Sunday 11th December 2011 - 3rd Sunday of Advent
(purple)
Theme: Prepare the Way
Readings: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11
John 1:6-8, 19-28 Ps 126 or Magnificat
Theme: Prepare the Way
Readings: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11
John 1:6-8, 19-28 Ps 126 or Magnificat
Collect:
God for whom we watch and wait,
you sent John the Baptist to prepare the way of your Son:
give us courage to speak the truth,
to hunger for justice,
and to suffer for the cause of right,
with Jesus Christ our Lord.
Comment
‘Who are you?’ The questioners were puzzled. Here was a man named John, preaching that the Messiah was already among them and that God was about to bring in a new age through him, and telling them to get ready. He was dressed in the garb of a prophet, wearing the same sort of clothes that the prophet Elijah had worn (2 Kings 1:8), and he lived a frugal yet ritually pure life. He told people to admit their sins and be baptised to signify a new, clean, start. And people listened! They came to him in droves, and the Jewish authorities took note. Such popularity; was he a threat? Who did he claim to be? What was his agenda?
John did not claim to be anyone. He had one aim in life: to prepare the way for the One who was to come. So he refused the labels people wanted to put on him. He was not the Messiah – that was the One he was talking about. He did not see himself as Elijah, who had not died but gone up to heaven in a whirlwind, and who would return to prepare people for the coming of the Lord (Malachi 4:5); he knew himself as John the son of Zachariah. (Jesus later said that John was in fact the fulfilment of that prophecy.) Neither was he ‘The Prophet’ – the prophet ‘like Moses’
who would come as said in Deuteronomy 18:15. That prophecy would be fulfilled by the Messiah. All he was prepared to say about himself was that he was a Voice. All he wanted people to do was to respond to his
message: to get ready to meet the One he was talking about.
Some people were so moved by John that they became his disciples. Some of those disciples responded to John when, later on, he pointed out the Messiah; they became Jesus’ disciples. Others did not. There were disciples of John who stayed faithful to him up to his death, and even long afterwards (we meet some in Acts 19). It is all too easy to be moved by a message, yet fail to get the point. Especially at Christmas time!
Questions
1) John pointed people away from himself and towards Jesus. Should we do the same? If so, how?
2) What is the point that God wants us to get this Christmas?
God for whom we watch and wait,
you sent John the Baptist to prepare the way of your Son:
give us courage to speak the truth,
to hunger for justice,
and to suffer for the cause of right,
with Jesus Christ our Lord.
Comment
‘Who are you?’ The questioners were puzzled. Here was a man named John, preaching that the Messiah was already among them and that God was about to bring in a new age through him, and telling them to get ready. He was dressed in the garb of a prophet, wearing the same sort of clothes that the prophet Elijah had worn (2 Kings 1:8), and he lived a frugal yet ritually pure life. He told people to admit their sins and be baptised to signify a new, clean, start. And people listened! They came to him in droves, and the Jewish authorities took note. Such popularity; was he a threat? Who did he claim to be? What was his agenda?
John did not claim to be anyone. He had one aim in life: to prepare the way for the One who was to come. So he refused the labels people wanted to put on him. He was not the Messiah – that was the One he was talking about. He did not see himself as Elijah, who had not died but gone up to heaven in a whirlwind, and who would return to prepare people for the coming of the Lord (Malachi 4:5); he knew himself as John the son of Zachariah. (Jesus later said that John was in fact the fulfilment of that prophecy.) Neither was he ‘The Prophet’ – the prophet ‘like Moses’
who would come as said in Deuteronomy 18:15. That prophecy would be fulfilled by the Messiah. All he was prepared to say about himself was that he was a Voice. All he wanted people to do was to respond to his
message: to get ready to meet the One he was talking about.
Some people were so moved by John that they became his disciples. Some of those disciples responded to John when, later on, he pointed out the Messiah; they became Jesus’ disciples. Others did not. There were disciples of John who stayed faithful to him up to his death, and even long afterwards (we meet some in Acts 19). It is all too easy to be moved by a message, yet fail to get the point. Especially at Christmas time!
Questions
1) John pointed people away from himself and towards Jesus. Should we do the same? If so, how?
2) What is the point that God wants us to get this Christmas?