Promises and Pathways: Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Advent

This last summer, I took three weeks of vacation, as you may recall, combining two trips into one for the sake of practicality. Even before my call to serve among you, I had been making plans to go to Iona with Confluence St. Louis for 9 days, and it was an incredible time of prayer and renewal in what the Celts call a “thin place” a place where the division between heaven and earth seems especially thin, the barrier seeming somewhat less of a wall than of a doorway.

This last week, I took some continuing education time on Iona’s “sister island” here in the US—and it was incredible to me how an island half a world away and very different in terms of terrain could still have such a holy and inspirational vibe to it. 

But last summer, after nine days in Scotland, I then traveled to Paris and met my husband Bill there, where we spent another nine days exploring that city and the nearby region in France. One of the day trips we took was to Chartres—another important, ancient pilgrimage site for hundreds of years for people of faith. Bill was careful to plan this trip for a day when the chairs of the cathedral are moved aside so that visitors can walk the original labyrinth set in the floor of the Cathedral there. 

The Chartres labyrinth has been copied repeatedly in hundreds of other sites throughout the world—you can even get a portable, life sized copy on heavy canvas, such as one owned by our very own diocesan Cathedral. This same pattern has been embedded in the floors of both Grace Kirkwood and recently at my home parish of Holy Communion in University City. There’s even one at my friend Pamela’s parish in Davis, CA.

But another reason why I thought about that trip to Chartres this week was that Chartres Cathedral also has a magnificent stained-glass window depicting the Jesse tree spoken of in our reading from Isaiah. This magnificent window is one of the original windows in the cathedral, created around 1150 CE, more than 850 years ago. 

So my heart and mind are drawn to Chartres when I read our readings for this weekend. I remember gazing at that beautiful window depicting part of Jesus’s genealogy from Jesse to Jesus. The center panel of the window shows Jesse lying on his couch, and tree sprouting from him, successively showing his descendants that led to Jesus: David; then Solomon; then a couple of generic kings of Israel to emphasize Jesus’s royal lineage; then Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and finally, at the top of the tree, Jesus—the pinnacle of Jesse’s lineage, the king and descendant that David was promised who would sit on the throne of Israel forever. Thus the symbol of the Jesse tree is one of promises God makes and keeps.

Hovering around Jesus are symbols for the seven gifts of the Spirit listed in the very beginning of our Isaiah reading: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and awe before the Lord our God, the last of which is so important that our Isaiah text mentions it twice for good measure. These were all attributes that Jesus himself embodied. 

After standing gazing at that window for at least half an hour, I then took my place at the labyrinth and slowly, mindfully traced the path shared by millions of pilgrims before me by walking on that ancient stone labyrinth at the heart of the Cathedral. With each step, I contemplated the ideas of promises made and kept. I thought of the twists and the turns of my own life--and in my life of faith. I prayed for the courage to cultivate and open myself to the powerful, life-disturbing gifts of the Spirit within myself: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and awe and wonder before the Lord. 

Just like at Chartres Cathedral, promises and pathways intertwine in our readings today. The idea of promises being fulfilled by God, even when it seems they continue unconsummated according to our understanding, is a theme that runs through scripture. Remember Abraham being promised descendants more numerous than the stars, even though he and his wife were old and she had so far had no children herself? With that promise, Abraham set out on a path he had never imagined—to a new life and a new land. What it’s often easy to forget is that years then elapsed after that promise was made to Abraham and Sarah by God, even as they scrupulously sought to fulfill their end of the bargain by packing up everything and moving to a land they’d never seen, which was itself promised to Abraham and his descendants by God. Like Abraham, we too live a life of faith that rests upon promises and pathways. 

We begin to really settle in to Advent this week with readings that remind us of the glorious promises which are our inheritance as people of faith. Advent is a time of penitence as well as expectation, a time of remembering things past while also inhabiting the “not-yet” of the coming Messiah. In the darkness and cold of winter, we are reminded of promises made and promises kept. One of the main theses of the gospel of Matthew is that God fulfills the promises he makes, in this case to David, and this reading from Isaiah helps establish proof for that claim in Matthew. Jesus is referred to as the “son of David” ten times in the gospel of Matthew, more than in any other synoptic gospel (the term does not appear in John). Promises made by God are never forgotten. 

The vision recounted here in our Isaiah passage ends with a description of a restored creation: many of the animals paired together are domesticated animals and the wild animals who prey upon them, led by an innocent. The vision ends with a reference to the “root of Jesse”—to David and David’s descendants—and again expresses the wish that the entire world will turn its face toward Israel and look to it as the source of salvation. Even though, as Isaiah writes, it appears that the tree of Jesse has fallen, the hope is that a rod or branch will spring up from the fallen tree that will grow to be even mightier than its parent. 

