Sermon on Second Sunday of Advent - Fr Sam Rossiter

Why does St John the Baptist Church exist? Today, as you can see from all of the decorations about you, we're opening to welcome the Barnet Christmas Fair. It's taken a lot of work from many of our community, it will take a lot more through the day. There's a rota of performances, the carol concert preparations, the wardens, Jackie, Tony have been pulling everything together now for weeks, months even.

Volunteers have been getting ready for the day, there's plenty of cakes and mulled wine. This afternoon will be an effort by the whole church family and by this evening we'll all be exhausted. On the barest level, we're doing all of this because last year we welcomed several hundred people through our doors for the Barnet Christmas Fair and we want to do the same again.

We want to engage with our wider community. We want Barnet to know that St John the Baptist is the right place for them, a place with community at its heart. But of course this isn't the whole reason why.

Many community organisations exist to serve the community and they don't need a church building to do it. So why are we working so hard today? Why do we bother to run community events? Why do we raise money for our chorister line or for Messy Church? Why do we want so many schools to sing carol concerts here? In our Gospel reading, which we've just heard, St John the Baptist gave some of his hardest teaching. You brood of vipers, do not presume to say to yourselves we have Abraham as our ancestor, for I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. St John the Baptist had come to prepare the people of Israel for God their Messiah.

To do that he told them, he preached to them, he called to them, he begged them to walk away from complacency, to repent of their sins, to prepare themselves for the one who was coming. He focused particularly on complacency because many of his people already thought of themselves as righteous. And they thought this because they were descendants of Abraham, the founder of the covenant between the Hebrew people and God thousands of years beforehand.

God had those thousands of years before promised Abraham that his children would be a chosen people. Some of those standing on the bank of the Jordan believed that this heritage, tracing their way back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was enough. And many of them assumed that the Messiah had come to restore Israel's fortunes.

The details of what people expected in a Messiah varied but the hopes were broadly similar. The hope was that because the people of Israel were Abraham's descendants they were holy and the Messiah was going to come and confirm them in that holiness and drive out everyone from the land who they felt didn't belong. But St. John the Baptist had no time for this assumption.

Instead he said God, the creator of all things, could make the very stones of the river Jordan into descendants of Abraham if he wanted to. Being part of the covenant of God was not about who you were born. The axe was lying at the root of that tree.

Instead he thought that the Messiah was bringing God's long-promised renewal. A world in which those who count themselves his people did so because they had relationship with him. The Christian tradition has gone on to see more in St. John's teaching than John himself probably realised.

But as the ministry of Jesus and the teaching of the apostles became clear those who would flourish as trees by the water weren't just the biological and cultural descendants of Abraham. They were Jews and Gentiles, which means non-Jews. Anyone who accepted Jesus Christ as Lord, who repented of their sin and tried to leave behind that old way of living and worked with him, worked with the Holy Spirit to live a life of righteousness, all of them were called into relationship through God the Messiah.

The new way of being was open to those who would walk the same road as Christ, whoever they came from, wherever they came from, whatever they'd done. St. Paul's teaching in Romans reveals the depths of God's work through the fulfilment of the Abrahamic covenant. St. Paul said that whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction so that we may have hope.

In Romans 4, St. Paul argued that Abraham was in fact the father of all who believe, who have not been circumcised, but also the father of the circumcised who follow the footsteps of faith that our father Abraham had. To understand this, we have to understand that when God established a covenant between himself and Abraham and through Abraham the Hebrew people, he first made some promises to Abraham. And Genesis tells us that Abraham believed those promises and it says, and his belief was reckoned to him as righteousness.

What Paul argues is that it was the belief that was the foundation of the covenant, not the things that came afterwards. What came afterwards was the law, circumcision, the food purity laws, the things that the people who on Jordan's bank heard St. John the Baptist clang to so closely, all of those markers of the law. But St. Paul said, no, those come after.

What comes first is faith. Abraham believed and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. So what is the foundation of righteousness? Belief.

And to whom does belief belong? Yes, to the Jews, but also to the Gentiles. So St. John wasn't criticising the law per se, but rather those who trusted in their obedience to the law and not in the faith that preceded it. And then in Romans 15, Paul proclaimed that Christ came so that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.

All of this points to a single truth. The work of God, the salvation that he brought about through Jesus Christ didn't begin at the Nativity. It didn't begin with the birth of Jesus Christ.

It didn't begin in the New Testament. It began at the beginning of time. The work of salvation has always been happening through the Old and the New Testaments and the covenant with Abraham was part of it because God never established a closed covenant.

The idea was not that only those who bore the markers of the law would be saved, but rather those who had belief and belief belongs to all. The work of God has always been a widening circle. It began with the faith of one man.

It widened through his family. It grew into a nation and through that nation it spread to the world and ultimately to us here in Barnet today. If you are here because you have even the beginning of a hope of a belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, then you are a descendant of Abraham.

You belong in that Abrahamic covenant. But just as a pebble dropped into a pond it creates ripples that continue outwards. So this circle of faith never stops widening.

It doesn't stop with Abraham or his family or Israel and it doesn't stop with us. The covenant is about relationship, relationship with God which by its nature can only grow because God's love goes into infinity and we are called to fall into it deeper and deeper and by that falling to call other people. We at St John the Baptist should remember that at one time there were a lot of people who said we would not and would never belong in the church.

We do not bear, most of us I imagine, the marks of the covenant. It was through a fuller understanding of God's grace, a fuller understanding of what God did with Abraham that people like us are allowed to sit here today and if grace welcomed us then we must show that same grace to others who still think that they're outside the circle because if we weren't excluded they can't be excluded. If we are here because we have the hint of a shadow of a spark of faith and that is enough to join us to Abraham and through Abraham to Jesus and in Jesus to the Father then a hint of a shadow of a spark of faith is enough for anyone.

I began by asking why are we here? We are here to share our resources, everything that we have as individuals, as a community to encourage those who have even that beginning of a hope that Jesus might be who he says he is. If there is ever a moment where a person thinks maybe there's more to Jesus than I thought then this church exists for them and everything that we do is for them. It's easy to think when it comes to things like the Barnet Christmas Fair of course we're going to be part of it.

We're Barnet Church, we've got a bus route named after us. We're important, we're in the centre of the town. Of course we're going to be part of this big community event.

It's easy to think that way because it's hard to imagine Barnet without Barnet Church and so it's easy to think of ourselves as set apart but remember those people that St John the Baptist talked to thought of themselves as set apart and he said to them even from the stones of this river can God create children to Abraham. Even from the stones outside on the high street can God create Barnet Church. We are not important because of who we are.

We are not important because we are Barnet Church or because we're in the middle of the town or because we have a bus route named after us. We are not important because of our history or because of our culture or because we've been here since 1100. We are important because God has called us to reach out to the people of Barnet and make Christ known.

That is the only reason that we exist. And so this Barnet Christmas Fair Sunday we have been working so hard because we want every one of the several hundred people who will hopefully come through our doors today to know that they are welcome here. That they belong here.

That they are loved here. That they are part of the family here. To know that if they have ever thought even for a second maybe this Christianity thing could be for me then this is the place for them.

Thank you for everything that you have done to fulfil that mission and that purpose. You have worked so hard. You will work so hard today and I am so proud of every one of you.

This is the most important thing that you could possibly be doing with your lives. Reach out. Make people loved.

Make this place home. Amen.