As good episcopalians, many of us love our different liturgical seasons. With different colours adorning our church buildings and changing focus in our journey of faith, liturgical seasons are most worthwhile because they reflect the rhythm of life itself. Advent reflects seasons in our lives that are filled with hope and anticipation. We often associate these with happy times with events like waiting for a wedding, waiting for a baby to be born, or waiting for the arrival of a loved one who has been away for a long time.

But the first Christmas wasn’t exactly happy and bright, and the readings of Advent itself aren’t particularly happy, either. Advent speaks of waiting for God’s help in the midst of desperation, reminding us that we can find echoes of Advent with the homeless living on the street as well with those waiting in the maternity ward.

Advent calls to us as we carry the weight on our shoulders, and it speaks hope. As we watch the news and see the pain in the world, we are often faced with our own powerlessness. As snow and ice and cold weigh down the landscape of many northern climates, we too can feel weighed down: by our ever-extending to-do lists, by the suffering in the world, and by our own personal struggles.

Advent is here to remind us that we cannot save ourselves, but that there is hope.

Today, with four candles lit, the Song of Mary soars through the Gospel reading and into our hearts again, as it does every year.

Mary, the unwed mother, the fiancé of a poor carpenter. Mary, who knows depths of desperation that many of us will never have to know. Mary, who felt herself powerless but sang to God who was about to save the whole world.

We often think of Mary as gentle and meek, but today, Mary is brave and bold, singing loud and strong.

Everything — the very shape of human history — is about to change.

The new dawn is on the way, and Mary sings out to greet it. The weight lessens and hope is born.

I don’t know if any of you have ever read the book or watched the film, The Hunger Games. In the first instalment of the three-part series, there is a scene in the movie that is not in the book, but it sums up very well the theme of the whole trilogy.

President Snow, the dictator of the dystopian, futuristic country of Panem, is walking in his rose garden with the chief “game maker,” Seneca Crane. Crane is the man responsible for creating a game that pits young people from the twelve districts of Panem against one another in a highly publicized fight to the death each year. The winner of the Hunger Games is then held up as a brave, strong hero that represents the spirit of Panem.

President Snow asks Seneca Crane why the games must have a winner. If the Capitol simply wanted to show its power and to instil fear and control, he says, why not simply execute people? Why the games? Why a winner?

Seneca Crane does not understand. He stares back, confused.

“Hope,” President Snow says simply. “Hope is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.”

A little hope, says Snow, would allow the games to entertain the people and would allow them to have a hero to root for, while also keeping the Capitol firmly in control.

A lot of hope would topple Snow’s oppressive regime entirely. The books and movies, as you either know or can probably guess, are about that spark not being contained. The second installment of the story is called Catching Fire as hope — a lot of hope — is revived in the country of Panem.

Hope is more than mere optimism. A lot of hope can shake the foundations of everything that weighs us down. A lot of hope can change the course of history.

For Mary’s part, she doesn’t initially greet the news of her pregnancy with her soaring song and blazing hope. When Luke’s Gospel first introduces us to Mary, she is more like the traditional image of Mary — young, meek, seemingly timid, but ultimately faithful. When the angel tells her the news, she consents, but she’s not singing yet.

As she’s absorbing the news from the angel Gabriel that she will conceive and bear a child, he tells her, perhaps to console her: Elizabeth, your relative, is pregnant too, even in her old age!

Gabriel doesn’t actually tell Mary to go to Elizabeth, but Luke says she still “made haste” to go to the Judean town in the hill country to see her.

Mary wants to be near someone who understands. Elizabeth is also pregnant by a miracle. Elizabeth, Mary knows, won’t think she’s crazy. And here, with another human being who understands that God works in really weird and unexpected and direct ways, Mary is able to find the courage to sing her song of hope. Not ordinary optimism, but great hope. The kind that catches fire. The kind that sings loud.

Today, Mary sings as she invites us into the vulnerable territory of daring to hope big. Optimism looks behind us to find comfort in what we’ve experienced before. Hope — the big, world-shaking, musical hope of Mary — looks ahead, knowing that we cannot imagine what God is able to do.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with optimism. Optimism hopes for good fortune, for fun with friends and family during the holidays, for a blessed and happy new year, and for love and warmth to surround us. There is nothing wrong with a little optimistic Advent cheer.

