Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Prepare the Way of the Lord!
This first week of Advent has been a busy week at Emmanuel! Advent is a season of waiting in the church year. We are waiting to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25. While December 25 may or may not be the actual, historical date of Jesus’ birth, it’s the date that the Western church has recognized for over a thousand years. Other Christian denominations celebrate Christmas at different times — some Orthodox churches as late as January 7, the day after our Epiphany.
Last year at this time, I was in Jerusalem on a yearlong fellowship, and I saw the full spectrum of Jesus’ birthdates. As a general observation, there is no such thing as what I would call Advent Orthodoxy in the Holy Land.
You know how in the Episcopal Church we wait quietly for Jesus’ birthday, holding off on decorating until Christmas (except for the Greening of the Church today — don’t miss that right after the 10am service!). Also, we don’t sing Christmas carols until Christmas Eve.
In Jerusalem, all the churches and Christian schools are extravagantly decorated and lit by the third week of November! Two major factors are at work in the different ways American Episcopalians and Arab Christians recognize the Advent season.
First, most Arab Christians in the Land of the Holy One have moved — to the US, to Canada, and to Europe. Christians are now only 2% of the population in the Holy Land. They feel compelled to be loud and proud.
As an Arab Christian friend told me, there so few of us that we have to let everyone know that we are here, and Christmas is happening!
Second, the Eastern Orthodox Christians have a different, later birthdate for Jesus, essentially stretching out the Advent period.
Preparing at Emmanuel
Here at Emmanuel, we spend Advent in holy preparation as we look forward to our celebration of Jesus’ birth on Christmas Day — and while we mostly hold off on decorating the church, and on Christmas carols, we have been busy getting ready. We have been busy preparing for our celebration of Jesus’ birth.
We had another wonderful Soup’s On dinner at Emmanuel on Tuesday, and the church was filled with our guests and our many volunteers — for cooking, serving, and cleanup.
Our Emmanuel community also brought over 50 winter coats — plus hats, scarves and gloves — to share with our neighbors.
We hosted the Newport Music Festival for two concerts yesterday, with one more this afternoon, welcoming Emmanuel parishioners and the wider community into this beautiful space to experience the joy of music.
We are also preparing and rehearsing for the Joyous Christmas Journey on December 19, 2019 — the Emmanuel Day School Christmas pageant with the Emmanuel Angel Choir and the Choir School of Newport County, teaching our EDS children the Christmas story, and the meaning of Advent in our liturgical year.
Commitment Sunday
Finally — but most important — today is Commitment Sunday, when we lay down our gifts before God and make provisions for our lives in community for Emmanuel. Our time, talent, and treasure sustain our lives as Christ’s body here at Emmanuel.
When we give our time, whether as Soup’s On volunteers, or service in Altar Guild, Coffee Hour, bulletin folding, office work, Property Committee, Emmanuel Day School Committee, or Vestry, we commit our lives to God’s purpose.
When we give our talent, we not only support our community, but we grow in our own faith through that commitment.
When we give our treasure through our pledges this Commitment Sunday, we not only support the church in needed ways, we allow the vestry to budget and plan to pay the costs of the church throughout the year.
While gifts of any kind, size, or timing help, Emmanuel Church’s utility, snow removal, insurance, staff, and other bills come due at specific times and specific amounts.
Your pledges of financial support to our lives in community at Emmanuel allow the vestry to budget and plan effectively.
ALL of this activity — our outreach to the community through partnership with the Newport Music Festival and Soup’s On, the EDS children’s Christian formation in Godly Play about the holy family on the way to Bethlehem and the Christmas Journey pageant, and our focus on our pledge campaign — ALL of this activity is part of our Advent preparation for Jesus’ birth that we celebrate December 25.
John the Baptist
And I can’t think of a more fitting gospel than the appearance of John the Baptist. He’s an odd duck, this Baptizer, with a really unusual lifestyle.
John the Baptist lived and had his ministry in the Judean wilderness, not in Jerusalem or Galilee, or any of the other cool neighborhoods in the Ancient Near East.
Also, he wore a robe made of camel hair, tied closed with a leather belt. While scholars have different ideas about just how John’s clothing was made, John lived alone in the wilderness.
I’ve never really thought that his camel hair outfit would have been much like the felted coats you might see on the business crowd in the city.
I’ve always guessed that John the Baptist’s robe of camel hair was a whole lot closer to the large, ungainly, improbably made beast itself: roughly crafted, warm, and durable – maybe it was even a blanket made of camel skin, with the hair still on.
Renaissance painters knew this. They typically represented John the Baptist in art with a furry – usually sleeveless – garment tied with a leather belt, like a fur vest made from a really unkempt creature that clearly spent its life outside in the weather.
John the Baptist’s camel robe, like his special diet of locusts and honey, make him different from all other people in the gospels. He stands out — fur-vested and bug-eating — setting him apart for a special role in Jesus’ ministry.
John is the one telling us to get ready for Jesus.
He is
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’”
John the Baptist has come to make straight the way of the Lord and to get everyone ready for God’s new plan of salvation.
What do we do to prepare?
We offer each other, and our broader community, our time, talent, and treasure.
We share our time to prepare and serve meals for those who need them at Soup’s On, and serve Christ in one another and in the stranger.
We engage with the broader community, hospitality and through music, sharing our talents — our beautiful, acoustically significant space — with others.
Sometimes hospitality to our neighbors means encountering difference. Remember the root words of hospitality literally mean love of the strange. I’m sure you have noticed that we have stages at the front of the nave, left over from our two concerts yesterday and ready for our third concert this afternoon. Sometimes offering hospitality to our neighbors, and encountering difference, means compromise. And we share our treasure in this Commitment Sunday with our pledges to Emmanuel Church of our financial support of our lives here together.
We do these things to prepare the way of the Lord — to get us ready to live in Christian community, and to get us ready for our celebration of Jesus’ birth on Christmas Day. This is the reason behind the discipline in our church of Advent — our holy time of waiting. We don’t rush right to the finish line — Jesus’ birthday celebration on Christmas, with decorations, and Christmas carols, and Christmas trees. Instead, we prepare the way of the Lord. We make straight his path, as Isaiah’s prophecy says, and as Matthew’s gospel repeats.
Remember that John the Baptist’s announcement of the coming Messiah we read today is not the first time he has recognized Jesus as Lord. Jesus and John are related — their mothers, Elizabeth and Mary are kinswomen — cousins probably. And as Luke’s gospel tells us, when the Angel Gabriel tells Mary that she will conceive a son and name him Jesus, he also mentions in passing that Mary’s kinswoman Elizabeth, who was thought to be barren, was herself six months pregnant.
Mary, then pregnant with Jesus, goes to visit Elizabeth. Unborn John, recognizing the nascent Messiah Mary is carrying, leaps up in Elizabeth’s womb. Even though he’s still waiting, still gestating quietly in his mother Elizabeth’s womb, he knows that the coming of the Lord is important.
As he tells us today, Make Jesus’ paths straight!
Prepare the way of the Lord.
This is important. Jesus’ birth, and Jesus’ coming is important. And getting ready, as we do with our time, talent, and treasure, is how we prepare, and how we wait. Amen