welcome to Westminster Abbey on this Second Sunday of Advent. My name is the Reverend Mark Birch and I'm Canon Rector and Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons. Today I'll be reading the gospel lesson for Advent 2 and thinking about what God is like. A reading from The Gospel According to St Luke 3: 1-6. In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was ruler of Galilee and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis and Lysanias ruler of Abilene during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

He went into all the region around the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah 'the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough ways made smooth and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Here ends the reading.

Luke is the most literary and scholarly of the gospel writers. He could hold his own in any classroom or lecture hall. True, his first two chapters contain those luminous stories of the birth of Christ full of angels and shepherds, read endlessly in carol services. In this third chapter, however, he gets down to the work of an historian and it begins with John the Baptist. Luke gives us what at first glimpse seems to be rather unnecessary details about emperors, rulers, governors, and high priests. Who says religion and politics don't mix? Certainly not Luke.

He positions the proclamation of John and the beginning of Jesus' public ministry in a very specific historic political and religious context. This is not a mythic tale of primeval origins. These are events within the mid-flow of history. What is being revealed is that God is not just the god of history but also God in history, fulfilling specific promises made centuries before, in this case, through the prophet Isaiah. John heralds this by calling for repentance, for a change of heart and mind that stops putting God at a distance, frozen beyond time and welcomes him and his forgiveness into history. Not that God is fiddling around with everything like the worst micro-manager but that in everything the promises of God are being brought to fruition, that all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

God wants to be known in history, in specific times and places wherever and whenever we find ourselves. The king of glory forever in our midst. For God to be known we need that change of heart and mind, to unbox our mistaken notions of God. It is always time to let God show us what God is like.

Thank you for joining me for this reflection. This is part of a series of reflections each Sunday in Advent leading up to Christmas. To find out more about Advent and Christmas at the Abbey and how you can take part, wherever you are, visit our website at www.westminster-abbey.org/Advent.