December 16, 2012

Helen-Ann Hartley

Advent 3     Zeph 3:14-20     Phil 4:4-7     Luke 3:7-18

Today is the third Sunday of Advent, also known as Gaudete Sunday; with the firm imperative being on our need to rejoice not just at the approaching news of Christ’s birth, but at the present effects of this already being a reality. As much as we await the not-yet of Christmas Day, we abide in the now-ness of it; for Christ is already present, here amongst us. This being the third Sunday of Advent, we are also very firmly into the seasonal tapestry of carols that place northern hemisphere weather onto the Christmas story; on Wednesday I opened our Advent calendar window only to be told that Mary had already given birth; on Friday I attended the St John’s College pre-school Christmas pageant, where Joseph looked thoroughly excited at the prospect of father-hood (no mention of divine involvement), the wise men arrived before the shepherds, and spider-man played an active role in protecting the Holy Family. It was all delightful, but it did make me reflect again on just what we think we are doing in proclaiming this most profound aspect of our faith at this time of year? 

Well our readings for today certainly give us a hint: we ought to be rejoicing; but this is a rejoicing that has more grit than glamour; more sorrow that show business. Our lectionary readings for today each have wider contexts and genres that we must attend to if we are to make any sense of them: Zephaniah takes us what one commentator calls ‘a vast distance into the possibility of utter annihilation’, a text set in a 7th century BC world of social and political turmoil and the need to balance compassion with coming judgment; Paul commands the Philippians to rejoice from his less than grand location of a prison cell; and Luke too, ever the keen historian is keen to remind us that his story is set in the realities of the Roman Empire and its means of imperial administration. Each text tells a story; points towards the truth that bursts on to the scene in the incarnation, but in a way that is less than straight-forward.

Around about the year 1868, the American poet Emily Dickinson wrote these words:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,

Success in circuit lies.

Too bright for our infirm delight

The truth’s superb surprise.

As lightening to the children eased

With explanation kind,

The truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind.

Dickinson’s poem reveals her view of the truth as something that must be broken to listener’s gently; while the reader is admonished to ultimately reveal everything, the sense is that the teller should move in circles towards the truth. A colloquial expression for this method might be ‘beat around the bush’ before the matter is fully revealed. More than that however, Dickinson’s poem shares the reflection that human beings are essentially frail and that truth is too intense for whatever fragile happiness we might now have; truth has an ability to deliver a supreme shock! The reference to children is indicative of the fragility and uncertainty often experienced by adults. How ironic perhaps that the children of the pre-school seemed far more ‘at home’ with their inhabitation of the Christmas story than the adults!

The truth must dazzle gradually.

Perhaps that is why we have an intentional period of time before Christmas Day; four Sundays in Advent, four weeks of waiting, anticipating, realising the wonder that is already in our midst, as we do on this day; but remembering that this is a message that needs to be imparted with wisdom, mystery, and in ways that encourage a depth and grace to our human frailty that is beyond our understanding. And perhaps that is why we have not one but four Gospel accounts, including two: Mark and John that give us the incarnation story in a way that is, to use Dickinson’s technique: slant. The truth is there, only we actually have to work a bit at uncovering its dazzling brightness.

The possibility of a truth that is revealed more gradually than it is in its immediacy is a helpful gloss on the strident message of John the Baptist that we heard in our Gospel reading set for this day. You might be familiar with the television programme Come dine with me, in which four strangers offer hospitality to one another over the course of successive evenings, all competing to win a cash prize. Now John is not a character you might want to have as a participant: certainly not for his culinary skills; in fact John would probably be more at home with Bear Grylls on his programme Man vs Wild. Such is his embrace of insect-eating and alternative living! 

Luke provides the fullest account of John the Baptist in the New Testament. He gives the impression that John’s ministry continued for some time; it wasn’t a ‘flash in the pan’ 5-minute wonder, an impression we might gain from John’s somewhat overbearing personality. Luke is careful to place John as the instrument of preparation for Jesus, noting the continuity between them by emphasising common concerns when he describes John’s proclamation, like that of Jesus as good news. Such good news consists of John’s announcement of God’s coming wrath and the need for repentance that leads to practical action. John is a prophetic figure who emphasises the moral consequences appropriate to conversion. Repentance is a recurring Lukan theme, as also is the theme that the use of one’s possessions symbolises one’s response to the call of God. So John’s own vision takes in both personal responsibilities and relationships as well as the need for the responsible and unself-interested exercise of political, economic and military might. God will include even tax-collectors and soldiers among the children of Abraham: they behave justly but they are not called to renounce their occupations. Thus Luke blends social conservatism with a radical ethic. John’s message is stark. Towards the end of the passage, Luke tells us in what is better translated as ‘with many other consoling remarks’ John ‘spread the good news among the people’. Consoling? How? That’s not the usual way of consoling, surely? The truth is out, but it resides at a slanted angle that enables deeply held convictions and obligations to be seen from an altogether different and dazzlingly new perspective. This is the deeper perspective that the incarnation holds out to us: but if we are to proclaim it as good news we must do so in a way that allows connections to be made in our faith that enable new possibilities that take us far beyond the barriers that we are often quick to put in place. 

All of this comes to a focus in the Eucharist. Christ in his incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension is the hope by which we live our lives as disciples. The light of the resurrection is also the light that surrounds the incarnation; the darkness of the crucifixion is also the darkness that hovers round the theme of judgment. And in both, we should ‘rejoice’ with gentleness, as Paul tells the Philippians, better translated as graciousness or tolerance. Character is informed and transformed as we are continually formed in Christ’s image, but it is also broken and reformed as the Holy Spirit moves us onwards even when we feel like our journeys are hard or haphazard, or we feel adrift in the wilderness: a lone prophetic voice like John; we do so because God wants us and those we encounter on the way to embrace the Gospel as good news. For us, gathered here this morning, this means listening to God’s word proclaimed and enacted through our sharing the Eucharist together in this church before we are sent out again into the world to be Christ to all those we encounter; a task in which we should rejoice and not lose heart, even when it all seems too hard. Scripture read and refracted through the lens of prophetic imagining and our present waiting, in future hope as the story unfurls once more. We participate in that story together. 

Tell all the truth, but tell it slant,

Success in circuit lies.

Too bright for our infirm delight

The truth’s superb surprise.

Amen.