Lectionary Reflection — Second Sunday of Advent (Year C)

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3I thank God every time I mention you in my prayers. 4I’m thankful for all of you every time I pray, and it’s always a prayer full of joy. 5I’m glad because of the way you’ve been my partners in the ministry of the gospel from the time you first believed it until now. 6I’m sure about this: the one who started a good work in you will stay with you to complete the job by the day of Christ Jesus. 7I have good reason to think this way about all of you because I keep you in my heart. You’re all my partners in God’s grace, both during my time in prison and in the defense and support of the gospel. 8God is my witness that I feel affection for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.

9This is my prayer: that your love might become even more and more rich with knowledge and all kinds of insight. 10I pray this so that you’ll be able to decide what really matters and so you’ll be sincere and blameless on the day of Christ. 11I pray that you’ll then be filled with the fruit of righteousness, which comes from Jesus the Christ, in order to give glory and praise to God.


Collect:
Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation and the rescue of the whole cosmos: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus the Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.


                                   


Our Lessons for the Second Sunday of Advent are full of prophets. Not the monetary kind but the kind who speak of Yahweh returning to God’s people. The Lesson from the Jewish Scriptures is a very famous passage from the book of Malachi. In it, Yahweh promises to send Elijah the prophet to “clear the path” before Yahweh returns to the Temple (cf. Malachi 4.5ff). Malachi asks, “Who can endure the day of [Yahweh’s] coming? Who can withstand [Yahweh’s] appearance?” (verse 2). These questions are asked because Yahweh would return like a “refiner’s fire” and purify the people (verse 3ff).

In our first passage from Luke’s Gospel, Zechariah prophesied over his newly born son, John, stating that he would be the messenger Malachi wrote about; John would prepare the people for Yahweh’s return (Luke 1.76ff). What I find fascinating about this passage is all of the past tense statements Zechariah utters because of John’s birth. He says that Yahweh “has delivered” the people and “has raised up” a savior. Zechariah states that Yahweh “has brought salvation” from the enemies. Why would Zecharian say this? Because John would be the messenger who prepares the path for the coming of Yahweh.

Finally, in our second passage from Luke’s Gospel, we have John actually living out his vocation. He’s received a message from God (cf. Isaiah 40.3-5) and went throughout the region calling on people to prepare for Yahweh’s return, baptizing those who changed their hearts and lives (Luke 3.3).

All of our Lessons thus far have been about the messenger going out and calling on people to prepare for Yahweh’s return. The Gospel Lessons tell us that John the Baptist was that messenger. And if John was the messenger, then that means, the way the Gospels tell their stories, Jesus was somehow the embodiment of Yahweh returning to the people.

As we saw last week, instead of preparing for some supposed “end of the world,” we should be steeping ourselves in Love and preparing to see the embodiment of God within others. And today’s New Testament Lesson offers the same admonition.

Saint Paul wrote that his prayer for the followers of Jesus in Philippi was that their “love might become even more and more rich with knowledge and all kinds of insight.” That they’d “be able to decide what really matters” so they could be “sincere and blameless” before Christ. Lastly, he prayed that they’d be “filled with the fruit of righteousness.”

Love, then, is the foundation from which “knowledge and … insight” comes. And because of the “knowledge and … insight” based on Love, one can “decide what really matters.”

What really matters, then, is Love. It’s from Love that all things come and to all thing go. As Trevor Hall (2009, track 3) put it, “Love is the goal, yes, and everyone shall reach it / Whoever seeks it / Seen and unseen.”2

On this Second Sunday of Advent, let’s pray with Paul for our love to become “even more and more rich with knowledge and all kinds of insight.” Let’s pray that through Love we’re “able to decide what really matters” so we can be “sincere and blameless” before Christ.



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In the Love of the Three in One,

Br. Jack+, LC


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1. Scripture quotations marked (CEB) are taken from The Common English Bible. Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible.

2. Hall, T., (2009). “Unity.” On Trevor Hall [MP3]. Santa Monica, CA: Vanguard Records, a Welk Music Group Company.

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