Second Sunday Of Advent The Child Is Father To The Man

 

“Long past?” “No, your past.”

Malachi 3:1-4

3:1

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight--indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.

3:2

But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like washers' soap;

3:3

he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness.

3:4

Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD, as in the days of old and as in former years.

Luke 1:68-79

1:68

"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.

1:69

He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his child David,

1:70

as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,

1:71

that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.

1:72

Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors and has remembered his holy covenant,

1:73

the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us

1:74

that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear,

1:75

in holiness and righteousness in his presence all our days.

1:76

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,

1:77

to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.

1:78

Because of the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us,

1:79

to shine upon those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

Philippians 1:3-11

1:3

I thank my God for every remembrance of you,

1:4

always in every one of my prayers for all of you, praying with joy

1:5

for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

1:6

I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

1:7

It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because I hold you in my heart, for all of you are my partners in God's grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

1:8

For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the tender affection of Christ Jesus.

1:9

And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight

1:10

to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless,

1:11

having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Luke 3:1-6

3:1

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, 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,

3:2

during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

3:3

He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,

3:4

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.

3:5

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,

3:6

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"

The Ghost of Christmas Past shines a light that can (almost) be extinguished. What are we to make of this?

Marley is dead, to begin with. Scrooge has no power over him. Marley has no power, either; nor volition. On Christmas Eve he finds he can talk to Scrooge, can tell Scrooge he has a chance for redemption Marley never had, but he has to return to his journey in the world: observing suffering, but unable to relieve it. Scrooge can’t keep Marley talking, or make him go away. But in the end, Scrooge can extinguish, or nearly so, the spirit of the past.

What are we to make of this?

The Second Sunday of Advent is traditionally about John preparing the way of the Lord. John does this by appealing to the past: the law of Israel, the teaching of the prophets.

Marley was right: humankind is our business. How easily we forget that as we grow from childhood and take on the responsibilities of adulthood. I don’t mean we all become Scrooge; but we narrow our circle of concern as we find our own concerns demanding our attention, and our efforts. We “put aside childish things,” and think ourselves wise to do so. Sometimes aging is just about willful forgetting. It’s certainly in Scrooge’s past that we begin to connect with Scrooge, because simply by association we remember our own.

We have to extinguish the past in order to suppress the past. We have to suppress the past so we can live in our present, the one we think we’ve made.

Malachi and the Benedictus of Luke look backward in order to look forward. That’s a theme of Advent: looking to the past for context about the future. But isn’t the story Advent looks forward to already in our dim past? What is there to look forward to?

What does Scrooge have to look forward to, from the past? A grim and lonely present? The fate Marley predicts for him, one worse than Marley’s? Past is not necessarily prologue: it’s not entirely clear how Trump Scrooge* goes from the joy of Fezziwig’s celebration to the grim Christmas where his betrothed breaks their engagement because Ebenezer has “changed.” That’s in the past. It is a fait accompli. But the past can be a teacher. Sometimes looking back is prelude to going forward.

The Ghost of Christmas Past teaches Scrooge that his past is where he came from, and the past is what made him. Not just the past of his lonely Christmases at school, barred from home by a recalcitrant father; but the merry Christmas parties of Old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig and all the friends and family; a party to be echoed by the party of his nephew on Christmas Day in the present.  The lesson is that, though he became what he is, “self-contained, and solitary as an oyster,” he didn't have to.  It wasn't fated.  It was his choice, entirely. Which can be said to be true of Advent: the purpose is to gather us with others and make us realize our part in a community, our common (and uncommon) humanity. We realize our part in our own lives, how our decisions are our responsibility, and even those long ago made, can be unmade. That is part of the preparation for the coming of the Christchild. More importantly, we prepare ourselves together, as friends and family and community. What do we prepare for? In some sense, what Scrooge prepares for: facing the joyous and awful truth of our lives, and redeeming ourselves by that knowledge.

Because of the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, 

to shine upon those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

And what’s the mechanism? Reviewing the past in order to see more clearly our place in the present. Every year we return to this end of the year, hopefully with joyous anticipation. Why? It’s always the same, isn’t it? In fact, we want it to be. We want to recapture what we remember from childhood, or the pleasure we hope we can enjoy this time. We want our traditions, personal and communal. We want this anchor in our years, and we want it every year. Scrooge has settled into his rut when Marley calls, shrunken more and more into himself and away from the world with every passing year since Marley’s death. And then he is, in the words of another Dickens character, “recalled to life!”  But it takes four lessons for him to recover what he has lost. 

Perhaps that is the lesson for us, in the four weeks of Advent. Scrooge’s journey is most unconventional; but we need our annual conventions and traditions to recall us to life, to the importance of the other, to our place in so many lives, and their place in ours. We want, in short, the past to repeat itself, to be a comfort that will restore to us the joy we have lost. It’s the time of year we expect that can happen. We repeat the same traditions, so the past will live in the present, if only for awhile.

So the church liturgy returns us to the beginning, starting a new year by preparing us for the “reason for the season.” Ideally this leads to self-examination that changes us just as it changes Scrooge. If we want to put out the guiding light of the past, it is only so we can selfishly continue our solitary lives in the present. But we can’t extinguish that light, and the more we try, the more it harms us. Remembering the past is the beginning of self-examination, if whole sight. “Whole sight, or all the rest is desolation.” It’s the beginning of that self-examination that makes Scrooge realize how desolate his life is; how much of that desolation is his fault, alone. Small wonder he wants to extinguish the Spirit’s light. 

In its origins Advent was so focused on the sins of the congregants that Gaudete Sunday was needed to keep alive the joy that Advent was also meant to prepare us for. Scrooge is equally taught by joy (especially on Christmas Day) as by terror; by the present as by memory. The Spirit of Christmas Past forces him to remember; the Spirit of Christmas Present invites Scrooge to see; to, in the words of the Psalmist, taste and know that God is good. Advent deals both with the joy of the nativity, and the cruel realities of the human-made world the Christchild was born into. Our world, then as it is now. Scrooge has to live entirely in his world in order to be redeemed. Scrooge has to take responsibility for who he is, to change who he is; to “prepare the way.” Advent begins a new church year teaching us that we do, too. 

Take joy. Next Sunday is Gaudete Sunday.

*Yeah, I kept making that mistake in drafts. I thought I’d caught them all, but obviously I didn’t. I am, as ever, grateful for attentive readers.