Second Sunday in Advent
6th December 2009

Preparing the Way of the Lord

When I was at theological college, our liturgy teacher was a Roman Catholic. Professionally she had knowledge of liturgy across the Christian Church and of the liturgical breadth of the Church of England but she was also able, by virtue of her own tradition, to give us a fair idea of the Catholic position. I remember her describing how, before Vatican II, a group of enthusiastic liturgists had got together to prepare some new Eucharistic liturgies in the vernacular - the language of the people rather than Latin. When these were published the Vatican moved quickly. The liturgies were suppressed and their creators were - metaphorically - shot. Metaphorically shot was her term, not mine, and it has stuck in my mind. It meant of course that they were censured and their licence to work in a particular context suspended or withdrawn. Certainly they would be very sure that what they had done was wrong. Then with the death of one pope and the election of another, came the kind of changes that they had looked for.

Being a herald is not easy. As Isaiah prophesied, the herald must prepare the way of the Lord, and that involves making paths straight and levelling, smoothing, straightening ground that would otherwise be insurmountably high, low, rough or crooked. This too is metaphorical. There are people called to do something ahead of its time and to endure the consequences. In our own tradition, William Tyndale was just such a man, put to death for his work in translating the Bible, only for the Bible in English to be endorsed just a few years later.

John the Baptist is perceived as the herald of Jesus Christ - the one who prepared people for the coming manifestation of the presence of God among them. He also provided the catalyst for Jesus, who came to the Jordan and was baptised and thereafter turned away from family life to embrace his destiny. But John was always a lonely uncompromising figure, and he died a lonely and brutal death.

Today at 10.30am the Choir will sing the Benedictus, the canticle based on the prophecy proclaimed by the father of John the Baptist, Zechariah, In St Luke's Gospel, Chapter 1, verse 68, Zechariah says of his son, "And thou child shalt be called the prophet of the Highest; for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways".

That of course is a Prophecy that we repeat because it reminds us of the task we share with John and all who have gone before the Lord. John preceded the first coming of the Lord, we precede his second. The task is not easy; it is the most sacred task that anyone can have, and it is ours.

Amen

© PCC St Martin's and St Paul's Canterbury 2008 - 2009