Episcopal Church of the Incarnation

West Point, Mississippi

The Second Sunday of Advent (C)

Baruch 5.1 Canticle: The Song of Zechariah Philippians 1.1-11 Luke 3.1-6

May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that

I may rightly and truly proclaim His holy Word. Amen.

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord ...” There’s another way to phrase this: Get ready to receive your God. Notice that John appears as a voice in the wilderness. He proclaims both repentance and the coming of the kingdom.

It’s no accident that John the Baptist proclaims repentance in the midst of the wilderness. But first, let’s look at John’s title: “John the Baptist” is a bad translation of a title made up of a participle, “John the Baptizer,” or “John, the one who baptizes.” Perhaps it’s best to think of John using the title given to him in the Russian church: “John the Forerunner.” The Forerunner is the one who comes before He who was, and is, and is to come; the King who is to come into this wilderness of the fallen world, to inaugurate a new kingdom.

Luke provides a lot of historical detail: what year it was; who was emperor; who was governor of Judea; who was ruler of Galilee; who were the tetrarchs; who were the high priests. We’re not dealing here with some mythological time, place and people, but real events in history; in history once for all time.

As Forerunner, John appears in the wilderness. The wilderness setting gives us an im-mediate signal that God is revealing something. Throughout salvation history God reveals Himself in the wilderness. In Exodus, Moses encounters God in the “wilderness of Sinai.” In 1 Kings Elijah hears the “still, small voice” of the Lord in the wilderness of Mt. Horeb. The Gospels describe Jesus as retreating into the wilderness for forty days following his baptism, days in which he overcomes temptation before beginning his ministry. And here in the wilderness, John preaches the advent of the kingdom of God.

How does John preach the advent of the kingdom of God? He proclaims a baptism of repentance; that God forgives us our sins. Note the parallel to our lesson from Baruch: those who have lived in exile are called to put on the “beauty of the glory from God,” the “righteousness that comes from God.” “[M]ercy and righteousnes ... come from him.”

Okay, so we as Jesus people recognize that God cares about us; God loves us despite our sins if we but turn to him. But how did we get to be people who sing, in the words of the canticle, that we “might serve [God] without fear,” people who proclaim the way of the Lord as the Way, the Truth, the Life in Jesus? We became those who confess Jesus because someone at some time in our lives cried out in the wilderness of this world that there is one Way, one Truth, one Life.

Who in your life has testified to the Lord? Who has been the Forerunner in your life? Maybe you learned the faith taught by a parent, a friend, a teacher, clergy; maybe even a stranger. Maybe the faith was testified to you by how somebody has lived, and not by how they have spoken.

Consider that one day each of us will die, and to this world our life will, in one sense, be summed as a dash mark between two dates: Karl Schaffenburg, 1956–____. The dates won’t matter, really. What will matter will be what has filled that little dash; all of our lives summed up in one little sign. Will that dash be a life which will be remembered by someone as a life in which you introduced them to the saving love of our Lord, a life in which you were the voice heralding hope in the wilderness of a world lost in despair?

Just as others, or someone else, have or has been the Forerunner in your lives, how are you called to be the Forerunner in the life of somebody, somebody wandering still in that wilderness which is a world without hope? Remember, you have promised to do this in your baptismal covenant. It is unusual, indeed, to have a baptism during Advent, but what a blessing this is. Today, we have baptised Tanner in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. And we have each made promises to God, to each other, and to Tanner in doing this. Go back to what we said in the Baptismal Covenant. We have each promised that with God’s help, we will:

§ Continue in regular worship. We proclaim God by what we do.

§ Repent of sin and seek to keep ourselves spiritually healthy.

§ Proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Jesus Christ.

§ To seek and serve Christ in all persons–all those folks out wandering in the wilderness where they don’t know God.

§ To strive for justice and peace, what Baruch calls the mercy and righteousness that come from God.

Remember that in all we do to proclaim Jesus Lord, we act not of our own strength but of His. We pray in the words of St. Paul writing to the Philippians, “... that [our] love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight...; “ that we might better cry out in this wilderness. We pray secure in the faith that “... the one who began a good work in [us] will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” He will complete His good work in us and in those who come to know Him, love Him and serve Him because somebody, somewhere, sometime in their lives–maybe us–will be the one to act as the Forerunner, to prepare the way of the Lord.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son,

and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.