Advent 2 Year C 12/8/2024
Malachi 3:1-4; The Song of Zechariah; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
Advent is the season of the church year where the focus of our Bible readings is on the coming of our Lord Jesus.
The advent of our Lord.
In the hustle and bustle of the cultural Christmas shopping season we look toward the coming of Jesus as a baby.
Theologically in Advent we anticipate the Incarnation.
Advent works as a countdown to Christmas.
We wait for the Lord’s arrival by preparing for the day of his coming.
But it is certainly more than that.
We not only look for the coming of Jesus as a baby…
We look for the coming of Christ in power and glory…
The Second Coming of Jesus…
Where he comes to make all things new.
Liturgically we are in the season before the life of Christ.
Once we celebrate Christmas, liturgically we follow the life of Christ throughout the church year.
Though, right now, we also have an intentional focus on the return of Christ.
Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.
God is faithful to do this.
What God starts… he finishes.
We serve the God who begins and finishes.
You probably know the name Sir Francis Drake.
In his 56 years during the 16th century,
he was an English explorer and privateer best known for travelling around the world in a single expedition.
Having started as a simple sailor, in 1588 he participated in the fight against the Spanish Armada as a vice-admiral.
He also served in Parliament three times.
Sir Francis Drake was a finisher and a beginner in many ways.
The seafarer was also a writer of poetry and prayers.
In one of his written prayers, he wrote:
“O Lord God, when thou givest to thy servants to endeavour any great matter, grant us also to know that it is not the beginning,
but the continuing of the same,
until it be thoroughly finished,
which yieldeth the true glory;
through him who for the finishing of thy work laid down his life for us, our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.”
In that prayer, Drake notes the beginning, the faithfulness, and the completion of God and our life in Christ.
And this is brought out in our reading today from St. Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi.
Paul is writing to his beloved church about the faithfulness of God…
The encouragement to continue on the narrow road…
And to thank them for their gifts in ministry.
And he writes this:
I am confident of this, that God who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.
What encouraging words.
Good news for sure.
And we can be so thankful that God will complete the work of Christ in us.
God will complete the salvation he has started in you.
He is working his goodwill in you.
If you are baptized you are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own for ever as it says in the Book of Common Prayer.
God is faithful to do this.
Nevertheless, we live in the tension of the beginning and the completion.
We could call this the tension of Advent.
We live hopefully for the return of Jesus…
And yet live in the muddy waters of our current situation.
God will complete the work he began…
But we don’t always feel like we are changing and being transformed into our new creation.
Sure, sometimes we do well.
Other times, well, we seem to be lacking.
Blogger Candice Gage writes:
We lack the enthusiasm of the beginning, and the end feels incredibly distant. [1]
It often feels that way, right?
We believe the scriptures…
We believe that God is fully able to save us…
We believe that he is coming again to make all things new.
But as we look around and as we look at our own life…
There sometimes creeps up a tension between what we believe and the reality of where we are at.
And I think that gets to one of the things St. Paul is writing here.
He is being very pastoral.
He is encouraging the church…
the people of God.
He is also living in the reality of difficulty.
Our text points out that he is writing this letter from prison.
Not because he did something evil, but because of his sharing of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And in this situation, Paul is keeping them in prayer…
Encouraging them…
Helping them to keep perspective…
In a God who finishes what he has begun.
Listen again to blogger Candice Gage, I really like the ways she writes this:
More personally, in a time of life that feels aimless and muddled at times, the season of Advent acts like a compass,
orienting me in the story.
While the particulars of my own little plot can feel fragmented,
I am reminded that a baby was born in Bethlehem,
that this little boy grew up to be a man who was victorious in life and over death itself.
I remember that in this man I have a great King who is sitting at the right hand of his Father,
and that one day he will return to reign forever.
If our King Jesus has already finished so great a work,
how can I not but carry to completion the small good works prepared for me, as insignificant as they may seem? [2]
St. Paul’s primary way of encouragement in his letter is prayer.
He writes:
I thank my God every time I remember you,
constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you…
And then Paul closes out our reading today in Philippians with a prayer.
It’s a beautiful prayer.
And he is essentially praying three things…
A 3-fold prayer.[3]
First, he prays that their love will overflow with knowledge and wisdom.
The head and the heart weren’t separated with Paul…
True love is expressed with the work of the wise use of the knowledge of God.
Not just the emotion of love…
but the wise actions that come from a deep love.
Second, he prays that this wise love will result in moral discernment.
They lived, just as we do today, in a world where many moral issues are “blurred and distorted” …
Where it can be hard to figure out what is the right thing to do.
He prays that they will grow in their ability to know good and evil so that they will be confident when the Lord Jesus returns.
Finally, he prays that they might overflow with the fruit of right living.
Paul says that this righteousness…
This right living…
comes from and through Jesus Christ,
and it is for the glory and praise of God.
All of life is to the praise and glory of God.
This is a powerful prayer.
A prayer that we should pray…
Pray over our families…
Our friends…
Our Church.
When I pray for you…
In my times of prayer…
These are often the words I pray…
And I want to finish my talk today with this prayer.
I want to pray this over you today.
So, let’s do this.
The Lord be with you.
Let us Pray:
Almighty Father,
I pray for your people here at St. Edward’s Episcopal Church in Mount Dora, Florida
that their love may overflow more and more in the knowledge and wisdom of Jesus Christ,
that they will be able to tell the difference between good and evil
and be sincere and faultless on the day of the Messiah’s return.
May they be filled to the point of overflowing
with the fruit of right living
to the praise and glory of God the Father
through the power of the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
[1] Incandescent Ink a blog by Candice Gage: Sir Francis Drake: Until It Be Thoroughly Finished
Posted on December 13, 2018
[2] Incandescent Ink a blog by Candice Gage: Sir Francis Drake: Until It Be Thoroughly Finished
Posted on December 13, 2018
[3] For this section please see N. T. Wright, Paul For Everyone: The Prison Letters (Louisville: WJK, 2002, 2004), 85-86.