Advent 2 7 Dec 25 – Christ Church St. Lucia
Readings: Isaiah 11: 1-10; Psalm 72: 1-7,18-21; Romans 15: 4-13; Matthew 3: 1-12
Midsummer night, and bonfires on the hill
Burn for the man who makes way for the Light:
‘He must increase and I diminish still,
Until his sun illuminates my night.’
So John the Baptist pioneers our path,
Unfolds the essence of the life of prayer,
Unlatches the last doorway into faith,
And makes one inner space an everywhere.
Least of the new and greatest of the old,
Orpheus on the threshold with his lyre,
He sets himself aside and cries, ‘Behold
The One who stands among you comes with fire!’
So keep his fires burning through the night,
Beacons and gateways for the child of light.[1]
We’re introduced again in our Advent adventure to the figure of John the Baptist. We’ll encounter him again next Sunday too. John appears in the wilderness with an uncompromising and stark message. What are we to make of him? Brendan Byrne comments that he’s a biblical character to admire from a distance but hardly one to win our hearts.[2] He singles out the Pharisees and Sadducees – religious leaders – as a brood of vipers! You’d hardly turn to him for fashion or dietary advice. And he talks about an axe cutting down trees, and the one who will follow him having a winnowing fork; and he goes on about fire – not once, or twice, but three times. And it’s fire I’d like us to reflect upon – which is why I chose to begin with Malcolm Guite’s sonnet which picks up the theme of fire linked with John the Baptist. To give some context, it’s not really an Advent sonnet but was written for the Feast of St. John the Baptist, which falls on June 24th, - midsummer day in the old Roman Calendar. Luke in his Gospel suggests that John the Baptist was born about 6 months before Jesus,[3] so John the Baptist’s feast falls halfway through the year, 6 months before Christmas! In the northern hemisphere, there was, and still is, a tradition of keeping St. John’s Eve with the lighting of bonfires and beacons. Midsummer bonfires were a traditional practice, often lit around the summer solstice in many cultures, with roots in pre-Christian pagan customs. Christian interpretations associate the fires with St. John the Baptist, who, St. John’s Gospel tell us, was a "burning and shining light".[4]
That’s all well and good, but what about in the southern hemisphere? What about our place and time? What images, thoughts, feelings does fire invoke for us? I venture to say it’s something quite different from cavorting around a merry midsummer bonfire. Libbie and I recently spent four days on Kangaroo Island. As we drove to the western end of the island, we were almost overwhelmed by kilometre upon kilometre of tree skeletons – dead white fingers reaching in desperate supplication to the sky. In late 2019 and early 2020 terrible fires burnt for 6 weeks on the island. They affected just under half of the island’s land mass. The destruction of property, environment and wildlife was awful. In today’s Gospel, John speaks of unquenchable fire. In similar vein, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews describes God as a consuming fire.[5] The word in the Greek translated as “unquenchable” is “asbestos”, by the way. Today’s piece of inconsequential trivia. Unquenchable fire isn’t foreign to us in our Australian context. In John’s and St. Matthew’s context, unquenchable fire may have referred to the continuously burning fires in Gehenna, the rubbish dump on the outskirts of Jerusalem. But as we drove through what had been utterly destroyed on Kangaroo Island, we could also see that lower down around the bases of the trees, there were signs of vigorous regeneration everywhere. The awful destructiveness of unquenchable fire was being replaced by new growth, new life. The Old Testament prophet Malachi describes a coming one who will be like a refiner’s fire[6]. Fires of extreme temperature were used to remove impurities from precious metals. All these metaphors remind us of God’s refining, purifying fire, and that if we wish to see new life, new growth, Advent is a time for very serious spiritual self-examination and work, that the One who stands among us comes with intense fire, not just a brightly burning candle. As Archbishop Jeremy reminds us in his reflection on todays Gospel "Advent is often wrapped in soft colours and candlelight, but John reminds us that preparing for Christ is serious work."[7]
John says the One coming after him will baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire. In the Cathedral yesterday four new Deacons and five new Priests were ordained. Please pray for them as they begin their ministries. The ancient 9th century hymn Veni Creator Spiritus would have been sung. “Come Holy Spirit our souls inspire and lighten with your heavenly fire”[8] Fire here means, I think, energy and power and guidance. Fire is also a regular feature of judgement in the Biblical tradition. Judgement in the Biblical tradition does not necessarily carry connotations of sentencing in a court of law. Making a judgement means coming to a decision, choosing between courses of action. So, Advent calls us to come to decisions, to make judgements about our lives – what we need to leave behind us, what to embrace as we look ahead and prepare ourselves. And doing this involves repentance. John urges the crowds to bear fruits worthy of repentance. Many people tend to overlay repentance with guilt. But the repentance has a different dimension to it. The word in the Greek is metanoia. It means a change in thinking, to expand our thinking in such a way as to have a new perspective on the world or oneself. Repentance is a reorientation, a fundamental transformation of outlook that includes how we see ourselves and how we see the world. And because to repent is to change the way we think, ultimately, it means to change the way we act. And as we act, we are guided by the Holy Spirit and enlightened by heavenly fire. Repentance is that kind of transformation: an inward change that results in outward deeds. When John and Jesus ask us to repent, they are talking about that kind of change.
Malcolm Guite in the last two lines of his sonnet refers to fires burning through the night as beacons and gateways. Libbie and I were in England when the millennium changed and can well remember beacons burning through the night – it was a sight that filled us with a joyful wonder. That, of course can’t happen here in the middle of summer. Coming from darkness to light is a major Advent theme. As I thought about beacons in our context, I wondered if we could hold in our minds for a moment the old bush tradition of marking runways on properties and in small towns with rows of fires – beacons. Car headlights were also used too. They provided a pathway of light which led to a safe landing at the destination amid the darkness. Our world is full of darkness, we all have our own darknesses, but Advent calls us to do the hard, serious work of owning our darkness, submitting ourselves to the refiner’s fire and following the path of light – the Light of Christ; the true Light which is coming into the world, a light which no darkness can overcome.[9]
© The Rev’d. W.D. Crossman
[1] Malcolm Guite Sounding the Seasons – Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year Canterbury Press, Norwich, UK 2012 p51
[2] Brendan Byrne Lifting the Burdens – Reading Matthew’s Gospel in the Church Today Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota USA 2004 p35
[3] Luke 1: 24-26
[4] John 5:35
[5] Hebrews 12:29
[6] Malachi 3: 2-3
[7] https://anglicanfocus.org.au/2025/12/03/sundayiscoming-reflection-7-december-2025/
[8] TIS 396
[9] John 1: 6-9