The Rev. Noah Van Niel
Christ and St. Luke’s
December 4th, 2022
Advent II (A): Isaiah 11:1-10; Ps. 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
To hear audio of this sermon click here.
Back in October, we took our family to the Perry Glass Studio over next to the Chrysler Museum for what was called “Pumpkin Palooza.” This was an opportunity for our kids (with expert oversight!) to mold and shape their very own pumpkin out of glass and then bring it home as a decoration for the fall season. If you haven’t been over to the glass blowing studio or seen that process, it is incredible—a mixture of hot, fast, difficult, physical labor and delicate, gentle, sensitive artistic technique. You start by taking a metal pole and plunging it into this glowing, fiery furnace, like you are lancing the belly of the sun. You take on the end of the pole this molten goo that can then be rolled in different colors and carefully shaped and molded before being plunged back into the furnace. And this process of molding and melting and molding happens over and over. While working the glass outside the furnace the pole must be constantly rolled because if it isn’t gravity starts to pull on this little ball of lava and drag it out of shape. And in the meantime, to get the glass to expand, little puffs of air need to be sent through the open end of the rod to give form and shape to this new creation. If you don’t roll it consistently enough, or if you puff too hard or at the wrong time with the air, the glass becomes mishappen. This was the hard lesson my youngest son, Arthur, learned. When he was instructed to send the air through the pipe he held on a little too long and a bubble started to form at the end. Whoops! The attendant was quick to stop him, but the damage had been done. And as he stood there looking at his misshapen pumpkin, his eyes started to well with tears. You could tell he was thinking, “It’s ruined.” Ah, but not so. For the attendant merely took the glowing bulb at the end of the stick and plunged it back into the fire to be melted down and reshaped again. All the imperfections and mistakes burned away, ready for another try. And on this second attempt, all went well, and Arthur ended up with his very own, beautifully shaped colorful glass pumpkin, which now adorns the bookshelf in his bedroom.
I’ve thought about this trip to the glass studio a lot since we took it. I found the whole thing deeply spiritual for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate to myself until recently when we turned the church calendar over to Advent and started getting stories of fire and destruction in the service of some new creation coming forth. And even though we’ve moved beyond the season for pumpkins, the last couple weeks that little glass gourd has come once again into my mind’s eye. For what are our souls if not glowing orbs of molten glass drawn forth from the blazing heart of God which are easily mishappen by the forces of this world that drag them down, or overinflate them, unless we attend sensitively and constantly to their care and construction.
That trip to the glass studio has given me a new way of thinking about this season of Advent and its none too subtle notes of repentance and refinement, penitence and purification, themes which are even more present in our readings than the happy notes of Love, Joy, Hope and Peace, we often to choose to focus on this time of year. Advent is a penitential season. John the Baptist makes that crystal clear in our Gospel passage this morning, crying out in the wilderness, ‘Repent!” It is a time for us to realize that we have, all of us, been somewhat misshapen by our lives. Certain experiences, or choices, or forces, or unchecked desires have pulled us into forms that sometimes we can hardly recognize. Advent asks us to prepare the way for the birth of Christ by waking up to that reality: how bent out of shape our souls have become. This is, you might say, the reason for the season. The encouragement to slow down, take stock, simplify is not just protection against the busy-ness of holiday preparations distracting us from what’s really important, it is to force us to stop and take an honest look at who we are and how we live so that we might be made aware of the good, the bad, and the ugly bits of ourselves.
To hear John talk about it, this repentance is a prerequisite to the coming of Christ. But we are not always very good at it. The older I get the more I think that the hardest knowledge to come by is self-knowledge. We are often the worst ones at understanding ourselves; why we do what we do, why we think what we think. Usually, it must be pointed out to us from the outside, which was, after all the role of Prophets like John—to point out what parts of ourselves and our society we had allowed, consciously or unconsciously to get warped. This is often hard, unwelcome news to hear and the fate of most of the prophets, John included, makes clear we would rather not hear it at all.
But Advent tells us hard news so that it can tell us good news. For while it does ask us to wake up to our shortcomings, our failures, our imperfections, our sins; those things which have turned our souls into mishappen pumpkins, it also says that while we need to be aware of these things, we need not despair of them. Because we can always, always, be made new. Even fragments of shattered glass, can be re-formed. With God we are never beyond repentance, re-formation, re-creation. So long as we are willing to be plunged back into the fire.
This was John’s message to the Pharisees and the Sadducees who snuck out to him at the river Jordan. These two religious sects were rivals with one another but united in their opposition to anyone who threatened their power and authority. Their hypocrisy, their hatred, their blatant manipulation of their position made them the enemies of the movement John was foretelling and Jesus would foster. And yet, while John does curse them out, calling them a “brood of vipers!” he doesn’t refuse to baptize them. But he makes clear that his baptism is only a first step in their repentance. They must bear fruit worthy of the change they claim to have made, must be willing to be re-formed in their attitudes and behavior. Because the water is just the start, John says. The one coming after him will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And at that point the repentance will require much more of us than a simple washing, it will melt us down, burning off the chaff, and reshaping us with the breath of the Spirit, in the hopes of making us new.
This new creation is what Advent is preparing us for. But like the tortures of labor which bring new life into this world, it comes about through difficulty and struggle. And it requires an honest confrontation with and confession of the things in us and in our lives which must be burnt away. This is a destructive process with constructive ends. For the hope is not that we will be shattered, but that we will be made re-made. The birth of Jesus Christ was an act of new creation when it came about those many years ago, and it came with a profundity that shook the world to its foundations. If that new creation, which we will celebrate so sweetly in a few weeks, is to retain any of that power for us today, we must be ready to receive it. Preparing for its coming is the hard work of this season and why I never wish anyone a “happy Advent” but a “holy” one instead. For as Arthur will tell you, sometimes it takes a plunge back into the fire for something new, something beautiful, something precious to be born.