SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR A

December 4, 2022

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Isaiah 11:1-10

Psalm 72:1-8

Romans 1:4-13

Matthew 3: 1-12

 

Over the past few decades, a debate has taken place in the wider Church about the true nature and meaning of Advent. Those of more traditional leanings emphasize the season’s penitential character, treating it as a kind of “little Lent.”

 

A good degree of this emphasis is evident here at Christ Church. We use violent vestments, signifying penitence. (By the way, the color I’m wearing is violet, not purple. I looked it up online, and, on the color wheel, purple is halfway between blue and red, whereas violet is halfway between purple and blue.) Also, I was delighted to discover that we accompany the violet vestments with unbleached wax candles as well: liturgically very correct indeed!

 

In many places, however, the trend nowadays is to downplay Advent’s penitential character and emphasize instead themes of joyful hope and expectation. Instead of violet or purple, many churches use something called “Advent blue,” which is erroneously claimed to come from the Sarum Use of the medieval English Church. While such blue vestments are often very attractive—and I’ve worn them elsewhere in the past—I’m just as glad we stick to the traditional Advent violet here.

 

So, which is it? Is Advent a penitential season, a mini-Lent, or a joyful season of expectation and preparation? Well, in this as in so many other such questions, the best answer takes the form not of “either / or” but of “both / and.”

 

We can begin by looking again at today’s Collect. Its opening form of address, “Merciful God,” reminds us that, before all else, our God is a God of mercy. Then, after recalling that God sent the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation, the Collect asks God for the grace to “heed their warnings and forsake our sins”—there’s the penitential note—so that we may “greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer”—there’s the note of joyful hope. 

 

We encounter these two dimensions of Advent—the prophetic call to repentance and the equally prophetic proclamation of joyful hope—running throughout today’s appointed readings. A bit surprisingly, perhaps, the prophetic call to repentance sounds out most loudly and clearly not in the Old Testament readings but in the wonderful Gospel account of John the Baptist preaching at the River Jordan: “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” Seeing Pharisees and Sadducees among those coming for baptism, John exclaims: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance … Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire!” 

 

And the next time someone repeats to you the cliché that the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath while the God of the New Testament is a God of love, you can quote to them this text from Matthew 3: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Some wags have even suggested that the image of John the Baptist declaiming these words would make a good holiday greeting card at this time of year.

 

But when we turn from John the Baptist to the Prophet Isaiah, we encounter God’s promises displayed in the wonderful imagery of a kingdom of love and peace. The reading begins: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” The Jesse referred to here is the father of King David. The prophet is proclaiming that even though the tree of David’s royal lineage has been cut down, and the Davidic monarchy destroyed, nonetheless at some unspecified point in the future a descendant of King David will arise to usher in the fullness of God’s reign on earth. As Christians, of course, we believe that this prophecy finds its fulfillment in none other than Jesus Christ.

 

The prophet continues: “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” Again, as Christians, we discern this prophecy’s fulfillment in the Spirit’s descent upon Jesus at his baptism by John in the River Jordan.

 

Isaiah proceeds to describe the Lord’s future reign as miraculously transforming and making new the natural creation itself: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” Obviously, this vision of natural predators and their prey reconciled and coexisting in peace hasn’t been fulfilled yet. But again, this imagery beautifully symbolizes the Christian hope in a new heaven and a new earth following Christ’s Second Coming as King and Judge. “In that day,” Isaiah concludes, “the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the peoples; him shall the nations seek, and his dwelling shall be glorious.”

 

In today’s reading from the Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul alludes to this same passage, writing: “and further Isaiah says, ‘The root of Jesse shall come, he who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles hope.” In Paul’s Greek the word “hope” has the sense of “joyful expectation.” And in this reading Paul uses this word no fewer than four times, beginning with the reminder that the scriptures were written for our instruction so that we might have hope.

Taken together, then, today’s readings present us with a summons to repentance and a call to hope, as two sides of the same coin. On one hand, bear fruit that befits repentance; on the other hand, place your hope in him whose coming we await. One of my seminary professors used to describe the difference between faith and hope by saying that faith is the belief that God’s promises are true, while hope is the belief that God’s promises are true for me. 

 

The key point, however, is that we cannot manufacture either this repentance or this hope by our own unaided human effort. They’re both gifts of God’s grace, gifts of the Holy Spirit, which is what we need to pray for above all else. Thus, John the Baptist concludes his discourse in today’s Gospel with the promise: “I baptize you with water for repentance … he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” And here it seems fitting to give the last word to Saint Paul, who concludes today’s reading from Romans with this wonderful blessing: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and hope in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”