Luke
3.1-6 & Malachi 3.1-4
“In the 32nd
year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the 2nd, during the premiership of Margaret
Thatcher, when Robert Runcie was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and when Torvill
& Dean won gold at the Olympics by dancing to Bolero, the word of God came
to Billy Graham at Wembley Stadium.”
That’s something like how Luke’s readers would
have heard his opening words of chapter 3.
Dates are
interesting things, aren’t they? The
problem for Luke, when he wrote his Gospel, is that no-one had come up with the
idea of dating years by numbers. In Luke’s
day, events were tied to the reigns or activities of significant people. Which is why he begins his account of John
the Baptiser’s ministry with the rather long list of posh people that I had to
read out just now!
Luke wants
his readers to know that the events he is reporting can be traced to a
particular time and place. He is saying:
“Pay attention! Listen up! I’m telling you about something that happened
in living memory! A herald came with an
urgent message from God”.
And what was
that message? John the Baptiser quotes
Isaiah’s vision of the massive earth-works needed to build a road across a
wilderness – reconfiguring the landscape shovelful by shovelful. Because that ultimately is how you build a
kingdom…brick by brick, shovel by shovel, or…if it’s a spiritual Kingdom,
person by person, or soul by soul.
The prophet
Malachi – who wrote our first reading for today – had similarly dramatic ideas
of what God’s coming means: God is in
the precious-metals business, refining, purifying gold and silver by putting it
through the fire to reveal its pure state; God is a consuming fire.
In another
stunning image, God is a washerwoman armed with fuller’s soap – not soft,
perfumed lavender-scented handwash, but abrasive laundry soap that scrubs and
scours. Fulling is the art of cleansing
wool – to strip out all the oils, dirt, manure and other impurities. Pure white wool has been “fulled” – with some
pretty abrasive chemicals!
In Jesus,
Luke sees a vision of the sheer purity that is the goal for all humans. That
holiness is what God made us to share when we were made in God’s image. God challenges us to be what we were created
to be. And in Advent, these flamboyant
images of fire, scrubbing and highway-engineering describe what it is like to
prepare to experience the salvation of God.
God’s
purpose is always to restore the original beauty that has been lost to sin. Malachi’s name means “my messenger” – and he
was part of God’s plan to clean things up.
He roundly condemned the laxity and corruption of the leaders of his
day. John the Baptiser, in the verses
that follow today’s reading, goes on to call the people who heard him a ‘brood
of vipers’. If either of them were
around today, they would have many people to hurl such insults at, wouldn’t
they? Corrupt politicians, tyrannical dictators,
greedy bankers, ultra-capitalists and extremist preachers.
But John and
Malachi would not have confined themselves to the mighty people of society –
even if the calendar depended on them! They would ask not just about bankers, but
about how you and I use our wealth and power too.
The
polemicist Libby Purves made a salient point this week. Writing in the Times on Monday (3/12/2018)
she pointed out how sharply our society is divided - not just between Leavers
and Remainers, but also between the rich and the poor. In a
very arresting image, she pointed out that the people who queue in Waitrose and
those who queue in food banks are not actually from different species. Her main point was that the rich need to
beware of constantly pressing down on the poor.
The rich will suffer just as much, in their own way, forced by their own
greed to retreat behind their gated community fences, with bars at the window,
and paid security guards. They will end
up living in gilded cages, barely experiencing their country, or connecting
with their neighbours at all.
Christmas is
a time for giving. It is good to give
gifts to our families and friends, of course. – because friendship is a wonderful
gift to celebrate and strengthen. But we
who are among the wealthiest people in the world can choose to level the playing field, to fill up the valleys of
poverty, and lower the mountains of greed.
Shovelful by shovelful. Pound by
pound. Penny by penny.
Perhaps we
might add up what we will spend this year on Christmas celebrations, and make
an appropriate donation to charities on top?
Then, people who have no one to give them a gift can receive a gift from
us.
Getting the
balance right over these things is of course only a tiny part of what it means
to prepare for God’s coming among us, during Advent. What does it mean, for example, to prepare
ourselves spiritually for the coming of the King? How can the crooked parts of our lives be
made straight? How can we help to lay
the straightening road through the wilderness…one shovelful at a time….one
person at a time – beginning with ourselves.
Both John
the Baptiser and Jesus himself learned to say ‘Yes’ to the call of God on their
lives. Are we also learning what it
means to say ‘Yes’ – Yes to the chance to go deeper, to live more fully, to
expand our spiritual horizons – engaging with all the opportunities that there
are in this parish for worship of God, and service to the community?
Advent is a
call to wake up and respond to God’s initiative. “In the 66th year of the reign of Elizabeth
the 2nd, when Theresa May is the Prime Minister (at least until Tuesday) and Justin
Welby is still the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the word of God comes to us: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.”
Amen
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