Sermon for Advent 2 Year A 2025

 Isaiah 11:1-11

A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse,
    and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
    the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the spirit of counsel and might,
    the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
    or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
    and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
    and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
    and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
    the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
They will not hurt or destroy
    on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

On that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that is left of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Ethiopia, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea.

Matthew 3:1-12

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.' This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

'The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
"Prepare the way of the Lord,
    make his paths straight."'

Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, 'You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our ancestor"; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

'I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.'

May I speak…

Two weeks ago, just before advent began, I went into St Mary’s first school and asked the children if they could give me an example of a time when they had to wait for something exciting.

It turns out that, despite being part of a culture that loves to queue, we don’t know how to wait. Or rather, we don’t know how to make use of the time that we have when waiting. Our entire world now works on the assumption that we are entitled to getting what we want immediately, that we are willing to sacrifice quality in favour of speed, or that we need to be distracted from waiting. Incidentally, the only really great countercultural example I’ve found of waiting recently, because I’ve spent a lot of time there, is the waiting room in the doctor’s surgery where there is nothing to do except fervently avoid eye contact with the person sitting opposite you.

Advent is a time of waiting, but it’s not the sort of waiting room waiting where you sit still, get bored, and sneak the occasional mince pie, or supermarket Christmas aisle treat when no one is looking. It’s the sort of waiting that has purpose: good old, unfashionable, purpose. And the purpose of Advent, even when you’re the vicar, is to give us time to slow down and sit with God and take a good long look at our heart, our soul, our mind and our strength, in a place where the only other person who might judge us, knows us fully and loves us beyond our comprehension. And in that place of intimacy and safety, we ask God to purify our hearts, and our souls, and our minds, actions, in short, our lives. Because Advent is about preparing ourselves, every little increment of our hearts and minds and bodies, for that moment when we will see God, not just in the face of the christ child, but face to face when Christ comes again.

Our collect for today asked God to purify our hearts and minds. Purity is an unfashionable word. It has been abused in both evangelical and catholic branches of the church and everywhere in between. Purifying our hearts is not about having perfect human relationships or shutting ourselves away from anything impure – that’s fear, not faith.

But, Just like purifying a precious metal when you heat it up so that impurities come up to the surface and evaporate, purifying our hearts means exposing them to God’s love, so regularly and purposefully, in prayer and silence and scriptural study, and corporate worship, and repentance, or penitence, and the Eucharist, that everything that is not godly, everything that we might be tempted to hide in the corners and crevices of our souls, encounters the light and glory of God, and, in that awesome, burning, LOVE, it evaporates – paling in comparison to the one whom our soul truly loves.

Isaiah paints a picture of purity in our first reading. He actually uses the word righteousness, tzedek, which is a legal term in Hebrew, describing someone who perfectly fulfils the law, and he describes the promise descendent of Jesse, Ruth’s grandson, and King David.

The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
    the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the spirit of counsel and might,
    the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

If we were a hebrew-speaking audience in the time of Isaiah, that phrase would have taken us to the garden of Eden where Adam and Eve are faced with the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…. But here Isaiah is promising a man that not only embodies the Spirit of knowledge, but for whom that knowledge and wisdom and understanding and counsel and might is the fear of the Lord, whose delight, whose very purpose, whose whole focus is God.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
    or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
    and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;

Isaiah promises someone for whom the standards of the world mean nothing. His shallow senses, his eyes and ears, don’t affect his judgement of the heart. But with Righteousness he shall bring justice to the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.

Imagine a world where all the leaders of the earth decided to ask themselves ‘is this just, is this righteous, is this decision in the best interests of the poorest of society’ on a daily basis. It seems so far away from the world we live in, and yet this is the picture Isaiah gives us of the Messiah, the Christ, someone who is the living embodiment of righteousness and purity and justice and goodness and faithfulness.

And Isaiah goes on to paint a picture of purity and innocence worthy of a Victorian children’s bible. The lion lays down with the lamb. The child leads wild beasts and plays happily among previously deadly creatures… such is the worldwide transformation of this righteous One. But whilst Isaiah is talking, at one level, about the transformation of the entire earth, that isn’t the whole story.

Advent is not meant to make us sit here, looking at the world around us dissatisfied, thinking “when will everyone else do what is right”. Advent is a time when we seek exactly this kind of transformation, but for our own hearts.

We have none of the excuses of the people that Isaiah is speaking to. We are immensely privileged Christians, we know and love God in the person of Jesus Christ, we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, we can buy bibles in hundreds of translations according to our reading or listening needs, we can commune with God in the Eucharist and in prayer, and worship God freely in public, we even have millennia of Christian wisdom and tradition at our fingertips.

Advent is a time when we recognise the root of sin in our own hearts and then acknowledge our part to play in the sin of the world. When will my heart stop gossiping, or complaining, or judging others? When will I take accountability for my role in the kingdom of God? When will I have the confidence to speak about God to others, or to volunteer at church or at school or at home - when I take the time to dwell in the presence and love of God and allow God to transform me.

[A prophet, we say at school, is someone who speaks the truth about God, even when it makes them really unpopular. Matthew talks about the final biblical prophet, John the Baptist, and his own promises about Jesus, which, again, focus on a language of purity, or rather of burning up impurities. Jesus is described by John as someone who will destroy evil and wickedness and unrighteousness once and for all. That is something we should long for. But we also know the astonishing truth of how that’s going to happen. The church year has just begun, and as we walk through the story of the Christian faith over the year to come we’re going to see Jesus’ righteousness and justice, not in pomp, or religiousness, or angry words, though there are a few of those directed at the religious leaders, but in humility, in meakness, in sacrifice, in touching untouchables, in eating with sinners, hanging out with fishermen, meeting secret converts in the dark, being betrayed by friends, and finally in humiliation and death. ]

If Jesus is not your heart’s desire, if you don’t long to be closer to God, then don’t panic, you’re among friends, and this is a good time to start warming up those cockles as we draw nearer to the start of the Christian story, as love steps into our world and bits you to sit and eat with him. You are being offered something you can’t earn, or buy, or achieve, unconditional love from someone who already knows your quirks, and your weird and wobbly bits, and loves you through and through.

So as we walk through advent, through the great season of waiting and preparing, can I challenge each and every one of you to take a moment, start this afternoon or this evening so that you remember, to set a timer for 15 minutes every day, and curl up somewhere cosy with a nice mug of something warm, and remove all distractions, and be honest with God. Allow God to love your heart, in all it’s messiness and chaos and stress. Hide nothing away, knowing that God already knows and loves you just as you are, and be attentive, watch, listen, pray, repent of anything that stands in the way, and see what God can do when we’re prepared to wait.

Amen.