Dear friends,
Welcome to our latest update, including a copy of my Advent 2 Sunday sermon from yesterday morning, and the readings we had at St Mary’s, Moorsholm. I was there this week as part of my role as a ‘Deanery Enabler’ - helping other parishes to work together and share ideas and experiences, rather like I’ve been encouraging in Middle ESK Moor since I started here six months ago. The message I preached was for the whole of the Whitby Deanery, of which we are part. So please do read on!
All our Advent and Christmas events and services have now been added to our website: middleESKmoor.org. For any further information required please email me - [email protected].
Our holiday on Holy Island seems like a lifetime ago already…
With all good wishes,
Anthony
Collect Prayer for the Second Sunday of Advent
O Lord, raise up, we pray, your power and come among us, and with great might succour us; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness we are grievously hindered in running the race that is set before us, your bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit, be honour and glory, now and for ever. Amen
2 Peter 3:8-15a
But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.
Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.
Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him,
Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight” ’,
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’
Sermon
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock, and redeemer. Amen.
A question for us to ponder today:
“What do we offer the secular world that’s distinctive, attractive and compelling?” If we can answer that question, will that help us to grow the church here and across the deanery?
I was talking to a group of Year 6 students (in one of our schools) about Advent, and we were thinking about John the Baptist. "Who is John the Baptist for you," I asked?
One student put up their hand and replied: "He’s a cool dude! An original guy!”
Another said, “He had the vibe!”
Asked to explain (as I don’t always understand how younger people speak nowadays!), they said they really admired John for being able to live in the desert without any obvious means of support. They also said they were curious about his clothing, and there was some horror and disgust at the thought of eating locusts, but eating honey was actually "okay" and “sustainable.”
The Year 6 consensus was that John was far more interesting than many of the characters we read about in the New Testament. One child said that some of those people were quite "boring" and “a bit too nice.” But John had something of a rebel about him – they quite liked that!
I think those Year 6 students were right to see John the Baptist as the "wild man of God." John was a complex character. His life had several levels of meaning that prepared the way for the ministry of Jesus. But John’s life has several messages for us, too, partly because he represents an image of godliness we may not have considered. But also partly because much of what John is, and does, could help us become more and more Christ-like in our journey together as Jesus’ disciples in this place.
John the Baptist was special. He was born into a family blessed by a miracle which brought about his birth, as the Gospel of Luke tells us. John’s family was from a priestly line, and they would have been highly regarded in the community. John’s parents knew from an angelic message that he must be dedicated to God, and John’s role in life would be to play the central part in the coming of the Lord among the people: John the Baptist would prepare the way for the arrival of the long-awaited Messiah. But John’s approach to his mission was far from what you might have expected from someone preparing the way for a mighty Messiah, someone that was a powerful individual, someone that would save Israel and release the captives from the Roman occupation. The fact that John the Baptist apparently threw up his birth right, left his family, and pursued a life of simplicity, says something about him, something that his family wasn’t prepared for.
John’s approach was certainly distinctive. We might also say counter-cultural.
John began to challenge the social norms, as Jesus would continue to do. John also proclaimed the coming judgement loudly and vividly. He lived out his conviction. And, through doing that, he attracted enough attention to transmit his message:
the time had arrived,
the Messiah was imminent,
the moment was now,
there was no time to waste!
A compelling message, just as much today as it was then. We await the arrival of Jesus at Christmas as a tiny baby, but we look forward to that day when Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead!
John's appearance and lifestyle were not just a gimmick to attract attention: they were authentic; they were a preparation; they were a cleansing and a method of living out the very repentance that John the Baptist preached as being essential for all people. God called him, and then worked from within John the Baptist's apparent "wildness." In doing so, a part of God that we rarely consider was exposed: God, too, has a "wild" side when the need arises. Sometimes God chooses people whose attractiveness to some may, indeed, rather repel others. God wants to appeal to the whole spectrum of humanity, not just the respectable people.
God calls all the different types of evangelists to suit all groups and types of people. God calls all the myriad of personalities that react to the Good News of Jesus in many different ways. At the start of the Jesus Movement, God needed strong, enthusiastic and sometimes fiery people with stamina and "grit" to energise the new Church. God still needs such people. There are some of those people here today! You might be one of them?
The seed of God's own wild Spirit planted in John the Baptist enabled him to prepare the way for Jesus. John gathered a group around him who transferred their allegiance to Jesus when the time came. And John was the key to the start of Jesus' ministry.
John the Baptist passed up his respectable life to follow God's path as his path. He taught by word and example and told his message clearly and explicitly. John lived, and stuck to, his own truth and, through his determination to be himself, showed us how to do the same. Perhaps it’s the combination of these attributes to which my Year 6 young people were drawn? John lived authentically his vocation as given to him by God.
Authenticity is what was important.
John encourages us to accept the invitation to be wild for God and, in being so, to permit God to be wild in the world, to shake it up, through us. Without John, Jesus would’ve been sorely deprived, and our Year Six children would have lost a "cool dude" role model.
Living in the desert and dining so frugally is probably not what our practice of Christianity in this place should look like. But stepping outside the mould which society and the Church create for us may well be our calling, and God’s way of transforming God’s Church and God’s world. Is ‘evangelism’ actually about stepping outside that mould and finding new innovative ways of speaking about Jesus?
You might not have the kind of fiery personality that John the Baptist had. I haven’t! And because of that, you might not think of yourself as being an evangelist. But you’d be wrong. You might be the kind of person that could sit quietly and calmly with someone that’s terminally ill: caring for them, healing their wounds without words; sharing God’s love with a still, quiet stamina and energy. Doing that, being Christ for that person, you would certainly be an evangelist. And there’s a myriad of different approaches to evangelism. A myriad of ways of being:
distinctive disciples,
attractive disciples,
compelling disciples.
There’s a myriad of innovative ways we can use to step outside the mould, authentically.
So, coming back to my question, “what do we offer the secular world that’s distinctive, attractive and compelling?”
Ourselves?
Our authenticity?
Our willingness to join in with Jesus and build his kingdom?
I think, fundamentally, it’s our authenticity that will help us to grow the church here and across the deanery.
Amen.
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The Reverend Anthony Bennett
Interim Minister – the Benefice of Middle ESK Moor
middleESKmoor.org
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These two books, edited by Jane Williams, are continuing to be very helpful with planning my sermon writing:
Williams, J (2009), Ed., ‘Lost for Words, A Sermon Resource for the Anglican Three Year Cycle,’ Redemptorist Publications, Chawton, UK.
Williams, J (2011), Ed., ‘Lectionary Reflections, Years A, B and C.’ Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, UK.