Third Sunday of Advent, rcl yr b, Sunday, December 17th, 2023
ISAIAH 61:1-4, 8-11; PSALM 126; 1 THESS. 5:16-24; JOHN 1:6-8, 19-28
Among you stands one whom you do not know,
the one who is coming after me
Advent is probably my favourite of all liturgical seasons. It is not, however, my favourite on account of its simplicity.
In fact, Advent is probably the least simple of all liturgical seasons. To begin, we have a 1000-year-old holdover from when Advent was seven weeks long, and just as penitential as Lent. The lectionary remembers this—that’s why the Sundays before Advent even begins still includes passages about judgment.
(So when Bishop Todd was here on the Sunday before Advent even began, he had a gospel passage about judgment, a difficult text about Jesus separating the sheep from the goats; and in the manner of bishops and how they solve problems, he told you that that particular problem of just who might be considered a sheep or a goat would be taken up not by him, but would be left for me, the local clergyman, to sort out.)
Which brings us to the themes that come from that longer tradition of a penitential Advent, themes often preached on in Advent, and that’s The Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.
Along the way we’ve added the Advent Wreath, something that began on the tables of German Lutheran households in the 16th century, and something that wasn’t part of the Sunday liturgy for Anglicans until the mid-twentieth century. And so on top of the readings on the Last Things, themes like hope, joy, peace, and love are added to death, judgement, heaven, and hell.
Further, we have a rose candle in the wreath because of an old Latin rite tradition of wearing rose on the third Sunday of Advent, a Sunday called Gaudete Sunday—gaudete being latin for rejoice, a word that appears in Roman Catholic liturgical texts.
On top of all that, the Church of England started the tradition that we use, an attempt to bring the Advent Wreath tradition in closer line with the lectionary, and so we have prayers for the Patriarchs, Prophets, John the Baptist, and Mary; (though I’ve even heard of some churches lighting the “pink” candle on the fourth Sunday for Mary, because girls wear pink, or something like that?) This more recent English practice, by the way, doesn’t use violet, rose, or even blue candles, but red ones.
Rather annoyingly, this new Scripture-based tradition, even as it solves some problems with Advent, it causes another, because the lectionary has us read a collect for John the Baptist on the Prophets Sunday, rather than the third Sunday which is John the Baptist Sunday in the new Church of England Advent scheme.
If you weren’t at all confused yet, I haven’t even come to the problem of what colours are worn in Advent. Some priests will wear violet vestments, keeping the medieval tradition; some wear rose vestments on the third Sunday of Advent, following a tradition that offers a break from all the purple penitence. I’d be open to this, though the vestments do have to be done very well, because the risk for pink kitsch is very high, and you can end up looking like a character in some weird medieval commercial for Pepto-Bismol. Some of us just wear Sarum Blue vestments with most of our candles blue, as we do; this is in a laudable attempt to move Advent away from a season of purple penitence to a season with its own particular character of hope and anticipation.
One can only imagine what Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the great 16th-century English reformer—a reformer whose major contribution to the English Reformation was to make the liturgy and calendar much more simple—one can only imagine what he might think if he were to see clergymen like me struggle to bring some coherence to a liturgy that has added German table devotions to it, a liturgy that includes themes
like death, judgement, heaven, and hell, overlapping with hope, joy, peace, and love, and those overlapping with patriarchs, prophets, John the Baptist and Mary; and a liturgy that can’t sort out its colour scheme, either, with vestment and candle options as diverse as violet with rose, blue with rose, blue on its own, or just red.
Well, we can imagine what Cranmer would say about colours: white, as in a white surplice, over black, as in a black cassock, please. We can also imagine what he would say about the liturgical accretions and the absurd diversity of overlapping thematic options: keep it Scriptural, and keep it simple, already.
Ok—so no tests will be taken on all that. Instead I’m not going to worry us too much about colours, candles, and themes; what I will do is to draw out some of the Scriptural simplicity of the season we are celebrating.
There is a shift that is beginning to happen this week in Advent. We’ve been slowly moving from themes like judgment, and Christ’s Second Coming, which is imagined, with the help of both the New Testament and the Old, as the coming of the Lord in great power. We can hear it, if we listen for it in a certain way, this week. Isaiah today speaks of a day of God’s vengeance. But we’ve also heard though on other Advent Sundays,
Isaiah speaking of heavens being ripped open, mountains quaking, fires burning, and of anger; from Mark we heard of suffering, a sun and moon darkened, the stars falling, and a heaven shaken. This is a telling of what is yet to come: the Lord descending on the clouds with great power to judge the peoples of the earth.
But as Advent progresses, we come closer and closer to that which we already know—that the Lord of the Heavens and the Earth has already come among us, and not with great power, at least power as we might conventionally conceive of it. Instead our Lord has come among us without those things, he has already come to us in the precariousness of human life, unshielded and unprotected, except by those who care for him; and at great risk to those who would do him harm.
We would hear this if we had read just a few more lines from the story of John the Baptist. The day after John is put to question on the banks of the Jordan, he will see Jesus; and even though Jesus will be a young man, John will point to the frailty that comes with our Lord’s first appearance; he will call Jesus the Lamb of God. This points partly to the sacrifice that Jesus will be, but it also speaks to frailty, the frailty of a newborn creature.
Denise Levertov, in her poem “Agnus Dei,” draws our attention not to the cross, but to the incarnation, as she writes of what it means to call Jesus the Lamb of God, it’s a poem described by one commentator as a “terrible and utterly unexpected vision of vulnerability.”
“Given that lambs
are infant sheep,
that sheep are afraid and foolish, and lack
the means of self-protection, having
neither rage nor claws,
venom nor cunning,
what then
is this ‘Lamb of God’?”
writes Levertov.
A lamb is “an innocence
smelling of ignorance,
born in bloody snowdrifts … ”
“God then,
encompassing all things, is
defenseless? Omnipotence
has been tossed away,
reduced to a wisp of damp wool?”
“And … is it implied that we
must protect this perversely weak
animal[?] …
[is it implied that we] [m]ust hold in our icy hearts
a shivering God? … ”
“Come, rag of pungent
quiverings,
dim star.”
“Let’s try
if something human still
can shield you,
spark
of remote light.”
Levertov makes her point quite forcefully. In the incarnation, in Jesus, the one who has come as the Lamb of God: in this Jesus, God’s omnipotence is “tossed away.” This is not to say that God’s entry into the world in the person of Jesus has been revealed as one without power, unable to bring justice, or unable to set things right— rather, it is only without power as we might usually imagine it.
And as we begin to look less toward the second coming, and more toward the incarnation of God in Christ, we begin to realize that it is in innocence, defencelessness, like a rag of pungent quiverings, it is this dim star that embodies a message of good news to the oppressed, the binding up the brokenhearted, of liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners.
That is to say, God’s glory, power, and might is not glory, power and might as we might first expect; but rather that the heavens are torn open in order that God might walk among us not as a Titan, but in innocence, defencelessness, like a rag of pungent quiverings, a dim star that teaches us that the way of God is the way of the lamb.
The Revd Cannon Preston Parsons PhD
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.