Theological Truth: In order to see the coming of Christ’s kingdom, we need to forsake sinful self-centrism.
Come Holy Spirit, and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.
Not too long after we moved to Staunton, a friend from New Orleans came to visit. We decided to take her to Crabtree Falls. If you’ve ever been there, you know it’s a beautiful drive on a very curvy road with lots of elevation gains and losses. What you may not know is that there’s also an alternative route that puts you above the falls, making for a significantly easier hike … if you survive the “road.”
We were attempting this alternative route (me by choice, the passengers by getting in the car with this naïve flatlander). The steepness of the terrain was challenging for my four-cylinder Honda. The loose gravel and deep potholes made me wish I had chosen for the four-wheel drive option. The sheer drop-offs had us leaning towards the center of the vehicle. But after the first water crossing, and then immediately facing another even wider one, my passengers’ protests finally prevailed. I relented … or repented, you could say. I turned around and went the safer way.
Repentance is about turning around. Did you notice our opening collect? “Merciful God, who sent thy messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation.” That’s what prophets do. They aren’t fortune-tellers; they are truth-tellers. They don’t threaten punishment; they foresee consequences. They don’t doom us to hell; they prepare us for redemption. Called by God and inspired by the Spirit, they call out what we are doing and where we are headed, thereby giving us the chance to turn around. And live. They prepare the way of the Lord by raising up our low valleys, knocking down our lofty heights, cutting out our wandering detours and smoothing out the rough spots of our lives. Their role isn’t to bring us down, but to turn us around so that we’re back on the right road, the place where the dawn from on high can break upon us.
That’s why, on this second Sunday of Advent, we pray for God to give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins. That’s what John the Baptist is doing out there in the wilderness. He’s telling us, “Hey! This road you’re on is dangerous. This is not going to get you where you want to go. You need to stop and turn around. There’s a much better way … get ready for it … watch for it!”
That’s what Advent is about: waiting and watching for the coming of Christ, “now in the time of this mortal life.” But, in order to turn around and watch for the way of God’s love made known in Jesus, we have to do something very un-Episcopalian. We have to talk about sin. If we are going to forsake our sins, we need to talk about them.
In her book The Church Cracked Open, Stephanie Sellers does just that. Here’s how she describes sin: “Given the choice, human beings tend to turn from God’s way of self-giving love, and instead choose to construct worlds that revolve around self: our needs, our identities, our desires. This turning from God is sin.” (p. 37). She goes on to call this human tendency “self-centrism: an orientation in relation to the world that assumes I am at the center and the world rotates around me (or my group, my nation, my race, my kind), so that everything and everyone else has meaning or value only insofar as it serves the self at the center.” (ibid). When I’m attentive only to myself or my group, I’m oblivious to God and others.
There’s nothing wrong with having needs, wants, and desires, but if/when I wander down a path where all things only and exclusively exist to satisfy me, then I’m traveling a very isolated, lonely and dangerous road. How can we witness the coming of Christ’s kingdom if we’re only self-absorbed. No wonder Jesus warns us, “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mk. 8:36). We need to turn around from thinking that the world is about us and turn (or return) to being about God’s world — ready to meet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.
There are two ways to do that, and Cara talked about them last Sunday:
- Look for signs
- Be those signs
As you have probably heard, The Rev. Shelby Owen died this past week. She served here at Trinity before being called as rector at Emmanuel. Even in the unfortunately limited time that I was able to spend with Shelby, she was obviously a sign of Christ’s life-giving presence and powerful love. Her holy kindness was prophetic in its ability to signal a better way to live. Her light and generosity exposed the dead end of self-centrism. She was a sign of the coming of God’s kingdom made known in Jesus’ self-giving love.
I hope that with Shelby’s example in mind, as well as the preaching of John the Baptist and the warnings of the prophets, we will take the opportunity to turnaround from the dangerous road of sinful self-centrism and get back to that level place where we can sing the words of that favorite hymn: “I come with joy to meet my Lord, forgiven, loved, and free, in awe and wonder to recall his life laid down for me” (Hymnal 1982, #304, words by Brian Wren). And in that place where we are looking for signs, not only will we see them, but we can then also be them. We can embody the outward-turned, self-giving love of Jesus. And when we do, a funny thing happens. The kingdom of God does indeed come a little closer.
Watch for the signs. Be a sign for others. Pray that we may heed the prophets’ warnings and forsake our sins. That we may turn around and greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.
Sermon preached by Rev. William AJ Heine at Trinity Episcopal Church, Staunton, Virginia, on December 8, 2024.
