B, Advent 2 - Psalm 85:1-7, 2 Peter 3:9-13, Mark 1:1 "20/20 Vision"

We have lived and are still living in the year 2020.  What’s your 20/20 vision like in the year 2020? Through what glass have you been viewing the year?  It’s been an interesting year to say the least!

If you haven’t noticed there’s been a lot of anger in the world in recent days. 

Anger in creation as temperatures soared and our country burned.

Anger in politics as China challenges over our supply of resources; and anger as they continue to build their military hornet’s nest in the South China Sea.

Anger in the United States as its president favours seizing and holding onto power through whatever it takes, rather than serving in an office under the authority of God!

Anger amongst people as Covid-19 blooms in the population!  Restricting our freedom, killing our kingdom building and its treasures! And destroying many families through death!  Some 1,526,281 people have died (to date — December 5 2020) since the Coronavirus first started killing on January 9, 2020!

How have these things been alerting you to have 20/20 vision?  How is your sight?  What picture are you seeing?

We Christians have a part to play in the year 2020.   We’re called to see and help others to see the deeper reality through the lens of God’s Word.  But being a part of this world our vision is often obstructed by the very same ideologies and idolatry with which the world struggles.

It’s no wonder we struggle to give the reason for our hope in a world that’s spiralling deeper and deeper into hopelessness.

Have you noticed how you are becoming angrier and angrier with others?  We see injustice in every institutional system, including the church. We see the corruption of God’s creation as a civil community and as the environmental ecology is being wrecked?

Where does God fit into this reality?  Or a better question is this: what is your god in this reality?  The reality of your anger and the reality of creation’s corruption! In what do you trust, in these days?  From where do you get your 20/20 sight in the year 2020?

Tell the world, “In the word of God we hear God is a God of love” and you will probably get a responding question, “If God is a God of love, then why is there so much suffering in the world?”  Then we can tell them we suffer because of our sin, and because God is a jealous God he wants us to give up all things we love more than him. God is returning and in his love and anger he will sort out those who trust in him from those who don’t. 

Our culture and its political correctness tempts us to doubt this, and so we as individuals and church sin in our lack of belief and our fear to point others to him.

Psalm 85, the psalm for the second Sunday in Advent, Year B, in the Revised Common Lectionary is used omitting verses 3 to 7.  This is what these verses say.

LORD, you were favourable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob.  You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger.  Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us!  Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations?  Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?  Show us your steadfast love, O LORD, and grant us your salvation. (Psalm 85:1–7 ESV)

God gets angry.   So If God is a God who gets angry, why does he show us his love?  After all God has every right to be angry with us!  Especially us in the church when in fear we stop his message of hope going out into the hopelessness of the world!  What kind of faith are we proclaiming to the world and to God?

Psalm 145:8 says more succinctly what is said above, The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. (Psalm 145:8 ESV)

God’s love does not exist in a vacuum.  God’s love always fills the empty, the weak, or that which seems like nothing.  Think of a stronger solution always running into the weaker, concentrating the weaker with the stronger. 

And next to love stands anger.  Anger exists as a result of bad love.  Blocking the flow or reversing God’s love so that the weak dilutes the strong. What do you reckon will happen when God’s church dilutes his holiness and in the process makes God impure and impotent?  God doesn’t let it happen and he gets angry.  If he did allow it he fails to be God and cannot be the love he claims to be in his word. God’s anger and love stand together against our reversing flow of impurity.

In this light we see how we add to the diluting and destruction of our world, especially a world that needs healing and a weak community that needs the concentration of God’s love to reverse the climate change within us and around us.

In the days of John the Baptist, people were waiting for God to act.  He opposed the political incorrectness of the day and he wasn’t found to be “keeping up appearances”, pleasing the masses!

Yet we find the masses coming to John.  But for what?  To repent, to confess their sin and to be baptised in preparation for the coming of their Saviour!  John was being the conduit through which God’s call came.  And those who were prepared by John were allowing the strength of God to flow into them and through them to their weakness and the weakness of the world around them.

See the reality found only in the Son of God and his word.  We know Jesus came to the Jordan and was baptised to fulfil all righteousness.  We know Jesus Christ because we have been baptised into him and all righteousness has been fulfilled for us in his death and resurrection.  As God’s people, in 2020, we’re called to be a channel or an open tube of love through which Jesus can flow to the world. 

God has every right in showing us his anger when we fail to be the vessels through which he flows.  Surely God has withdrawn enough in these days for us to get a 20/20 view of our failure, to see like those who heard John the Baptist and responded with a confession of sin.

But Jesus Christ, God the Son, reversed the flow of sin without diluting the love or the anger of God the Father.  He reversed the flow so the flow of love can continue through us to those around us. 

As much as people want us to believe we can, we cannot fix the world.  Only God can.  Yet we can be a part of the healing by allowing God to flow though us as we forgive and proclaim how we have been forgiven and what God has forgiven in each of us.

So see the great love God has for this world and we who live in it. See the arrival of our Saviour, weak and lying in a manger. See him weak and destitute bearing the anger of God on the Cross.  See him reversing the flow of sin and suffering.  See his patience with you so you can be patient with others who cannot see the hope we have despite the dissolution and death of everything and everyone because of sin.

In the first words of Mark’s Gospel account it says, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1 ESV)

Jesus’ death and resurrection was the just the beginning.  Today the gospel continues and in the future it will be fulfilled.  Put God’s word under the magnifying glass, in doing so you will not only see your sin but you will magnify God.  See the steadfast love of God in his anger being poured out on his Son in exchange for your sinful hopeless situation. 

Therefore, in Jesus Christ know this: you can do the greater works of believing; these are the mega works Jesus promised to his disciples living in the midst of strife with a 20/20 vision of him. Jesus says,

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. (John 14:12 ESV)

These mega works are works done as forgiven sinners.  We believe, therefore we speak of the joy of being set free from the reality of our sin, so others might be freed of fear and sin.  We can do this when we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us to Jesus, to feed us with Jesus. To daily reverse the flow and flush the pipes so God’s love of confession and forgiveness can flow from his power into our weakness. Let’s be found doing the greater works of God when Jesus once again arrives at the resurrection of the dead and the final restoration of this world.

Hear the promise of God which was fulfilled in your baptism and will bring you through all fiery trials and temptations. 

The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.  But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.  Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness,  waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!  But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:9–13 ESV)

Be found by God doing the mega works of faith, confessing sin, believing and confessing God’s forgiveness. Let the Holy Spirit build in you a hunger for the righteousness that is found only in Jesus Christ.

Amen.