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Saint Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church

An Episcopal Church in the Anglo-Catholic Tradition Where All Are Welcome

The Second Sunday of Advent (Year C)
December 8, 2024


Merciful God, who sent thy 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 liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Baruch 5:1-9
Philippians 1:1-11
Luke 3:1-6

Each Advent, we spend two weeks with John the Baptist. He is, after all, the quintessential Advent figure, the forerunner who proclaimed to anyone who would listen the coming of the messiah. John’s preaching, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness”(1) quoting Isaiah, to “make his paths straight”(2) is, in fact, one of a vanishingly small number of events attested by all four canonical gospels. And it isn’t just that each mentions John in passing, in each case, the language the authors use is for all intents and purposes identical, quoting the Greek of the Septuagint text of the Hebrew Bible. This is a sign of something significant, as these guys don’t agree on a lot of things. This means that for each of the authors, John, in this moment, saying those words, is an indispensable element of the “good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God” (Mk 1:1).

Furthermore, these four witnesses all, in one way or another, see John the Baptist as where it all begins. This is where the Kingdom of God starts to unfold like at the beginning of creation in Genesis, as it is announced by one prophetic voice quoting a much earlier one.

Mark is the one who makes it most clear. The first word of his text is, in fact, “beginning”, the same Greek word that is used in the Septuagint version of the first chapter of Genesis, the same construction as John the Evangelist uses in the first verse of his Gospel. The “beginning” of it all for Mark is this moment: “the voice of one crying in the wilderness”... to “make his paths straight”. In the version from Luke that we heard today, it is a little more complicated. It seems that Luke wanted to eat his cake and have it, too. Essential to Luke’s telling of the Gospel are all the events that took place around Jesus birth, infancy, and even into childhood. At the same time, Luke wants very much to retain the role of John the Baptist as the forerunner, the one with whom it all starts, who is there to call the world to prepare the way. So, even before we read of Jesus’ birth, we learn about John’s own miraculous birth to elderly, barren parents, and we are told almost immediately about John’s important role in the events that are to come. In telling Zechariah what is about to unfold, the Angel explains the importance of this son, concluding by saying, “he will go forth before him in the spirit and power of Elijah ... to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (Lk 1:17).

When we meet John again in chapter 3, then, we already understand his place in salvation history. Luke, therefore, can introduce another element that is critical to his understanding of the Gospel: that the story of Jesus Christ and of the Kingdom of God is embedded deeply within human history. We are told how John’s preaching comes at a specific moment, in a specific place and time. This is why it is so important for Luke and his readers that this all happened “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee.” This isn’t a myth set in the distant past, say, the time of the Trojan War, of heros and gods. This is a moment in human history, right around what we would say is the year A.D. 29, that was within the living memory of Luke’s first readers. Salvation history is playing out in the here and now, and within the boundaries of the greatest empire the world has ever known. It is to the very centre of the known world that John preaches the coming of the messiah.

It was, then, here at this precise moment that, “in the wilderness,” John was filled with the “the word of God ... and he went into all the region about the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” According to Luke and Matthew, and their likely source, Mark, John the Baptist’s message was calling people to account for their sins in preparation for the coming of the “one who is mightier than I.”(3) But it is not simply individual repentance to which John is calling the people, although it can all too readily be made to seem that it is. His warning to “prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. [That] every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God,” this is a signal that something larger is happening, that the coming of the messiah means we all must work together in our preparation, and be prepared as a people.

The one who is coming, and the change that he brings, are so monumental that to be ready, we must move actual mountains. On the one hand, this image is basically describing the construction of a military road, like the ones the Romans built all over the empire and, in fact, that was like those known in Isaiah’s time. Such a leader deserves a great triumphal route. At the same time, the coming events demand extraordinary preparation by people working together. All of us, as a people, must be ready for when the messiah – the anointed one – arrives. Our hearts and minds must undergo a profound reorientation – the repentance of which John speaks – and the ground on which we walk must be ready.

We must approach Advent with this orientation. We must be be willing to do the hard labour required of us to be prepared when Jesus arrives and ushers in the Kingdom of God. In a funny way, Luke’s version of John the Baptist’s story speaks directly to our own experience of Advent and helps us see the two sides of waiting and preparation the season evokes. The Baptist is one who anticipates both Jesus birth in the manger that we shall recall in celebration at Christmas, and the coming that will happen at the unexpected moment, when God incarnate shall burst upon the scene and turn the world upside-down. The infant John points us to the crib, the adult John points us to the Cross and Resurrection and beyond.

And it all happens here, now, too, in the fourth year of the presidency of Joseph Biden, when Kathy Hochul is governor of New York, and Eric Adams mayor of the City of New York. Advent does not merely point us back to the first Christmas. Advent looks ahead as it commemorated in the here and now. This story, the Good News of Jesus Christ, that God intervened decisively into history to ensure the reconciliation of maker and creation and to lead us in the ways of peace and love, is, as Luke knew, our story, and John’s words are for us as much as they were to those who followed him in the wilderness and around Judea.


Andrew Charles Blume ✠
New York City
Advent Feria, 7 December 2024


1. Luke 3:4; Matthew 3:3b; Mark 1:3; John 1:23
2. Luke 3:4b; Matthew 3:3b; Mark 1:3b; John 1:23b
3. This is also a phrase that appears in all four Gospels: Luke 3:16; Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:7; John 1:27 (although this is slightly different)



© 2024 Andrew Charles Blume