As I read that passage from St John’s gospel, I’m struck by two ideas that come from John the Baptist’s message. On the one hand, there is a sense of preparation for something that will happen in the future. Then, on the other hand, there is a sense that that something is already here. In Advent, as we prepare for the future coming of Jesus, how do we recognise the ways in which he is already among us? These two things must, I think, be linked. If we are living lives in which we are prepared for the future coming of Jesus, we will at the same time notice that he is already here among us.
There’s a lovely and profound story of St Francis of Assisi; one of many of course. St Francis was busy hoeing a garden when a pilgrim came up to him and asked him: “If you became aware that you were going to die a few hours from now, what would you do?” St Francis replied: “I would finish hoeing this garden.” St Francis was already with his Lord in the present and experiencing time as a gift and his work as co-working with Jesus. So he was ready.
What are the things that we need to do to be ready to meet Christ in the future and to recognise that he is among us?
Well, prayer is one thing. On this Gaudete Sunday, with its theme of rejoicing, we may not feel that rejoicing is very close to us. We may also think that St Paul was rather tactless in telling the Thessalonian Christians in the middle of a time of persecution to rejoice, just as I might be rather tactless telling everyone simply to rejoice in my sermon on Sunday with all that is happening at the moment.
Rejoicing was not particularly easy for St Paul, though, with all that he was going through; imprisonments, opposition, failure, physical ailments. It doesn’t come easily but is something to be worked at. It doesn’t come so much from externals but from finding Christ within and without. That is why Paul links it to prayer and to prayerful thanksgiving which are, again, things which have to be worked at.
The former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Basil Hume, wrote a lot of good, grounded and realistic things about prayer and he was particularly good in talking about the need to keep going when it was difficult. He said that while prayer brought moments of peace and inner joy to all of us, it could also be hard work. At such times, he said, it is important to keep going because we pray to please God and because God wants us to and not just to make ourselves happy so he writes: “Carrying on when we seem to be getting nowhere is a proof of our faithfulness to God, and it shows that we are selfless and generous in our service of him. We are prepared to do the right thing for his sake, and not for ours.”
There are two ideas here which link to the themes of today’s readings for me; being ready for Christ by praying and being ready for Christ by living for others. When we do those things, we will reflect something of his light to others and we will reflect Christ’s light through who we are and in our own particular way. It is a light that is given not a light we have to generate.
We see these themes in our reading from St John’s gospel about John the Baptist. John the Evangelist is very clear about who John the Baptist is. “He is not the light. He is a witness to the light.” Nonetheless, like all of us, he has been given something important to do. He occupies a special place that God has given him to prepare the hearts of the people of Israel to receive their Saviour. But that role is self-effacing. It is to live for others to be a person who lives for others.
It must have been very tempting for him, with all those voices urging him, “Are you the Messiah?”, to say “Well, yes I am actually!” If he had been thinking about his own ego or his own glory, perhaps he would have succumbed but John knew that the loving thing to do was to point people to Jesus not to himself.
We sometimes think of Christians as having a “messiah” complex in the way they approach being a Christian. That may or may not be egotistical. Sometimes it can be about having an over-extended sense of responsibility or thinking that we have to do it all on our own or that we need to know all the answers. We don’t. Like John the Baptist we are pointing people to Christ not to ourselves.
Our Isaiah reading today is of course the passage that Jesus chose to read out in the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4:17 – 21). It gives the manifesto of a Messiah who Himself came to live for others and maybe in a sense we could read that list of actions as a list of places where we can find him.
It is by being more aware of the opportunities in our own lives to live for others and by rising to them, that we will find and bring joy and that we will be both ready for the Lord who is to come and we will also meet the Lord who is here among us. We will be more prepared for him and we will also know how much he loves us for who we are.
Amen.