Sermons
It is 5:00 in the morning. The house is quiet and cold on this winter morning and you hear the rain outside falling on the pavement and the trees.
You have been startled awake by a vivid and very strange dream. You toss in your bed for a bit, but sleep eludes you and the dream haunts you. Perhaps by going over it in your mind, you’ll be able to go back to sleep.
Christmas feels like home and all the comfort that word conjures up inside of me. And yet, I’m acutely aware as we read this Gospel tonight, that the first Christmas was anything but home for Mary and Joseph. They were not home for the holidays when this day first became holy. They were at the end of a long journey, having just left their home, a journey that had been made much more difficult given the late stage of Mary’s pregnancy.
On the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we always hear of The Annunciation, that story of the angel coming to prepare the new parents for the coming of their child. When we use the phrase, The Annunciation, we usually refer to Mary’s Annunciation when the angel came to her. That is Luke’s story, but this year we are given Matthew’s story, which is a lesser known annunciation of the angel coming to Joseph.
This is a season all about light: getting ready for light, celebrating light. The remarkable thing is that at this same time the world is getting darker and darker as we approach the winter solstice and we tilt back towards the sun. And in the midst of that we are pushing back against the darkness with more and more light with each passing day. This is more than just the literal lights that we are lighting, it is what we were meant to do by people who follow Christ, the one who is the light. We are to bring light, to bring our light into the midst of the darkness.
It’s Advent, that wonderful, delightful time to prepare for Christmas. And there are all kinds of ways we do that: we might light candles on an Advent wreath, put up a tree, decorate the home, hang some boughs, put up some lights outside to light up the world, baking, shopping for presents, shipping gifts, sending Christmas cards. But who among you reflects on the fact that you are a “brood of vipers?” I don’t see a single hand going up. It’s not the usual Advent preparation we think about, but it is the one that John the Baptist calls us to today. We usually think about repentance as part of our Lenten preparations for Easter, but it is a part of these Advent preparations. It is a minor note, but it is here: “You brood of vipers. Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”
