A Point of Order

Sermon by Revd Ross Meikle
Sunday 7 December 2025

I would like to commend to you a sermon from earlier this week for the Feast of local saint and bishop, Saint Osmund, delivered by our Roman Catholic neighbour from St Osmund’s church, Father Joseph. It really was an excellent sermon that celebrated our medieval bishop who instilled order out of chaos with regards to policy and liturgy, and Father Joseph likened that to the work of God in the beginning of creation who brings the created order out of the chaos of the primeval deep. And draws upon the message of the prophets in this season of Advent: Make straight the way of the Lord.

And my intention is not to contradict Father Joseph, but to go one step further.

Because, there is something more that has emerged for me as I have sat with his sermon about order and chaos.

Let’s return to the phrase from the prophet – quoted in today’s Gospel. “Make straight the ways of the Lord.”

I suppose it comes from the fact that I approach the text as a gay man – and hearing it and knowing that there’s no making me straight. And aware of the slur targeted at the gay community: bender, or being bent. We are not straight, and there are part of the Church that believe and perpetuate the money-making myth of conversion therapy, peddled primarily by conservative evangelical churches, kills young people as they bring about an end to their life because they cannot live a lie, but they cannot foresee a way in which they can live true. The Williams Institute found in 2020 that those gay, lesbian and bisexual people who experience conversion therapy were almost twice as likely to think and attempt suicide than their peers.

The idea behind conversion therapy could align itself with this idea of bringing a deviant way of being into order. An order that says: you must be married to someone of the opposite sex and you must have children because that is God’s plan.

It’s a form of theology that seeks to control people into conformity, and conformity to ways of living that are not universally healthy and are not even grounded in good biblical theology and scholarship. And the most sinful consequence of conformity is the exclusion of those who are unable to conform because of how they have been made.

This is not a recent thing. It goes back generations, and has affected many different types of peoples who have fallen victim to unrealistic expectations. Colonialism of the British and other European countries sought to control and subdue native communities around the world into an order that they argued was biblical. In the name of ‘order’, there has been ethnic cleansing and genocide, the destruction of dignity of human life, atrocities beyond our imagining. The way of the Lord twisted out of shape and semblance.

In the time of our Lord, Jesus reprimanded the teachers of the law for the ways in which they enforced their law unfairly and unkindly upon people. Our Saviour stands in the tradition of the prophets, who recognise and love the law of the Lord but hate the way it is used callously and cruelly.

Prophets like Isaiah who proclaims freedom to the oppressed.

Like Jeremiah who stands in the public square and condemns his nation for their corruption.

Like Joel, whose vision of God’s kingdom involves the Spirit poured upon both the young (sons and daughters) and the old – two social groups often with least power in human society.

I’d argue like Mother Mary whose words are recited here every night for the hungry to be fed and the rich to be sent away empty.

And like John the Baptist, forerunner of our Lord Jesus Christ, who preaches repentance. Both to the people who come to them as individuals seeking wisdom, mercy, and a new way of being human… but also to the ancient people of Israel who time and time again fell from the way of the Lord their God. But more on him next week for he has his own Sunday in Advent!

We twist God’s way both when we abandon it entirely to suit our own nefarious ends – when we revert to chaos. And when we enforce it to the detriment of others – when order becomes conformity.

Father Joseph is correct. God brings order out of chaos. But it is not our order.

His ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts higher than our thoughts. Thank you, Prophet Isaiah.

And it is the gift and the ministry of the prophets to draw us higher again – above the chaos and above the conformity – to behold one another as God does: through eyes of love and compassion and mercy.

So for us. Treading the line of the way of God, forever falling off the road and into the ditches of sin either side of chaos or conformity. Yes, our Lord warns us that it is a Narrow Road. And there is some comfort that we will fail – the expectation is Too Great.

But there is greater comfort that Jesus walks that road so we can follow him, our Good Shepherd who knows us, loves us, calls us by name. The words of our altar comfort us: that when we have heavy burdens because of the trials and tribulations of the difficult facts of life or because of the weight of the guilt of our sin… Jesus offers us rest, by participation in the life of God.

Participation in the life of God is not supposed to be a hard task – but a gift of grace.

An ordered life after the way of God is intended to assist us in living together with love.

We can and have distorted that.

Yet the message of the prophets in Advent is that there is repentance. We must turn again to Christ, make straight our paths after his way, and – having turned – love mercy, do justly, and follow Christ humbly – to paraphrase the prophet Amos.

And in this season of Advent, as we look ahead to Christmas – both the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus AND his second coming whenever that shall be – perhaps the prophetic gift is to be liberated from the maddening and expensive rush of the seasonal fluff and tinselly tat… and for these weeks to put aside the baubles and the Baileys, and pick up our Bibles and blessings. To refrain from getting the house ready, and join in the refrain of the angels instead. To focus less on the wrapping of presents, and more on the presence of God.

That’s enough quipping – but the structured order of our liturgical calendar gifts us this Advent season and allows us to rise above the capitalist chaos and instead use this time to prepare our hearts for the peace, joy and love that is fulfilled in Christ. Amen.