Sermon for December 17, 2023 – The Third Sunday of Advent

The Reason for the Season

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11, Psalm 126, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24, John 1:6-8, 19-28

Depending upon your tv watching and radio listening habits, you have without a doubt been inundated with messages about the reason for the season. Whether it is the many Christmas songs on the radio that tell us all about themes of joy, happiness, family, and love are all reasons for this season of Christmas. If you watch any amount of tv you have seen commercials from every store highlighting their deals to save money and get that perfect gift for your loved ones; as if there really is a “perfect gift.” No matter how you navigate this world at this time of year, you just simply cannot avoid this firehose of Christmas consumerism that is all neatly wrapped up for us as the reason for the season. However, what if, despite how important these themes are loving, serving, giving, all hallmarks of discipleship, what if they are not the reason for the season. What if the reason for the season is found in the words and actions of John the Baptist, who points not to himself, but to another more powerful than he?

For the last two weeks we have been delicately balancing the themes of darkness and light.  We have been sitting impatiently in the darkness, eagerly anticipating the light, waiting for God to break into our world and walk with us on our journey.  We have been sitting in the apparent absence of Jesus waiting and hoping for him to come.  We know he will come.  We reenact this dramatic pageantry each and every year so that we remember the story at least one more time. It is a ritual that we enter into to remind us of the promise of God.  As with all rituals it is meant to remind us, as well as move us closer to God.

This theme of darkness and light continues this week, but instead of revolving around the absence of Jesus, the darkness and light is synonymous with sin and redemption.  Sin and redemption point to why God became incarnate, why God chose to share in our human condition, and ultimately to provide us with a pathway back to the light and love of God.

One of the prayers that plays a central role in my personal spiritual life is the Jesus Prayer.  The prayer is simple. 

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. 

I love it because it is short, it is simple, and I can say it pretty much whenever and wherever I want or need.  But the real reason why this prayer resonates with me is that it reminds me that I am a sinner and that Jesus is my path to redemption.  This prayer is an acknowledgement of how I can fail. This acknowledgement of my sinfulness is how I let Jesus and his healing light and love into my soul, my life, so that I may be healed.  Because of the nature of the human condition I am not perfect.  No matter how hard I try I will make mistakes. And I know that God loves me and wants me to continually come back to him.

We are sinners.  Each and every one of us. We try to justify and explain away our sins.  We often try to minimize what we do or say or think, yet we are all predisposed to sin.  It is woven into the very fabric of our being.  To be human is to sin.  To sin is to be human.  We sin when we follow ourselves; satisfying our desire. We turn our gaze away from the presence and will of God in our world.  We look inwards, believing that all we need is found within ourselves or in the stuff around us. We are reticent to seek or even ask others for help. We cannot help ourselves. We are who we are.

This propensity towards sin is shown throughout the story of God and humanity.  It was sin that we were expelled from the garden. It was because of our sin and complete disregard for the will of God that led God to cleanse creation with the Great Flood.  It was because of our sin and idolatry that led the Israelites to wander the desert until a whole generation passed away and then they could enter into the land of milk and honey.  Finally, our sin all came to the point where God had to act in a new way, a way that has no parallel in history.  To save us from our sin, God entered into his own creation in a radical way when God became human in Jesus of Nazareth.  Under the cover of darkness, God came to us as a baby, not a rich king or a warrior, but a baby, who will grow to be the shepherd of all of God’s people.

The great third century Church Father, Athanasius of Alexandria, gives us the reason for the season.  In his work on the incarnation Athanasius wrote that God has been manifested in a human body out of love and goodness for our salvation.  It was our suffering in our sin that caused God to come down, our transgressions that called out God’s love for us, so that He made haste to help us and appear among us.  God became incarnate to give us a pathway towards redemption.  In Jesus, humanity was made perfect.  Where our old humanity failed, God gave us a new human being so that all human beings could grow again towards the light of God, just as we were originally made.

The struggle to understand why God became incarnate in Jesus has been something that we as humans have been wrestling with for centuries and today it is no different.  While we may not be fighting different heresies and interpretations of God’s incarnation, we are fighting a different beast all together, the commercialization of an unparalleled event in human history.  We give presents to remember the gifts that were presented to Jesus at his birth.  We give presents out of love because God gave us the path to redemption and reconciliation with Him because he loved us so much.  As Christians who hold this light of Christ as our truth, we have a choice…dwell in darkness and the absence of Jesus or dwell in the light and love of Jesus.

When the waters of baptism wash over us, cleanse us, and we begin our journey to the light.  There is healing, comfort, and release in the light.  That is the promise of God given to us through the poetic words of Isaiah.  The world will pass away; the suffering and the burden of sin will be lifted.  The beauty and peace that comes with the light and presence of Jesus in our lives is what will bring us closer to God.  Jesus is our pathway to redemption, our way back to God.  God wants us to walk in the light.  We are children of the light.  The reason for the season is not Santa, decorations, or even family time.  Those are great things, but the reason for the season is the light of salvation that casts away the darkness of sin.  Today we continue to sit impatiently in the darkness, but soon, very soon, the light will break forth into our darkened and sinful world, then, and only then, the path to God will be made straight.  Amen.