Repentence and turning everything upside-down

A sermon for the second Sunday in Advent by Fr Russell Goulburne

On this the Sunday nearest the anniversary of his death, we commemorate the founder and benefactor of this church, Charles La Trobe, an Englishman of French Protestant descent; last Thursday was the 150th anniversary of his death in 1875.

La Trobe arrived in Melbourne from England in 1839, aged 38, to take up the role of Superintendent of the Port Phillip District – the area we now call Victoria which was then still part of the Colony of New South Wales. On 18 June 1846, he laid the foundation stone of this church, where he also became a regular member of the congregation. And in 1851, he became the first Governor of the newly established Colony of Victoria, a position he occupied until 1854, when he returned to England.

La Trobe is depicted at the back of our church: when you leave today, take a moment to look at the incumbents’ board behind the font, where you’ll see the 1853 bronze medallion by the English sculptor Thomas Woolner that shows La Trobe’s left profile – so you can put a face to the name.

And you might want to compare that portrait of him with the two statues of him that exist in Melbourne. The more recent of the two is in front of the State Library: it’s a classic bronze monument, created by the Melbourne sculptor Peter Corlett in 2006, and it shows La Trobe dressed in official uniform, reading the declaration of Victoria’s separation from New South Wales. The second and earlier monument – created in 2004 by the Melbourne sculptor Charles Robb and displayed on the Bundoora campus of La Trobe University – is not too dissimilar to the statue outside the State Library, save for one rather obvious difference: it’s standing on its head.

Some commentators have suggested that Charles Robb’s 16-foot-tall upside-down statue of La Trobe is a not-so-subtle critique of colonialism – the man from England who finds himself standing on his head when transplanted to the other side of the world. But according to the sculptor himself, the statue embodies the notion that universities should turn ideas on their heads.

Well, however you view the statue, I can’t help thinking that it’s rather appropriate to commemorate a man who’s depicted in an upside-down statue on this, the Second Sunday of Advent, when our Scripture readings present us with a vision of an upside-down world, a topsy-turvy world, a world transformed by the coming of the King.

In today’s Old Testament reading we have one of the great messianic prophecies of Isaiah. Writing some 700 years before Jesus’s birth, Isaiah pictures the ideal king arising from the family of David who will lead Judah to victory over Assyria. The Spirit of God will rest on him and he will change everything because ‘with righteousness he shall judge for the poor and decide with equity for the oppressed of the earth’. And the benefits of the king’s transformational reign are described in idyllic terms: the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion will eat hay together. Isaiah foresees a kingdom that completely turns on their head our expectations of how we live together – a time when harmony will resonate through all creation.

That theme of harmony is picked up in today’s New Testament reading. Paul is writing to the church in Rome – and he encourages those early Christians to keep reading the scriptures, by which he means what we now call the Old Testament. (Remember that there was as yet no New Testament in the early church – indeed, by writing his letter to the Romans, Paul was taking a hand in producing what would later become the New Testament.) And he tells the Romans that what we see unfolding in the scriptures is God’s great unifying work – hence his call for the church to be unlike the world by living in harmony: ‘May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus’ and ‘Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God’.

Paul reminds us that as Christians – as the Church – we are called to show our harassed and broken world a completely different way of living: a way of living in harmony with one another;  a way of embodying reconciliation and grace, by welcoming everyone into the community of faith, by making room for those once excluded, by having no enemies except injustice, ignorance and the intolerance that makes people fear the other.

And that invitation to a transformed way of living is what we hear in today’s Gospel too. John the Baptist foretells the coming of Jesus – the one whose birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension change everything. And he proclaims the coming of the kingdom in exactly the words which we will hear Jesus himself use in our Gospel reading on the Third Sunday after Epiphany: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’ (cf. 4.17).

They’re words that confront us with the reality of our lives and our world – they confront us in our sin and our complacency – and they call us to change – to turn around – to change our heart and our mind and our lifestyle in response to God’s loving action.

And such change is necessary because things are not yet right – and we must commit to turn our lives around in order to turn this world back to rights – we must commit to turn away from those things that get in the way of our love for God and for neighbour in order to free us to love God and neighbour more.

And it is precisely love, not fear, that should be our motivation in repentance. It can be tempting to think that God cannot deal with us as we are. But the message of Advent is that Christ comes to us as we are. And so repentance is not about looking downwards at our sins, but upwards at God’s love; it’s not about looking backwards with regret but forwards with thankfulness and trust, opening ourselves to what God is calling us to be and do in the world – because if we’ve repented of the past, something about how we live and how we love from now on has to change.

And while repentance may be a personal thing, it certainly isn’t a private one: what we do in our Christian discipleship and service cannot just be for our own benefit. Put another way, there’s no point repenting if we do not do so in order to change the world around us, to challenge the status quo, to live as citizens of heaven, to work to bring about here and now the peace and justice that are the distinctive signs of the kingdom of God.

John received from Jesus the news that things shouldn’t stay the same. Doing justice means things not staying the same – it means good news to the poor. And until the poor are fed and there is peace on earth and there is justice for all God’s people, there should be a voice crying in our ears: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’

For that voice calls us to change how we live and how we love. That voice calls us to become more and more like Jesus Christ, who is coming, in us, alongside us, through us: God made flesh, coming into the world, and turning everything upside down – or right side up.