Isaiah 35.1-10 God himself is coming to save you
James 5.7-10 Do not lose heart; the
Lord’s coming will be soon
Matthew 11.2-11 ‘One
greater than John the Baptist has never been seen’
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.
Indeed, the Lord is near. (Philippians 4.4-5)
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Our
three readings this morning cohere around a key theme: the Lord is coming, and
coming soon.
Isaiah’s
hope of the coming of God is before Christ’s incarnation, his first coming.
James’
hope - that the Lord is coming soon - is after Christ’s death and resurrection,
so that’s about his Second Coming, his ‘coming again in glory’.
And
the Gospel speaks of the presence of Christ, the one who has come, and describes
what it looks like.
Isaiah’s
hope, James hope, the Gospel hope are all summed up in the words of St Paul in
his letter to the Philippians, the singing of which as the Introit to the Mass gives
this Third Sunday of Advent the title ‘Gaudete’: ‘Rejoice’.
Today
is ‘Rejoice Sunday’ – Gaudete:
Rejoice in the Lord always;
again I will say, rejoice.
Indeed, the Lord is near.
Rejoice
in Isaiah’s message that, like a wilderness and wasteland transformed, glory
and splendour shall be seen for the Lord is coming and coming to save us.
The
letter of James gets down to the nitty gritty of the Christian life lived in
the expectation of the coming again of Christ.
Be
patient and not lose heart!
That
is a spiritual disposition, for lack of patience and loss of heart breeds
grumbling.
And grumbling
is a sign of selfishness.
Grumbling
is what happens when we put ourselves at the centre of things and not God.
Grumbling
is when we come to feel God, the world, those around us owe us something and we
blame them for our feeling small in a big world.
The
antidote to grumbling is rejoicing.
But
rejoicing is not banal, frothy and vacuous as often it is characterised in
Christians.
We
don’t just rejoice, we rejoice in something, someone: in the Lord.
We
rejoice, as St Paul says, because the Lord is near: rejoicing comes from
proximity to Christ.
Rejoicing
is about gratitude; thankfulness for the utterly unmerited gift of life itself.
Rejoicing
is a spiritual posture that receives other people as if that person is Christ
himself.
Ultimately
rejoicing is about looking outside ourselves: vigilant, watchful, expectant,
hopeful.
So to
rejoice in the Lord is the opposite of grumbling because it is putting God
front and centre of our lives.
So
what does it mean then to rejoice in the Lord?
Rejoicing
in the Lord is about knowing the God saves us.
God,
in Christ, saves us from an ultimately futile self-reliance and from wallowing
in our own misery.
As
Advent reminds us, we are called out of darkness into God’s marvellous light.
To use
Isaiah’s imagery, the wilderness of our souls bursts into life and song through
the transforming presence of Christ.
That’s
not just a theoretical hope, it’s something rejoicers and not grumblers can see
in the world.
It’s
what Jesus tells John the Baptist’s followers when they ask if Jesus is the
real deal, the one who Isaiah was talking about when he said:
5 Then the eyes of the blind
shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
6 then the lame shall leap
like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for
joy.
Oh yes,
it’s those things and more:
‘Go and tell John what you
hear and see: 5the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news
brought to them. 6And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’
We
could spiritualise all those things and see them as metaphors or comforting
images, but then the embodied, practical reality of how Christ through the Holy
Spirit, transforms lives is lost.
The
measure of the Lord’s proximity is in a life transformed, turned out from self
and turned to God.
Christ
is coming. For sure. Christ has come. Oh yes! Christ will come again. Most
certainly.
So,
‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is
near.’
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