But if you have experienced the depths of despair, if you have seen the pain that exists in the world, you know that optimism is not enough on its own. It is too difficult to sustain. The world is too broken, too violent, and too divided, and we alone cannot fix it. Our one spark of hope is that God has spoken and told us that someday, all things — all things — from our personal struggles to the weight of the world’s pain, shall be made right. That hope is why Mary sings.

Today, the Gospel story invites us, like Mary, to seek out others in order to find our song of hope. It wasn’t until Mary was with Elizabeth in the Judean hills that her hope burst into song. And maybe, whether we know it or not, that’s what we’ve done today, too. We have made haste to seek one another out, to gather together so that we, too, can sing songs of hope.

Our song is one of extraordinary hope. Hope that has seen the broken and divided state of the world and knows that it cannot afford to hope too small because we cannot repair the world on our own. Only God can, and only God will. In the meantime, we are called to make our corner of the world that God so loves a less divided, more trustworthy, more hopeful place. We are called to sing.

The best part about Mary’s song of hope is that it is never hope unfulfilled. Every year, we remember her bold song to remind ourselves that God has already broken through.

Even in the darkness, even in the deepest disappointments, even when we are betrayed, and even when the world looks most broken, we keep this crazy hope alive that God has and God will break through. And today, we make haste to find each other to sing that hope again, to fan that spark into flame again.

Every year, Christmas always arrives. Even if we are exhausted or brokenhearted, the Light of Christ always comes to the Church. Always. The final candle is always lit.

Advent and Christmas are here every year to remind us that God has already broken through. Despite the world’s pain, the dawn is well on the way.

And that is why Mary finds Elizabeth and sings her heart out. So, let us today find one another and sing our hearts out to the God who breaks through, who sustains our lives, and who dares us to hope big — and beckons us to sing loud. Amen.

We begin our sermon this week with a story about a crime! The story about a burglar who broke into a house one dark, stormy night. The family were all fast asleep in their beds, but as the burglar was looking around for valuables, she suddenly heard a voice say –

“Jesus is watching you!”

The burglar froze in her tracks, looked around and then, with great relief, realised it was a parrot inside a cage.

“Jesus is watching you!”, the parrot squawked again.

The burglar made her way across to the cage and saw a small nameplate that read John the Baptist.

“Huh! What kind of religious nut names their parrot John the Baptist?” she said out loud.

To which the parrot responded, “The same kind who names their Rottweiler Jesus!”

My apologies, but I just couldn’t resist sharing this little story with you today. You see things didn’t go quite as the burglar had planned, it wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. But then, breaking into someone’s house is not the way things are supposed to be either.

And that’s an interesting thought for us today.

This isn’t the way things are supposed to be.

I wonder if you have every had that thought?

This isn’t the way things are supposed to be.

Maybe it was about something a bit more serious than our burglar story, perhaps something you had planned for your career or retirement. Maybe it was the latest family gathering that ended in shouting or falling out. Maybe it was the silly thing you said or did to someone else and now regret.

Or perhaps it was your response to something you’ve seen or read about in the news recently

• The shooting of the CEO of an insurance company on a city street
• The bombing of cities in Israel and Palestine
• The attempt to impose martial law by the president of South Korea
• A shooting spree on the Isle of Skye

This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

If you have ever found yourself having this thought or feeling this way, then you have a sense of the biblical concept of sin. The very thing of which John call’s us to repentance.

When you say or think, “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be” there are actually two things going on.

First of all, you have a sense that something is not right. But there is also a second thing. In order to say that something isn’t right, you also need a vision of what things are supposed to be like. So sin, in the biblical tradition, is a derivative concept. First, you have to have some sense of what is right. Only then can you say something is wrong.

In the biblical tradition the vision for how things ought to be is sometimes called shalom. We translate this word as “peace,” but it means much more than an absence of warfare or a calm state of mind. Shalom or peace in the scriptures means universal flourishing, wholeness, harmony and delight. The prophets spoke of a time when crooked paths would be made straight, when rough places would be made smooth, when flowers would bloom in the desert, when weeping would cease, when the lion would lay down with the lamb, when the foolish would be made wise, when the wise would be made humble, when humans would beat their swords into ploughshares. A time when all nature would be fruitful and benign, when all nations would sit down together for a sumptuous feast, all creation would look to God, walk with God, and delight in God.

