Generating righteousness

Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Advent

The Church says, "Do not commit adultery!" The world says, "Shut up! Judge not lest ye be judged!" 

Have you heard that sort of thing?

[PAUSE]

It's worth remembering that if the Devil can use the words of God to mislead us, then he will. There are many who try to use Holy Scripture to justify their actions or to condemn others.

Our Lord does indeed say, "judge not lest ye be judged" but that's not to stop us from making an assessment of whether something is good or bad, but rather a reminder that we, too, must submit ourselves to the same assessment.

You obviously remember that, when we judge, we are making an assessment between what is right and what is wrong. But to make that assessment we do need to know what right and wrong are in the first place, and that's the problem. If we can't see, then our assessment is flawed. We can only judge as far as we can see: we cannot truly see the speck in someone else's eye if our own eye has got a piece of two-by-four stuck in it.

How do we remove the two-by-four? That ought to be easy, oughtn't it?

Well, you'd have thought so, wouldn't you?

[PAUSE]

St John the Baptist cries out the words he has heard from Isaiah, "make straight the way of the Lord."

Isn't the Lord's way straight already?

Not if we are the ones making the path!

It's clear that it is not God's responsibility to prepare His way, but ours. It is we who have to prepare ourselves for His coming. It is the path to our own heart that needs to be straightened and tended. This requires repentance. But how do we repent?

We know that repentance means turning to God but it also means seeking His righteousness. It is an action to perform, not just the reciting of a prayer of confession. We have to work repentance.

This means we have to learn to be righteous ourselves because God is righteous. God is what it means to be good, so if we seek to be good then we seek God. If we succeed in being good then God is with us.

But we need God to do this right from the start! We cannot be truly good without God. We cannot work our way to Heaven by our own effort. God is the beginning of life's journey and He is its end. With our eyes fixed on Him and our hearts making Him a home, we make straight in life's desert a highway for our God.

[PAUSE]

The challenge, then, is to focus not on changing the Church's teaching. Adultery is a sin and the Church will declare it because God declares it and God is not only a judge but He is justice itself. The challenge is to put on Christ, to follow His example, to change our ways for the ways of righteousness and, with Him, become like Him. The challenge is to judge the world by allowing God to transform us. 

[PAUSE]

God has created us to live a good life and enjoy it. This is why He comes to us as a baby, for what is more joyful, more glorious, more human than the birth of a baby? How about the birth of a baby that is God with us?