Having got that off my chest I turn to today's readings which not surprisingly also have a context. The cross references today are many but the bits omitted also need to be considered if we are to understand the passages before us. For example the gospel passage from Matthew is full of reference to the prophetic imagery of Isaiah. “Prepare you the way of the Lord”. John the Baptist for all his eccentricity is not a stand alone. He is firmly grounded in the great tradition of the Hebrew prophets. With reference to the prophetic message he reiterates the need for the repentance of his religious audience.

Those religious people were no better or worse that religious people today. We like them need to hear the call to repentance in our own time. We as individuals and as community can be just as wayward and selfish and prejudiced as John's audience. And in that call John uses the classic language of judgment: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees.” Here he makes another direct reference to Isaiah. In fact it is the context of the first lesson that begins with the image of the useless stump of the cut down tree. Immediately before it is some classic prophetic judgment about how God will deal with the wicked nation cutting down the trees of the forest until there is only stumps left. So the opening of the Isaiah passage is all the more powerful. For out of the “stump of Jesse”, the useless remnant of God's judgment, a shoot shall come miraculously and be the beginning of God's new thing, the reign of the Spirit filled monarch who will bring about God's peaceable Kingdom.

Likewise there is context to the reading from Romans. “Whatever was written in former times” comes at the end of a whole chapter in which Paul admonishes the Christian community divided by petty quarrels and jealousies with scriptural reference highlighting the error of their ways and the need for unity. To undergird the importance of diversity within that unity Paul gives verse upon verse from the Hebrew scriptures to illustrate that this is God's plan. In reading scripture we do well to consider the context.

But what do the scriptures have to say to us in this Advent season and on this Annual Meeting Sunday? Have they a word for us? One theme that strikes me is that of hope. We often talk about Advent hope. Paul repeatedly uses the word in Romans. “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and the encouragement of scriptures we might have hope.” And “may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

In thinking about our life together here at Transfiguration and about the aims of my rectorship one of them would be that we create here a community of hope; to make this place an oasis of hope in this city. In the world today and in our personal lives there are many forces at work to make us cynical about the future; to become people without much sense of hope. But to be such is to forsake our religious tradition. For at its heart is the clarion call of hope; that God's kingdom will prevail over all the forces of death, darkness and destruction. Isaiah says it in the passage about the green shoot coming out of the useless stump; itself a metaphor for new life coming out of seeming death. John the Baptist says it in witnessing to the one who is to come who will baptize with Holy Spirit (that Spirit referred to in Isaiah as the bearer of the peaceable kingdom). Paul locates that hope in God's future in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is that hope, that God loves, that God cares, that the future is God's that is the very heart of the gospel that we live, that we celebrate and that we proclaim. For Paul that hope is lived out in both our relationship to God and to each other.

Our worship is central to our life with God. By it we acknowledge the source of our hope. But our welcome and care of each other is the way we express that hope horizontally as it were. Both worship and hospitality stand together. Both need each other. Our worship without hospitality would by arid. Hospitality without worship loses its purpose. We at Transfiguration love our tradition of good worship beautifully offered. Hospitality has been honored here over the years. But it is easy to think of hospitality only in terms of the coffee hour. That is important of course but hospitality is to do with our respect for each other and for the stranger. Our welcome is part of our hospitality; speaking to strangers and visitors in our midst is hospitality; our reaching out in ministry is hospitality; our open door and accessibility is hospitality; the way we relate to minorities and to the marginalized is all about hospitality. Paul goes at length to defend the diversity of the church in Rome. All those words about Jews and Gentiles refers to 1st century diversity issues.

I thank God for the degree of diversity at Transfiguration. Only recently I was at another parish here in Manhattan and I was struck by the lack of diversity in the congregation. Diversity does not just happen; it is inextricably related to welcome and hospitality. But furthermore it is easy to become content and satisfied with our current diversity and to lose sight of people who do not naturally fit in to our community even as diverse as it may be. We need to remain sensitive to and active on behalf of those who feel excluded, unwelcome or uncomfortable from or in our midst for whatever reason or none. Sometimes a smile and a word of welcome is all that it takes; sometimes it will require some patient listening. But above all is the fact that we take the other stranger or newcomer seriously; that we respect them and value them for who they are. “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ welcomed you, for the glory of God” says Paul.

The other theme of these readings I wish to highlight is that of expectation. Isaiah speaks of God who will act on behalf of his penitent people. He speaks of a leader whom God will raise upon whom the Spirit of God will rest and who will bring in reign of righteousness and peace which will even be mirrored in the animal kingdom. In Jewish history that idealized kingdom was seen to be embodied in King David. It was that image of God's Spirit filled leader that the New Testament writers saw fulfilled in Jesus. So John the Baptist points towards Jesus who will baptize with Spirit and with fire. And for Paul it is this sense of expectation that is the basis for hope. What God has promised God will fulfill in the power of the Spirit. In our life as a church we need to embody that sense of expectancy. To put it another way we need to demonstrate by our words and actions that we believe that God has acted, and is acting and will continue to act in the bringing in of his peaceable kingdom. We need to continue to work at being an expectant community, a community that exhibits its faith and confidence in God's coming kingdom of love and peace. “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done” we pray day by day.

We have much to celebrate in our life together in this year of grace. As we hear the reports today and order our common life let us give thanks for what God has done and is doing with us. And in Paul's timely words slightly adapted: May the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing, so that we may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen

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