St Mark’s 10.30 11/12/2022
Advent theme
Isaiah 35: 1 – 10
Matthew 11: 2 – 11
Anyone who has the privilege of preaching in church has to decide how to begin their sermon. (Well, they also need to think how to continue and how to finish too!). But first, how to begin, faced with that blank sheet of paper, on this 3rd Sunday of Advent. So I thought, how about starting with 2 apparently heretical statements, to hopefully start the congregation thinking? So here we go. Number one: Jesus himself wasn’t a Christian. And number two: Jesus never set out to start a new religion. Controversial? Well let’s think about those two statements.
Jesus wasn’t a Christian. Well actually that’s not too difficult to explain; it’s a bit of a trick statement really. Because we read in Acts ch 11 v 26 that it was at Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians. And that was perhaps 5 years after the death of Jesus. So before then the name hadn’t been invented. The disciples at Antioch were called Christians because they were following the teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus himself was the teacher, not the disciples who later followed him, so he can hardly be called a Christian. In fact, of course, he was a Jew, who regularly attended the Jewish worship in the synagogue and in the temple, where he taught the people who flocked to hear him. And we read that those, mostly Jews themselves, who heard him were amazed at his teaching.
What about the 2nd statement, that Jesus didn’t set out to start a new religion? In our reading from Matthew’s gospel, we find Jesus being questioned by the followers of John the Baptist. John was in prison having offended Herod by accusing him of divorcing his wife, and improperly marrying Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. We know that John had previously baptised Jesus and in doing so had recognised that he was the promised Messiah. But now, it seems that he was having doubts. ‘Are you the one to come, the Messiah’ asked his disciples of Jesus, ‘or should we expect someone else’.
Jesus did not reply directly, but pointed to what was happening in response to his teaching. ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see, the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor’. Jesus was pointing out that what he was doing was fulfilling Old Testament prophecy. We read some of that in Isaiah ch 35. ‘Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy’.
Jesus was telling John, ‘Look, you know your Scriptures, you know that these things were promised, when Messiah comes. And now those miracles are happening, and your own followers are eyewitnesses. So, doubt no longer. I am indeed the promised Messiah’.
So we hear it from the lips of Jesus himself. He is the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies. And again and again the New Testament writers quote from their scriptures, our Old Testament, to show that the coming of Jesus, his miracles, his teaching, and his death, were all part of God’s plan, as foretold by the prophets.
So Jesus didn’t set out to start a new religion. He fulfilled an old religion. The separation of Old and New Testaments in our Bibles is artificial. There is a profound continuity between Old and New. Our Bibles tell us of the progress of God’s plan through human history. Starting with Abraham, and through the growth in number of his descendants, God revealed himself to the people of Israel, but with a constantly stated purpose, of bringing blessing to all nations, through the one who was to come, the promised Messiah. And ‘Here he is’, said John the Baptist, and when he began to doubt, Jesus himself confirmed it.
So the followers of Jesus, who in due course came to be called Christians, were not following a new religion. They were following God’s plan, and spreading the good news of God’s love and purposes, now not only to Jews but also to Gentiles. This new Way, as it was first called, was the culmination of God’s revelation throughout history. And in the book of Acts that theme is repeated, in the sermons of Peter, the witness of Stephen, in the sermons of Paul, and in his subsequent letters.
And we know that those most in tune with the scriptures had recognised this from the start. Mary, his mother, in the Magnificat, had said that God had helped his servant Israel and remembered his promises to Abraham and his descendants for ever. Simeon, holding the week-old baby Jesus in the temple had uttered those much-loved words that we know as the Nunc Dimittis: ‘Now let you servant depart in peace, according to your word. For my eyes have seen you salvation, which you have prepared, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.’
Jesus was both the glory of God’s people Israel, the culmination of his promises to them, and also a light to the Gentiles, to us today, bringing salvation to all people. Jesus didn’t start a new religion; he fulfilled all that had gone before. Which is why we have so many readings from Isaiah, from Micah, and from other Old Testament scriptures during Advent and at the services of 9 lessons and carols. We are celebrating the continuity of our faith with the faith of those who have kept the faith over the past 4 millennia or so. Those who faithfully served God in Old Testament times, keeping the faith alive, despite persecution and despite the many failings of God’s people over the centuries.
So what implications does this have for us today? Firstly, I suggest, that like those faithful people from Old Testament times, like Mary and Simeon, like the disciples of Jesus and the early church, we too must keep the faith. We are in continuity with faithful people of all ages, who have studied what God has taught and sought to please him. In Acts ch 17 we find Paul on his 2nd missionary journey, arriving at a place called Berea. We read that, ‘on arriving there, Paul and Silas went to the Jewish synagogue’. Note that: Paul’s first move on arriving in a new place was to preach in the synagogue, again supporting the point that the Christian faith was a fulfilment of Judaism. And the account goes on, ‘Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. As a result, many of them believed’. They searched the scripture, we read, and that wasn’t the New Testament, which hadn’t yet been written. No, they searched the Old Testament to confirm what Paul was teaching about Jesus.
There’s a lesson for us. Searching the scriptures, Old as well as New, each day, is the way to confirm and to grow our faith. That’s something for a New Year’s resolution perhaps. And we can be helped by various Bible notes, available from the Triangle in Kingsmead. Why not try that?
Secondly, there is no place for antisemitism in the Christian church. In the past that has been a terrible indictment of Christians, who persecuted the Jews, drove them out, stigmatised them, and killed many, shockingly all done in the name of Jesus. Recently Church leaders have rightly repented of that, but for some that prejudice remains still. But our faith is intrinsically continuous with the Jewish faith, which is centred on the same God, bringing about the same promised plan, now revealed in the baby in Bethlehem. Today there are still many faithful Jews, faithfully worshipping and seeking to serve the same God as we worship and serve. Yes, Christians do believe that God has revealed himself in a new way in the person of Jesus, but God still loves Jewish people, just as he loves us. There is no place for antisemitism among us.
And thirdly, and finally, we wait. Advent is a time of waiting. Waiting for Christmas, certainly, but waiting too, and expecting, that Jesus will come again. When, how, where, in what form, there are many things we do not know. But we do know that his second coming, just as first coming, is promised, and that God keeps his promises. We say in our Creed, ‘And he will come again with glory’, and I hope that we mean that as we say it. And like Simeon, awaiting that first coming, we are to keep the faith while we wait.
And in a very real sense you here at St Mark’s are still waiting. It has been good for me to be here many times in this long vacancy, to wait with you, with, still it seems, no light at the end of the tunnel. But to think in that way would be wrong, as there is a light, and that light is to be found in Jesus. Promised in the Old Testament; announced by the amazing vision, lightening the sky above the Bethlehem shepherds; pointed out by a star to wise men from the east; and as Simeon said, bringing light to lighten the Gentiles – us today.
So, people of St Mark’s, as you wait, it may seem interminably, keep your eyes on the light of the world: Jesus Christ, whose coming we will be celebrating once again this Christmas, and who will come again with glory. Let’s pray.
Father, for your people throughout the world and especially for your people here at St Mark’s, keep us faithful, we pray, as we watch and wait for your good timing, for us individually and as a church here, and as we wait for your coming in glory. Amen.