As we begin year A in the three-year lectionary cycle, we will spend most of this year with the gospel of Matthew. Matthew’s gospel is the most Jewish of all the gospels, supposedly—Jesus gives five discourses in Matthew, just like there are five books in the Torah, for instance. Matthew’s driving claim is that Jesus, as the Messiah, is the fulfillment of promise and prophecy to the people of Israel throughout the centuries. And even in the early chapters of this gospel we see this case building— chapter 1 recounts Jesus’s genealogy and legitimacy as a son of David and as a son of Abraham—of which our Jesse tree is a symbol.

Today’s gospel, from chapter 3, skips ahead to Jesus’s adulthood, and introduces his cousin, John the Baptist—another familiar character each Advent. John is a prophetic herald, warning his listeners that the one who by rights may judge them is at hand. Our gospel also quotes Isaiah (although chapter 40) as a touchstone to solidify the claims that John will make about Jesus and about himself. John is the one crying out from the wilderness, proclaiming the coming of the Lord. The appearance of John himself here is itself a sign or promise fulfilled, since he comes out of the wilderness dressed just so for the role of an Old Testament prophet—his attire is remarkably similar to that of Elijah. 

The appearance of John the Baptist on our Advent stage is therefore another reminder that promises made through the prophets of Israel were being fulfilled, as the birth of Christ and the launching of his public ministry drew near. “Prepare the way of the Lord! “John, as promised, will shout out from the wilderness. “Make his paths straight!”

And it is here again that I am drawn to the walking of that labyrinth in Chartres, for to me, that is where our reading from Isaiah and our reading from the Gospel came together in one space, and where their connection was physically embodied in the pilgrim path the hundreds of us there that day traced. And I think of that experience every time I get the chance to pray in a labyrinth.

By a special blessing, I even got a chance to walk a labyrinth again this week on Whidbey Island near Seattle as I prayed and thought about these readings—just as I had back in Chartres. With each step I took, twisting and turning, doubling back on myself, I noticed seeming to draw near to the heart of the labyrinth only to be led away again I thought about how that labyrinth walk is so symbolic of the life of seeking faith, of seeking deeper knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. With every twist and turn, I thought about that command, “Make straight the path of the Lord!” 

Jesus’s incarnation reminds us that Jesus comes to show us the way that is straight to the heart of God. Our problem is, as we seek to follow him and emulate him, we often turn aside, distracted or fearful, often, to the right and the left. Now, we can beat ourselves up for that—or let that convince us that the journey is pointless. But this Advent season reminds us of the promise of God to send us one to show us the way, to accompany us in navigating the twists and turns of our lives, the obstacles and seeming dead-ends that really only become dead ends if we fail to remember how God accompanies us as we go through them or around them. 

The labyrinth reinforces one of the messages of this season of the new church year of honoring the journey as much as the destination. As we move from turn to turn in our lives, as we encounter detours and obstacles which we never expected, the gift of that labyrinth calls us to peace in the face of each twist and turn, of relying on the sureness of God’s promises to always walk beside us. A promise that is so sure that God sent God’s only begotten Son to led us through the labyrinth of our hearts to the path of love, of hope, of mercy, and of grace. Even if Jesus’s way is straight, and ours isn’t, what we are reminded today is to nonetheless persist in seeking to follow Jesus, and be transformed by his presence within us.

By wisdom, by understanding, by counsel, by fortitude, by knowledge, by piety, and by awe and wonder the path before us will seem to straighten. What once appeared to be a barricade or a detour instead becomes a blessing that shapes us along the journey. This coming Christ child will be our companion, our model, and our guide along the way. By him, with him, and through him we will not only reach the heart of God, the center of the life of faith. We will ourselves become lights in the darkness to others as they contemplate the call of the path in the deepest recesses of their hearts. We become companions along the way for others as disciples, accompanying each other on the twists and turns of the life of faith. 

The labyrinth also literally embodies for us something we don’t often talk about-- the life of repentance. Think about it. To repent means to turn aside from the path we have been following, and recommit ourselves to the Way of Jesus. A Way that is beautiful and alluring—yet also costly, as all precious things always are. The turns in the labyrinth also remind us of how important it is to examine our paths each day—and turn back from those times we have interposed our own will for God’s vision of love and light for us.

We have to be patient, of course, and persistent. The time it takes to traverse the path of course may seem interminable. There is always the temptation to step off. There is always the temptation to just attempt a shortcut, like proclaiming we are Christians yet turning aside from the transformation and repentance that following the path literally demands of us. Yet the minute we fail to honor the twists and turns in the journey as gifts to ourselves and as proofs of the abiding promise of the love of God, we actually risk losing the path altogether.

As the winter nights lengthen, may we have the faith to embrace the promises of God’s strength in our lives, and the strength to embrace the pathways of faith that lead us deeper into the life of abundance God dreams of for this world. May we remember, no matter how we get to the heart of God, we have the promise of light from light, true God from true God, coming among us, offering salvation and enlightenment for all. May we hold fast to the promise of not retribution, but mercy coming to live among us, judging with righteousness and equity the cause of the oppressed. May we have assurance that surely that goodness and mercy will walk alongside us, no matter where the labyrinth of our lives may lead us.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on December 7 and at 8:00 and 10:30 on December 8 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:
Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12