This sermon was preached on the Third Sunday of Advent, Dec 17, 2023, at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Jacksonville, FL, by the Rev. Canon Beth Tjoflat.

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8,19-28
Psalm 126

May I speak in the name of God,
Father Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

For the second week in a row,
The Gospel brings us the story of
John the baptizer.
There he is on the banks of the River Jordan,
practicing an ancient Jewish tradition
of ritual washing – of baptism.
Only he has taken it out of the carefully
contained and controlled context of
the synagogue, with its large jars of pristine waters.
He has brought this practice to the edge of a
river full of murky, silt-laden waters and
slippery mud that makes it hard to walk
or stand with confidence.

Hundreds, even thousands are coming to John,
not just from the surrounding countryside but
from as far away as Jerusalem.
Today he is visited by the Pharisees and those they send.
Experts. Leaders and the strictest observers of Jewish law
and tradition.

They have to be wondering: what is going on out here?
Look at everyone coming to this, this wild man.
Who is he?
And by what authority?
“Are you a prophet?” they ask.
“Elijah?”
“The Messiah?”

John puts that one to rest quickly, confessing
not once but twice:
“No, I am not the Messiah.
I am just a voice crying out in the wilderness,
Make straight the way of the Lord.”

He tells them: “Among you stands one
whom you do not know.”
“Among you” implies stature.
A spiritual leader and protector of the faith.
“I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”
Repent.
Get ready.

These Pharisees are just as human as you and I.
They push for answers so they can know
what to do with John.
How to think about him.

Listen to these words from a recent award-winning
advertising campaign:
The unknown is not empty.
It is a storm that crashes and consumes,
replacing thought with worry.
Only one thing can calm uncertainty:
An answer.
An answer that leads to more answers.

This ad campaign for Mayo Clinic works,
because it speaks to the most visceral fear
we can imagine:
To find ourselves suddenly vulnerable,
Our whole world turned upside down,
As we face the unknown without
a clear path forward.
We’ve all been there in some form or another.
Or we know someone who has.

I’ll confess to you now:
I can be a bit of a control freak.
I remind my staff often:
“I don’t like surprises.”

One reason we hunger for answers is that
they can give us a sense of being in control.
But, even then, we aren’t in control.
As our 12-step friends like to say:
“There is a God and you aren’t it.”

Answers aren’t the only way to calm our fears.
Imagine being a young girl,
learning you are to become with child
by the movement of the Holy Spirit.

How will you explain that to your parents,
who are preparing for a wedding?
Or to the good man to whom you are betrothed?

Mary chose to believe the Angel.
She must have sensed in the midst of this hair-raising
experience that something Holy was at work.
Something vast and incomprehensible.
Something that makes no sense in our
natural understanding,
but nonetheless is true.
Truer than true.

This same assurance is offered to us.
The Holy Spirit who is Emmanuel –
God with us always and especially in the
most trying seasons of our lives.

The season of Advent invites us to let go of our
expectations for certainty, and to instead
open ourselves to the expansive mystery of
the divine in our midst.

“Stir up your power, O lord,
And come with great might among us.
Let your bountiful grace and mercy
speedily help and deliver us.”

Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest and theologian,
writes about the spiritual journey of Advent
in his book “Eternal Seasons.”

He describes Advent as a time not just of waiting
but of waiting open-endedly:

To wait open-endedly is an enormously
radical attitude toward life.
It is trusting that something will happen to us
that is far beyond our own imaginings.

It is giving up control over our future and
letting God define our life.
It is living with the conviction that God moulds us
according to God’s love and
not according to our fear.

The spiritual life is a life in which we wait,
actively present to the moment,
Expecting that new things will happen to us,
new things that are far beyond our imagination
or prediction.
That indeed is a radical stance in a world
preoccupied with control.

As we journey toward Bethlehem,
Let us lay down our burdens –
Our anxieties and worries — whatever they may be.
Let us open ourselves to wait open-endedly.
To be surprised by the vast love of the One
who is faithful, who is always with us.
Amen.