Patrick Comerford
Next Sunday, 9 December 2018, is the Second Sunday of Advent.
The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary as adapted for use in the Church of Ireland for next Sunday are:
Baruch 5: 1-9 or Malachi 3: 1-4; The Canticle Benedictus (Luke 1: 68-79); Philippians 1: 3-11; Luke 3: 1-6.
Last Sunday (2 December 2018), on the First Sunday of Advent, we began a new Church Year, and the beginning of a new cycle of lectionary readings this year, Year C, drawing mainly on Saint Luke’s Gospel.
Note that next Sunday’s readings provide for the Canticle Benedictus (Luke 1: 68-79) rather than a Psalm, and that because the Old Testament reading is from the Apocrypha, an alternative is available from the Book of Malachi.
These readings can be found HERE
Baruch 5: 1-9:
The Book of Baruch is set during the Babylonian exile, soon after 600 BC, when some Jews had been deported to Babylon and others had been dispersed around the Mediterranean. However, this book was probably written between 200 and 60 BC. It is attributed to Baruch, the friend and secretary of Jeremiah.
Both Jeremiah and Baruch are said to have been taken to Egypt in 582 BC (see Jeremiah 43:1-7). However, a later tradition says that Baruch went to Babylon.
As with several books in the Apocrypha, most of this book is compiled of passages copied or paraphrased from other books in the Old Testament books. The passage Baruch 1: 15 to 2: 19 is largely a reinterpretation of Daniel 9: 4-19, so Baruch was written after the Book of Daniel.
The Book of Baruch is set in the time of the Exile. Earlier, the author says the Exile took place because many Jews did not obey the Law of Moses. The words are spoken by Jerusalem, the personified mother of the nation. She is a prophet of events to come. God, she says, has noted the people’s return to obedience to him, so the time of the return home is imminent. The time of the city’s mourning for the loss of her children is nearing its end.
In Sunday’s passage (Baruch 5: 1-9), Baruch responds to these words from Jerusalem, and cries out to Jerusalem in exile. It is time to remove mourning attire, to don forever splendid garments given by God, guarantees and symbols of harmony, security and prosperity.
Exodus tells us that Aaron as priest, wore a diadem or mitre inscribed ‘Holy to the Lord,’ a symbol of divine regal splendour. Now Jerusalem becomes a priest of the Everlasting God, succeeding Aaron, as a sign of God’s power.
The city will receive two titles forever, ‘Righteous Peace’ and ‘Godly Glory.’ From now on, Jerusalem will be a place where justice and peace prevail and where God’s glory will be seen.
From verse 5, Baruch tells of a procession, a pilgrimage to the holy city. The exiles will return from Babylon in the east and from elsewhere. God has spoken the word and has remembered them. They left the city on foot, but now they will return regally, as if borne on thrones.
Baruch then echoes Isaiah (see Isaiah 40: 3-4), words that are repeated with joy in the Gospel reading (Luke 3: 1-6). A road will be levelled through the desert, so the exiles can return safely. The road will be lined with trees that grow miraculously at God’s command. God will be with the exiles with his mercy and his righteousness.
For a people in exile, who find themselves in a culture that is not their own, how do they leave what they have in the present, how do they maintain their hopes from the past, and how do they look forward to the future?
These are questions of anticipation and hope in this season of Advent. Baruch says it is time to end the mourning and to look forward in hope to the future.
Could this be true for us this Advent?
How do we turn from the gloom and fears of the present day to hope for reconciliation and peace?
What would we see in this vision for the future?
The Canticle Benedictus:
The Canticle Benedictus is the Song of Zechariah (Luke 1: 68-79), provided as the Third Canticle at Morning Prayer and as Canticles 7 and 8 in the Book of Common Prayer.
Zechariah the priest has been struck dumb when he hears that in her old age his wife Elizabeth is pregnant with a child – the child who is to become Saint John the Baptist, who is the focus of our Gospel reading.
After his birth, his parents bring him to be circumcised and named. Elizabeth favours the name John and Zechariah agrees. Now Zechariah, filled with the Holy Spirit, speaks this song of prophecy we know in the Anglican tradition as Benedictus – from the Latin word for ‘Blessed.’
This song tells us of God’s blessing for his people. God is to give them a mighty saviour who will save them from sin. This descendant of David is the fulfilment of promises of the prophets of old, and he will rescue the people from their enemies.
God is fulfilling his promises, made first as an oath with Abraham, and they shall no longer live in fear of his wrath. John the Baptist, who will be thought to be like Elijah, and he will bring the people to a godly, way of living, preparing the way for the Lord.
Christ is ‘the dawn from on high’ that ‘break upon us,’ the one through whom God fulfils his purpose for humanity. At a time when hopes are at a low ebb and people are particularly in need, ‘in darkness and the shadow of death,’ he will be a beacon guiding us ‘into the way of peace.’
Philippians 1: 3-11:
Philippi was the centre of Saint Paul’s first mission in continental Europe. It would become an important early centre of the Church in a world that did not yet know Christ or the message of salvation.
On Sunday next, we read from Saint Paul’s letter to the Church in Philippi. This is one of the most positive and encouraging letters of all the Pauline epistles, and Saint Paul’s words are powerful and visionary. In this letter, he offers us a vision of what Church is to be – the very kingdom of God on earth. He believes in a world transformed and reordered by love and grace, in response to love and grace. He believes that in Christ our love will overflow ourselves to one another.
Saint Paul’s vision of the Church is one in which we as the Church recognise that Christ is doing good work in the lives of the other. He writes to the Philippians telling them that his prayer that their love may be so generous that it overflows more and more, so that when Christ returns at his Advent, they will have produced the harvest that gives glory and praise to God.
