets before him, stretches his contemporaries and us today.
His lifestyle and message, his radical choices and authenticity, stretch us in the same way that physical stretching does: stretching, (as the sportspersons among you will know better than me), is sometimes a bit painful but it allows you to be more flexible, to have freer and more graceful moves.
Athletes and dancers need to stretch to make powerful and beautiful moves, and so do we.
When we are stretched or stretching, we become more comprehensive, you can gain momentum and expand better.
Sometimes we are willing to do these exercises, but more often, we are pulled into them like a yoga class we wouldn’t have signed up for…
If we surrender to the exercise, we will benefit immensely from it.
Indeed, when our lives are being stretched by the coming of God’s kingdom, we are made more ready to reconsider things and embrace or reevaluate certain realities about who we are as individuals or communities.
I believe that this is how we are to understand John’s call to repentance in this season.
Repenting is not a mere verbal confession of sins, it is not even going to the river Jordan to be baptized so that your sins can be washed away.
John vehemently calls out these outward forms of repentance.
His call to repentance is not a mere intellectual or moral process as we too often mistakenly think.
For someone who has experienced the spiritual and physical tensions of God’s coming Kingdom in the desert in his own body and soul, John comes to us a mentor and coach in repentance.
John shows us that repentance is rather more like stretching than self-flagellation.
“Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand” calls us to stretch our bodies and our lives so that we can receive what is at hand, so that we can embrace it to its whole extent.
God’s comfort coming to us in Jesus Christ, announced by John, reveals to us how we are mistaken about our comfort.
The comfort of advent is not so much the one we derive from being sluggish and feasting on our privileges and power but rather the comfort that we will experience after we’ve stretched.
It is akin to the sense of relaxation you get when you have stretched, gone for a long winter walk, done something you are proud of because you thought you couldn’t do it.
Stretching this way, stretching our lives and worldviews to receive the Kingdom of God which is at hand, allows us to surrender, to be more flexible, to love more freely.
Stretching this way enables us to be ready to embrace Jesus Christ who is coming to us as a little child and needs the tenderness of our arms, not the stiffness of anxious penitents.
All the discomfort that John experiences and that we experience in our lives, all these daily moves of repentance that fold us back into God’s fold, all these stretches of ours prefigure God’s infinite life which has been woven into our limited human life in Jesus.
All these little stretches of our worldviews and our lives make us ready to welcome Jesus Christ, a newborn life so fragile that we can receive it only if we are meek and tender, to ourselves and to each other.
Those of you who have cooked for us on Wednesday or who serve in this church in so many different capacities know that it takes some effort.
Serving the Church is a form of longing, well beyond the season of Advent, because you never know what the direct result of your courting will be.
It does stretch us to give our food, energy and money to the Church and the poor, it does stretch us to get up in the morning on Sunday, it does stretch us to gather the children together on time…
But all these stretches of yours are the very things that prepare for God’s coming here and now, in this world and this church.
It allows not only you, but all the members of Christ’s body to receive his life-giving Spirit and love because, when one member stretches, all members benefit from it.
When you come to this table and stretch out your hand to receive the Eucharist, remember that all your stretches in this life, the ones you have embraced and the ones you feel not so ready to embrace yet, are encapsulated in this one movement of stretching out that you’re doing here.
The warmth, welcome, sense of home and comfort we are called to long for as Christians is more than the coziness of this world.
The coming of God’s kingdom in Jesus Christ, through you, goes deeper than a superficial Yankee-Candle smell of comfort. It is a revolutionary warmth gained through stretching.
One that builds the muscles of our beings to be more flexible, more encompassing, more loving.
The coming of God’s kingdom in Jesus Christ, through you, is a revolutionary warmth because it stretches out beyond the limits of what we often call home: it stretches out beyond the borders of our family, our groups of interest, beyond the limits of our nations, our languages, or cultures.
Through all those stretches of yours God’s kingdom is being revealed and we can at once “welcome one another just as Christ has welcomed us, for the glory of God.”