In the Bible, shalom, or peace, is the way things are supposed to be.

Sin, the way things aren’t supposed to be, is the violation of shalom.

Of course, sin is an affront to God, but it is an affront to God because it breaks God’s peace.

And what is it that breaks God’s peace? Twisting the good things of creation so that they serve unworthy ends. Splitting apart things that belong together. The corruption of personal and social and natural integrity. A moment’s reflection or a look at the evening news can easily supply specific examples.

Now, all this talk about sin may sound like a bit of a downer, especially on the 8^th December. Many of us are starting to get into the  Christmas spirit. Decorating the tree, listening to Christmas music, building up the ‘jolly’. We even came to church this morning!

But instead of the baby Jesus and heavenly choirs of angels, we get John the Baptist, a rough prophet prowling about in the Judean wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Not exactly “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas”!

But here’s the strangest thing. We still refer to this message as good news. After the gospel lesson was read, Monica said to us, “This is the gospel of the Lord.” That is to say, “the Good News of the Lord.” How can this be? Some of us might say, “No way.” An Old Testament prophet wagging his finger at us and calling us sinners is definitely not good news. Others of us may be willing to admit the importance of John’s message, but only as a prelude to good news, something we must do to get ready for good news of the birth of a saviour. We need to go through the hard process of acknowledging and repenting of our sins so that we may make ourselves ready for the gift of Christ. It may be a necessary process, but we still wouldn’t call it good news. Think of when the doctor tells us we have to give up the foods we love and start exercising – they may be telling us a truth we need to hear, but we don’t really rejoice and burst into song when we hear it.

And yet there is a way that John’s message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins can actually be seen as good news, and not just as a necessary, grit-our-teeth-and-get-through-it prelude to good news.

After Monica read the gospel and said, “This is the gospel of the Lord,” we responded, “Praise to Christ our Lord” But how can really mean it?

How?

Well, I think we can see John the Baptist’s proclamation of a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins as good news in three ways.

Firstly, if we hear John’s message and it rings true, if we have ever said, “This is not the way things are supposed to be,” then we already know God’s peace. As I said earlier, in the biblical view, sin is a derivative concept. We must already have a vision of how things ought to be if we feel as though things aren’t that way. We must have some sense of God’s peace, to know when it is broken. And this is good news. We do have a vision of God’s shalom, God’s peace. It has been given to us in our scriptures, and in our religious traditions, and in our reflection on creation. We have been given a vision of the world as created and redeemed by our good and generous God, a world made to be fruitful, filled with deep and abiding joy. If we hear and respond to John’s message about sin, then we must already know about God’s peace. And that is good news.

A second way we can see John’s message as good news is that if we hear and respond to his call to repentance for the forgiveness of sins, then we must believe that there is something we can do about it. John is not saying things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be and they never will be, so just get used to it. His is not a message of futility in the face of the brokenness of God’s creation. Rather, it is a liberating and joyful call to realign our individual and collective wills with the purposes of God. If we already know of God’s vision of shalom, we can be people who promote flourishing, seek wholeness and restore harmony. We can be repairers of the breach. To hear and respond to John’s message is good news, because in spite of the fact that things aren’t the way they should be, they can change and so can we. People can stop killing each other. Hungry people can be fed. Parents can love their families and help their children to thrive. Enemies can become friends. It is good and, indeed, joyful news to know that we are free to respond to God’s call to shalom.

And finally, we can hear John’s message about a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins as good news because if we already know God’s peace, if we can respond to the call of God’s peace, then in some deep way we already trust in the eventual triumph of God’s peace.

In our gospel lesson, John is described by the words of the prophet Isaiah as:

“the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough way made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

It is an emphatic message: all flesh will see the salvation of God. And this is good news, the Good News.

Things aren’t the way they are supposed to be. We know this because we already know God’s peace. Through a process of repentance, we can align ourselves with God’s purposes, God’s peace, the way things are supposed to be. And we can do this in spirit of gratitude, joy and trust because we have been given a promise of the eventual triumph of God’s shalom in the birth of a baby who is the Lord strong and mighty, the everlasting Father, the prince of peace!

That, my beloved sisters and brothers, is Good News!