Advent 3 – 2020
John 1:6-8, 19-28
Marian Free
In the name of God Earthmaker, Painbearer, Lifegiver. Amen.
Those of us who love to garden will know that sometimes the soil is so hard that water just runs off the surface. In order to prepare the ground for planting (or even for watering) we need to soften the soil to allow the water to penetrate and to saturate the dirt. All cooks know that there are a number of techniques to mix two different ingredients. It is impossible for example to mix sugar into a hard, cold lump of butter, but if the butter is softened the two ingredients can be mixed into a consistency like whipped cream. To make pastry though, the butter is better cold, and it is rubbed into the flour with one’s hands until the mix looks like crumbs. Oil and vinegar need a brisk stir to combine but adding oil to an egg mixture has to be done slowly and patiently or the two ingredients will separate, and the aioli ruined.
Combining two different substances requires a change in both. Dry soil absorbs water, sugar dissolves and butter become creamy, flour and butter become crumbly and oil can transform eggs into a creamy dressing. In each case the original ingredients give up something of their own characteristic in order to make something new. Few people eating a cake, or a pastry see a lump of butter and a pile of sugar or flour. What they see and taste is the finished product.
The butter, the soil, the sugar have no say in what we do to them. They cannot object to our treatment or maintain their integrity in the face of our spades, our spoons and our fingers. They must simply submit to being manipulated and changed. Or, to put it in a positive light, they, having no will or ego, are open to being altered and reshaped to create something new and wonderful. They allow their barriers to be broken down so that another substance can enter and integrate and transform them.
We have seen over the last five weeks that biblical passages that at first seem harsh, violent and unforgiving can be viewed in a different light – one that is gentler, more compassionate and life-changing. Read in a particular way, the parables of the young maidens, the talents and the sheep and goats along with the warnings of John the Baptist can create a religion of fear, one in which we live with uncertainty – never knowing whether or not we have done enough to please or to satisfy God. The violence of the Old Testament imagery is likewise capable of creating terror in the hearts of the faint-hearted. If God’s coming is going to be associated with the tearing of the heavens and the upheaval of the natural environment, it is hard to be anything but anxious and on edge.
Over the last five weeks, I have come to see that these texts which urge us to “be ready” to “be prepared” can be seen in a different light. That is, they are not insisting that we look at our exterior lives, but at our interior lives. They are not demanding that we simply change our behaviour by focussing on the external, but rather they are encouraging us to consider how our thoughts, attitudes and inclinations might cause us some discomfort should God return. God, who is love, is not wanting us to respond from a position of fear, but from a position of security and confidence. God who sent Jesus to a world that was far from perfect, longs for us to believe that we are loved and, being safe in that love, to open ourselves to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.
Last week, I suggested that readiness for the coming of God among us might involve breaking down the barriers of pride, independence or embarrassment that separate us from God. Today I would like to take that one step further. Having removed the barriers that prevent an honest and trusting relationship with God, we must allow the Holy Spirit free range to transform, renew and reshape us. In order to be truly one with God, we must abandon our sense of self, let go of our need to be in control and rid ourselves of anything that restricts God’s ability to enter and direct our lives.
John the Baptist relinquished everything that prevented his being united with and used by God – his dependence on outward appearance, his pride and his ambition. He stripped himself of all distractions – taking himself into the desert and relying on the bare necessities for survival. His longing for, and his preparedness for the coming of God in Jesus was demonstrated by his willingness to be used by and for God. He had given up any struggle to be separate or distinct and had allowed himself to be fully absorbed into God.
The Christ whom John announced has come into the world. How is the world to know that unless through us, unless we make ourselves fully open and available to God’s presence in us, unless we allow the Holy Spirit to infuse every part of our being?
As St Teresa of Avila said: “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
How can the world know the presence of Christ in the world if we are not prepared to lose ourselves in God?
In some sense, the coming of God is terrifying and violent. It has the potential to upend our lives, to lay bare our inner lives and to change our direction. Are you ready?
Swallowsrest 