Tough Love... Or Comfort Series

A sermon for Advent 2 Year B preached at St Joseph the Worker Northolt

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Joe wicks - who here remembers Joe Wicks?

During the pandemic -Joe Wicks ran his daily fitness routine and when everyone was trapped in their houses he got the exercising. Well at least I am pretty sure everyone in the country started exercising with Joe Wicks even if not everyone kept it up.

And for many people Joe Wicks was exactly what they needed - a kick up the backside to do some much needed exercise….

Well in 2020 I was one of the very first people to get Covid. I think I came down with it on Valentine’s day - long before we were meant to be getting it, although afterwards my doctor said “Yes that was almost certainly Covid”. So by the time lock down happened I had just recovered from this horrible illness. At the time I didn’t know if I had had Covid or not. I thought to myself - if that WASNT covid then I really need to make sure I am super fit and healthy so if I do get it I can fight it off. So I decided to do Joe Wick’s exercise.

I kept it up for about a week, struggling more and more as I got more and more fatigued. I had thought I had fully recovered from the virus, but clearly I had not fully, and all this exercise was too much for my system and I went into a terrible year of Long Covid.

For some people what they needed was Joe Wick’s Tough Love kick up the backside, and for other people like me what they actually needed was a much more gentle “be kind to yourself approach”.

What’s that got to do with today’s readings?

Well our readings are all to do with Advent. Just like you open your advent calender each day opening a window and taking a chocolate out counting down to Christmas- these readings are about helping us prepare - prepare for Christ’s coming at Christmas, prepare for Christ’s coming again at the end of the world.

They have THAT in common - but apart from that they are very different.

Peter’s Message is quite a scary one

“the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed. 11 Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, 12 waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire?”

Similarly Mark’s Gospel - although it starts with the lovely sounding phrase “the beginning of the Good News” - it rapidly goes on to talk about the wild ascetic John “clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey” and he calls people to “Repent”

John’s very much the “Joe Wicks- Tough Love- kick up the backside” approach.

Contrast that with Isaiah

“Comfort, O comfort my people,

says your God.

2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

and cry to her

that she has served her term,

that her penalty is paid,

that she has received from the Lord’s hand

double for all her sins.

This is too is about preparation - but a so much more gentle approach is here.

Let’s start with John the Baptist’s tough approach. The fasting on pretty awful food (locusts?) And no I don’t personally buy the argument that they weren’t really insects but some weird sort of food. Of course they were insects - John the Baptist was hardcore. As we are told elsewhere (Matthew 11:18) John “came neither eating or drinking”. He wears rough clothes, lives in the wilderness and calls people to prepare “repent and be baptised” because “after me comes one who is more powerful than I. I am not worthy to untie his shoes”

As I said Advent is about preparing. Getting ready for the coming of the “one who is more powerful” - getting ready for the coming of Christ at Christmas and also for his second coming at the end of the world.

Once upon a time that’s what advent was like. Go back to the middle ages and you wouldn’t be eating mince pies in Advent - it was a time of fasting. Indeed less than 100 years ago Christmas trees would not go up until Christmas Eve itself. Christmas Day and the month that followed were for feasting but before that was a time of Spiritual discipline.