RCL Advent 3B
14 December 2014
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
Focus
texts: Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-11 & John
1.6-8, 19-28
This
past week I received a flurry of e-mail messages from my Facebook friends
warning me that my account had been hacked.
An imposter was using my profile to send ‘friend requests’ to people who
were already enrolled as my friends.
This request offered many of them thousands of dollars in exchange for
information about their financial institutions.
To compound the problem, if one of my friends accepted this imposter’s
request to become a friend, their own Facebook accounts could be
compromised. The result was an
ever-expanding digital weed field, as this imposter’s seeds took root in the
soil of my network of friends.
Fortunately,
the damage was quickly limited. I
increased the security on my Facebook account and, as luck would have it, the
imposter did not do a very good job of impersonating me. His use of the English language was quite
distinct and all of my friends were fairly certain I do not have thousands of
dollars to offer freely. Betty Boland,
our Treasurer, need not fear that I have been raiding the Rectory Fund or any
other fund of the Parish to make such offers.
In
the days following the breach I found myself in the position of trying to prove
to my friends that I was the ‘real’ Richard Geoffrey Leggett. My friends would send messages with test
questions or situations to find out whether I was truly the person who was
their friend. Some of the questions were
simple, others more complex. My
favourite question came from a friend in Winnipeg: “You’re in a scrum on the 1st of
March. What are you doing?” Apparently my longer answer was to his
satisfaction.
In
today’s gospel John is asked to identify himself. Is he the Messiah? ‘No,’ says John. Is he Elijah returned to earth to announce
the coming of the Messiah? ‘No, I am
not,’ John responds. Is he the prophet
that Moses predicted would come, a prophet greater than Moses himself? ‘Wrong again,’ John replies. Then who?
“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the
way of the Lord,’” is the final answer of John. [1]
There
is much to unpack in this simple quotation from Isaiah 40. How do we know a voice for God from the other
voices in our lives? Where is the
wilderness in which this voice rings out?
Who is responsible for making straight the way of the Lord? Today I cannot offer my thoughts on all three
of these questions, but my experience of this past week led me to reflect on
the first question: How do we know a
voice for God from the other voices in our lives?
God’s
voice is an anointed voice. In the time
of Isaiah and of John to be anointed was to be marked out for a special
vocation. It was a public act that had
life-long consequences. Priests were
anointed to serve the people of God in their liturgical life. Kings were anointed to serve the people of
God in their political life. Prophets
were anointed to serve the people of God in their covenantal life. All three:
priests, kings, prophets were called upon to lead their people in doing
justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God.
God’s
voice speaks good news. When those who
are oppressed in any way hear the good news that their burdens can be lifted,
this is God’s voice. When those whose
hearts are broken by whatever kind of sorrow the world can bring upon us find
their heart-strings re-woven and re-tuned, this is God’s voice. When those who are held captive by social,
economic and political forces find freedom, this is God’s voice. When those who believe that God does care for
this world hear the truth that this world is beloved by its Creator, this is
God’s voice. When those who live in the
physical, emotional or spiritual ruins of their lives find the strength and
will to re-build, this is God’s voice.
You
and I are just such a voice. When we
were baptized, we were marked with the cross, the sign of God’s enduring and
passionate love for the whole of creation.
We learned who we truly are and, in the ways that we are able, we have
undertaken to live out this love in concrete ways every day of our lives. When we have witnessed the baptism of others,
we have renewed our commitment to this vocation, acknowledging our shortcomings
but also giving thanks for God’s faithfulness to us in all times and in all
places. We are counted among those whom
God has anointed, set apart for a life-long ministry of proclaiming the good
news.
We
know that we are such a voice because who we are is shown by what we do. Our story as a Christian people is sometimes
told as if it were only marked by spectacular failures. While it is true that we have not always
lived up to our vocation, the signs of our faithfulness are all around us. Public education in the Western cultural
tradition is a product of the Christian movement not the state. Organized health care, as well, has its
origins in the compassion of Christians throughout the centuries not in the
benevolence of the state. Slavery was
brought to an end, in part, through the efforts of Christians throughout the
world.
In
recent decades our voice has been raised to confront those attitudes and
practices which have treated women as second-class persons. We have confessed our failure to uphold the
dignity of First Nations and continue the struggle for justice and
reconciliation. We are still engaged in
the struggle for the recognition of the full humanity of gays and lesbians,
whether in the church or in the world at large.
Here
at Saint Faith’s God has anointed us to preach good news to the many newcomers
to this neighbourhood, some who have knowledge of our faith, others who do
not. Through the Pastoral Resource
Centre we are helping those in need find housing and security. Even joyful occasions such as the Christmas
Sale have at their heart raising funds to support people whom we are likely
never to meet.
We
have been anointed by God’s spirit to be a voice in the wilderness of our own
times that dares to speak on behalf of
Christ, the one who makes straight the way of God. Just as John spoke that word in the dangerous
and hostile world of Palestine in the first century, so we speak this word in a
more comfortable and at times indifferent world of Vancouver in the
twenty-first century. All around us are
people who long for a community of purpose, a community of compassion, a
community of prayer and thanksgiving.
Let us lift up our voices, for the Spirit of the Lord is upon us to
proclaim the good news that in us, through us and with us Christ is making
straight this world’s crooked ways and making level this world’s daunting
heights. Amen.
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