As baptised members of the Church, we are marked as Christ’s own forever. We belong to God, God has claimed us, and we are ‘the saints of God.’
Following his opening greeting, Saint Paul thanks God for the Christians at Philippi, praying with joy because of their sharing in spreading the good news, from the day of their conversion.
This vision of the community of the baptised is a reminder that for Christians the hallmark of our community is to one of grace and peace. We are inheritors of this godly vision for community.
Luke 3: 1-6:
Saint Luke places the events in his Gospel firmly and historically in the time of particular rulers, both political and religious. The ministry of Saint John the Baptist and of Christ are incarnational and take place in real time, in history.
What is to come is a new authority that is inaugurated in very real time and is measured by grace and not power, a challenge to the people of God and to the authorities of the world. It is a time of renewal linked to the past, lived in the present and looking forward to the future.
The words of Saint John the Baptist are not only for a people long ago but words for us today.
Saint John the Baptist is announcing judgment at the end of the era and the beginning of a new pact with God that is available to all. He travels throughout the Jordan Valley, preaching a return to God’s ways and being ethically and spiritually renewed. He quotes from the Prophecy of Isiah we have already heard quoted by Baruch (see Isaiah 40: 3-5).
However, Saint Luke makes one change in the quotation: the word ‘his’ (verse 4) emphasises that it is for Christ that John prepares the way. For Saint Luke, all flesh, all people all people will have the opportunity to be rescued from sin.
The world is a place and we find our home as foreigners in a strange land, longing for the Kingdom of God present, and not yet fully realised. In the wilderness, we long to hear the voice crying out, to hear that we are welcome.
As we heard in the canticle, Saint John the Baptist is the agent to fulfil the promises of the prophets (see Isaiah 40: 3; Malachi 3: 1, 4: 5).
Christ who is coming at Advent is bringing the Good News of the Kingdom of God, and is the living word who brings the promise of transformation and change.
Saint John makes his proclamation to the whole world. The whole of creation will be remade, the world of authority will be turned upside down, the word of salvation will raise up new children of God, and even the stones will shout as the kingdom message becomes a message of embrace and love, with a new order of family and kinship that embraces all people.
In this season of Advent, how do we connect with the real world which is wilderness for so many people?
How do we encourage people in our churches to take the promise of the Kingdom of God outside the walls of the church building, to take the Gospel of grace into the world around us, proclaiming Christ and the opportunity of hope and joy and transformation that he brings with him at his coming?
Luke 3: 1-6 (NRSV):
1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2 during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
5 Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God”.’
Liturgical resources:
Liturgical colour: Purple (Violet)
The Advent Candle, the Second Sunday of Advent (Second Purple Candle):
The Prophets
Loving God, your prophets spoke out
in the darkness of suffering and loss,
of a light coming into the world.
May we proclaim the light of Christ
as we stand alongside the marginalised
of your world,
that they may find new strength
and hope in you.
(A prayer from USPG)
The Collect:
Father in heaven,
who sent your Son to redeem the world
and will send him again to be our judge:
Give us grace so to imitate him
in the humility and purity of his first coming
that when he comes again,
we may be ready to greet him with joyful love and firm faith;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Collect of Fifth Sunday before Advent may be used:
Blessed Lord,
who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:
Help us to hear them,
to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them
that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word,
we may embrace and for ever hold fast
the blessed hope of everlasting life,
which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.
The Advent Collect is said after the Collect of the Day until Christmas Eve:
Almighty God,
Give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and to put on the armour of light
now in the time of this mortal life
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Post-Communion Prayer:
Lord,
here you have nourished us with the food of life.
Through our sharing in this holy sacrament
teach us to judge wisely earthly things
and to yearn for things heavenly.
We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The liturgical provisions suggest that the Gloria is omitted in Advent, and it is traditional in Anglicanism to omit the Gloria at the end of canticles and psalms during Advent.
These additional liturgical resources are provided for Advent in the Book of Common Prayer (2004):
Penitential Kyries:
Turn to us again, O God our Saviour,
and let your anger cease from us.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Show us your mercy, O Lord,
and grant us your salvation.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Your salvation is near for those that fear you,
that glory may dwell in our land.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Introduction to the Peace:
In the tender mercy of our God,
the dayspring from on high shall break upon us,
to give light to those who dwell in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1: 78, 79)
Preface:
Salvation is your gift
through the coming of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ,
and by him you will make all things new
when he returns in glory to judge the world:
Blessing:
Christ the sun of righteousness shine upon you,
gladden your hearts
and scatter the darkness from before you:
Suggested Hymns:
The hymns suggested for this Sunday in Sing to the Word (2000) edited by Bishop Edward Darling include:
Baruch 5: 1-9:
418, Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face
671, Jesus, thy blood and righteousness
Malachi 3, 1-4:
52, Christ, whose glory fills the skies
331, God reveals his presence
634, Love divine, all loves excelling
134, Make way, make way for Christ the King
640, Purify my heart
The Canticle Benedictus (Luke 1: 68-79):
685, Blessed be the God of Israel
52, Christ, whose glory fills the skies
119, Come, thou long-expected Jesus
381, God has spoken – by his prophets
706, O bless the God of Israel
Philippians 1: 3-11:
518, Bind us together, Lord
413, Father, we thank thee who hast planted
567, Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go
588, Light of the minds that know him
81, Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided
601, Teach me, my God and King
Luke 3: 1-6:
126, Hark! a thrilling voice in sounding
134, Make way, make way for Christ the King
306, O Spirit of the living God
136, On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry
204, When Jesus came to Jordan
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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