Advent 2 Sunday
“‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.”
Summary
“In this morning’s readings three different prophets promise us a new future: one in which God’s glory, healing and wholeness will be offered to all people and the world will be reordered and renewed. The promise comes with a task: we are ones who are to prepare for this future and the work will be hard to endure. Malachi 3:1-4 describes it as a refiner’s fire, that will burn away everything unnecessary, everything that hinders the coming of God’s kingdom. All that is crooked and rough, both in the world around us and within ourselves, is to be set straight. In Luke 3:1-6 we hear John repeating the promise made by Isaiah but he gets the grammar slightly wrong: Luke tells us of “The voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.” Whereas Isaiah has “The voice of one calling, in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord”. The little comma makes a big difference: is the wilderness the place where the voice cries out from? Or is it the place where we are to prepare God’s way? Are we just to hear those calling from the margins of our society or are we to head out into the margins? Luke makes a point of comparing John in the wilderness to those who are at the centre of things: Tiberias the emperor, Pilate the governor and Annas and Caiphas the high priests represent earthly authority: they are the holders of financial, political, military, religious and cultural power. John, in the wilderness, has no such power but it is he who hears the voice of God. Each of the prophets ask us a question: whether, in the midst of the busyness of this season, we will take time to listen to the voices of those living on the margins of our world and whether we will respond to the call to join them there and prepare the way for God?
First Reading
Malachi 3:1-4
‘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. 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 fullers’ soap; 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. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.’
GOSPEL
Luke 3.1-6
‘In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, 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, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 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.
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;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”’
