The Third Sunday of Advent '25

The Third Sunday in Advent focuses on John the Baptist and the ministry of preparing people for the coming of Christ. The New Testament says that John fulfilled three prophesies: Isaiah 40:3, that says, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord” (Matt 3:3, Mk 1:3, Lk 3:4); Malachi 3:,1 that says, “Behold, I send My messenger, And he will prepare the way before Me” (Matt 11:10, Mk 1:2, Lk 7:27, Jn 1:23). And Malachi 4:5-6, that says, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, And the hearts of the children to their fathers” (Matt 11:4, Mk 9:13).

John prepared the way for Christ’s first coming by calling the people to repent. In today’s collect we pray that the “ministers and stewards of God’s mysteries” will likewise “prepare and make ready” the way for Christ’s second coming.” There is a difference between the two. John prepared the way for the Messiah by calling people to repent at one point in time. The church prepares the way by calling people to continual repentance.

The main New Testament word for repentance means “to have a change of mind.” This means to change the way we look at the world and our lives in the light of the revealed truth that Jesus is Lord. Having a change of mind is not the first thing people think about when they hear “Repent!” For many, to repent means to feel really bad about yourself and all the bad things you’ve done. This kind of repentance is cultivated by examining our lives with a fine tooth comb to find every sin in its minute details.

This is not what God wants us to do. The call to “have a change of mind” is a call to see our lives in the light of Christ and begin to live in a new way. The goal is to love God and others better. Excessive preoccupation with our guilt and failures reflects the deadly sin of pride. It puts the focus on us and what we have done rather than on what God has done and is doing. Growth in repentance will lead us to focus less on ourselves and more on God and how is calling us to change.

Isaiah the prophet is an example of repentance. In Isaiah 6 he was given a vision of God. He writes, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up.” (Isa. 6:1). In the light of this vision, Isaiah saw himself more clearly and was led to repentance. He said, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The LORD of host." (Isa. 6:5). Isaiah describes God’s response to his confession. He writes, "One of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged." (Isa. 6:6-7). Then God commissioned Isaiah to be prophet. 

This is an image of our encounter with God in the Eucharist. Here we see God high and lifted up in the glory of the cross. We see ourselves more clearly in light of Christ and are led to confession. God sends the body and blood of Jesus, which touch our lips and cleanse us from sin. Then God sends us out to do the good works he has prepared for us.

Another example is the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8. The woman was dragged by accusers to Jesus to test his obedience to the Torah. The Torah sentenced both participants to death by stoning. It is instructive of the accuser’s hypocrisy that they only brought the woman. In capital punishment cases, the Torah said that eyewitnesses should throw the first stone. Jesus told the accusers that anyone present who was without sin could fulfill this Torah duty. When no qualified stone-throwers stepped forward, the crowd dispersed. Jesus said, "Woman, where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said to her, "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more." (Jn. 8:10-11).

Now, this was a forced repentance. We don’t even know if the woman was sorry. But Jesus transformed the circumstance anyway. The act of being caught in adultery by ill-intentioned accusers ended up being a means of grace for the woman. Evil was overthrown by the goodness of God. Jesus is revealed in this story as the forgiver, not the accuser.

This story shows that it doesn’t really matter how our sin is brought to light. Sometimes we are sorry only after we get caught and stand accused by others and the accuser. Jesus is the bestower of grace who can use all circumstances for his good. As Joseph said to his brothers in Genesis, “You meant evil against, but God meant it for good” (50:20).

We see in these stories that God brings sin to light in order to bestow grace and bring penitent people into his new creation. The grace of God that comes through Jesus is illustrated by the Old Testament Jubilee Year. Every fifty years, debts were supposed to be cancelled and slaves were supposed to be set free. This did not always happen. Jesus proclaimed the fulfillment of the Jubilee. Repentance leads us into freedom. 

We grow in repentance. Growth looks something like this. Initially, we see our visible sins of the flesh like gluttony, lust, and sloth. As we grow we become aware of the more subtle spiritual sins like covetousness, anger, and envy. As we grow further, we realize that these are all pride, a focus on me and what I want, not on God and what he has done. Eventually, we come to see that our real sin in every case is our failure to love. We have not loved God and our neighbor as we ought.

We did not love because we were too busy fighting our own battles. Thus, the best synonym for repentance may be surrender. In Advent we can ask God to show us how we need to surrender in a new way in order to grow in our ability to love. 

As we ask and listen for the answer, let us remember two things. First, the purpose of repentance is to get rid of sin, not to ruminate about it. As Psalm 103 says, “As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.” And second, we remove sin to make room for Jesus to come to us in a new way. As Ephesians 3:17-19 says,

That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.