Sermon December 9, 2007

Advent II, Year A

Isaiah 11:1-10 Psalm 72:1-8 Romans 15:4-13 Matthew 3:1-12

I guess we're just so used to seeing John the Baptist from a "Jesus perspective" that it's all too easy for us to miss why Matthew, Mark, and Luke make such a big deal about who he was and what he said.

Mostly what we see (because it's a big part of what the Three Synoptic Gospels say) is that "continuity thing" - John's the 'forerunner', the one who "prepares the way" - and he even reminds his listeners that this "massager" identity is his ministry.

'Course, we automatically think he means Jesus, but he probably didn't. In fact, most scholars believe that Jesus started out as a disciple of John - and no matter how talented Jesus must have appeared to John it would have been very difficult for John to make that transition from seeing Jesus as someone he had to teach, to accepting him as the Messiah of God! He simply meant - in line with all the great Old Testament prophets - that someone was coming, a messiah, and he would turn the world upside-down (or, more accurately, right side-up)

I think that's a helpful thing to remember.

Important, too, is not to convince ourselves of what place John had in relation to Jesus. We tend to see it as a natural continuity flowing from the former to the latter.

But I think that perhaps the most important thing that John did was to provide those contemporary listeners who gathered around him with a example of the best that Judaism had to offer - a model of one who sought to honor Torah Law - the Law at the heart of Judaism - not just on his lips but in his heart.

That's a gift to us, too, because now we, too, have an example of all that is good about Israelite faith. John was, in other words, still working "inside the system" - still demanding that the Torah be respected for itself.

We have that example, and so that we can see what is similar between him and Jesus - but we can also see what is very different about Jesus, and its this: Jesus offers a new vision that comes out of Torah Law, but is also beyond it.

Even for Judaism Jesus represents the close of something. No documents were added to the Hebrew bible after Jesus. It's as if they, too, realized that something had changed.

So anyone want to tell me what "Jesus Law" looks like? How about: "You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart and soul and mind, and your neighbor as yourself." The two Great Commandments.

Love is the only law that matters, he told us, and all Torah has to be interpreted through that lens. If a particular law violates the two great commandments we toss the former in favor of the latter.

And less anyone think that this focus on the two great commandments was not that much of a difference, Jesus went out of his way to make it clear to his own disciples - and to anyone who would listen to him - that one of the major consequences of this new vision was that the most central tenet of Jewish practice was no longer important.

Torah Law was built around a vision of community found in Leviticus(and in particular chapters 17-26) that was predicated on holiness, and summed up by one famous command of Yahweh: "Be holy, as your heavenly father is holy" (Leviticus 11:45) - in fact it became known as the Holiness Code.

Jesus was completely intentional in proclaiming the replacement of that Holiness Code of Leviticus (chapters 17-26) with a Compassion Code (Luke 6: 36 cf. Matt 5: 48): "Be compassionate, as your heavenly father is compassionate".

The message is abundantly clear. Religious faith is not fundamentally about the sort purity proclaimed in the Holiness Code, but about relationship, and compassion, and most especially about love.

I think some Christian groups get confused here. Quite a few miss the radical nature of this new proclamation and keep focusing on the Holiness Code. There are quite a few Anglicans out there who are more "Old Testament Christians" than "Jesus Christians" it seems to me. They've noticed that the behavior that love promotes sometimes looks like seeking purity, but missed that behavior's birthplace, so all they do is focus on being "pure" - and that inevitably leads to excluding those who are not, by their definition, pure.

And they've noticed the fact that living out of love will inevitably lead to following a moral code of behavior, but they've only seen the moral code, and missed its origin, and so they end up focusing on rules, and not the one who said that rules don't count if they violate the fundamental law of love.

Jesus is quick to point out the holes in that perspective: when its only about "purity", only about a "moral code" that's a violation of God's law of love - it's to make purity or a "moral code" an idol.

Paul puts it best, in his first letter to the Church at Corinth: " If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
    Love never gives up.
    Love cares more for others than for self.
    Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
    Love doesn't strut,
    Doesn't have a swelled head,
    Doesn't force itself on others,
    Isn't always "me first,"
    Doesn't fly off the handle,
    Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
    Doesn't revel when others grovel,
    Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
    Puts up with anything,
    Trusts God always,
    Always looks for the best,
    Never looks back,
    But keeps going to the end."

So today is really little different than we might at first have thought. It's a reminder to us that if we fall prey to legalism, and understand only that salvation is based on our ability to obey all the rules we're losing touch with our Christian faith. The rules we follow have to be shown to exist because of love or they have no reason for existing.

I think Augustine of Hippo (the "other" Augustine) said it best: "love God and do as you will", knowing that the "as you will" was determined by the love.

Perhaps that's the best theme that we could choose for this Advent. Amen