Year 1, Proper 28, Evensong

Sermon for Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2013

Solemn Evensong & Benediction

By the Reverend Stephen Gerth

Year 2: Isaiah 42:1-12; Revelation 12:1-10; Isaiah 7:10-14

When Saint Mary’s lost her third full-time priest position in the summer of 2009, Father Smith and I picked up a lot duties. One thing which largely fell to me was what we call “Saint Mary’s Lectionary Project”—that is, formatting the readings for all the services.

The published materials available to us each presented problems. For one thing, we’ve tried to make the materials just user friendly, with a uniform style.

Another thing, the Prayer Book provides three different ways to begin a lesson and three different ways to end a lesson. I think that means for each lesson there are nine possible combinations. When the new Prayer Book was adopted, the materials from Church Publishing left three options for beginning and no printed options for ending.

We’ve spent a lot of time working thinking about how we announce lessons, name the books of the Bible, how we end lessons. More than not, what’s most is not any particular choice, but the fact that we were able to make decisions and to be consistent.

The Prayer Book doesn’t require us to read all of the New Testament, but it gives us that option. So we do that, especially at Morning and Evening Prayer. There’s not enough time to read all of the Old Testament this way, but we’ve expanded many of those readings, too.

Sometimes it’s very uncomfortable to hear the words of Scripture on sexuality, church leadership, divorce, remarriage—and in the Old Testament, the killing of innocent children mandated by God—but our Anglican tradition, at its best, is never afraid to face what Scripture says and does not say.

Today’s lessons are not just in-course readings, they are chosen for this, the Fourth Sunday of Advent. The unifying theme for today is about humankind’s acceptance, through Mary and Joseph, of God’s will to reveal himself and his will for humankind.

This morning’s first reading was from the Second Creation Story. It began, “The man and the woman heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” But the Lord God discovers Adam and Eve are hiding because of what they have done.

The second reading was from John’s gospel and included the words of John 3:17, that should be more popular than John 3:16. John 3:17 is this, “For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

Tonight’s first lesson is one of the four servant songs in Isaiah. In that book, Israel is the servant. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus himself is the one who is the servant who has God’s own Spirit, in whose Name the Gentiles will find hope.

A great deal of Christian writing has seen the unnamed “woman clothed with sun” who brings for a male child in tonight’s second lesson from the Revelation to John as Mary. This lesson also includes the vision of Michael and his angels defeating the serpent who is the Devil and Satan.

The reading we will hear during Benediction was also this morning’s first reading. We Episcopalians and other Protestants who use the three-year lectionary, however, heard two verses that I believe Roman Catholic Christians, who are the majority of Christians in this world, should also have heard.

There was a huge kerfuffle when the Revised Standard Version came out in 1952 and translated the Hebrew word used in Isaiah 7:14, al-mah, as “young woman” shall conceive instead of a “virgin” shall conceive. The Hebrew word simple means young woman.

The Roman Catholics also omit the final verse of Matthew’s birth story and leave Joseph dreaming, “When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus.”

I don’t think you and I have to hide from what is hard about life, about Scripture, about God, about the realities of good and evil.

Saint John famously quotes the beginning of Genesis to begin his own gospel. But he also goes to a garden before he finishes his story. It’s in John’s gospel that by Calvary there is a garden where there is a new tomb. In that garden, Mary Magdalene leaves with no shame but having seen the risen Lord and having been sent by him to spread the Good News.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.