THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Philippians 4:4-7 (8-9)
Luke 3: 7-18
Year C
Reading a story to Linus
once, Lucy says, “And so the King was
granted his wish. Everything he touched would turn to gold! Now the next day…..”
Suddenly Linus says, “Stop!” You don’t
have to read any further. I know just what’s going to happen. These things
always have a way of backfiring”.
That’s what I felt had
happened this week. After being lured into the beauty of our first two readings
it felt like something had backfired
when John the Baptist shattered the beauty of it all with his condemnatory
words of, “You brood of vipers!”
Even in the midst of the
Gospel of Luke John the Baptist seems out of place. Hallmark has never put him
on the front of a Christmas card or quoted him inside as far as I know. Yet, we
have to wade through John two Sundays in Advent, when we’d really rather just
get on with singing “Away in a Manger”
or “Deck the Halls”. If we’re honest
we don’t like John very much and a big part of that is because John’s purpose
was to tell the truth and truth tellers are not always welcome. Like the
prophets before him John didn’t get too many dinner invitations. It would have
been like welcoming Poison Ivy into your midst; an irritant you don’t know how
you’ll ever get rid of. It’s easier to live in denial than truth, but the
Gospel calls us to become truth tellers like John. As Flannery O’Conner put it,
“You shall know the truth and the truth
shall make you - odd”.
Today is called “Gaudete”
Sunday, or “Stir up”Sunday. Gaudete means to lift up or rejoice. It is
symbolized by a rose candle on the Advent wreath, for today is designated for
joy and hope because the Lord’s Incarnation draws near.
It all seems paradoxical when
compared to the gospel, but then there is something paradoxical about Advent to
begin with. It’s a season of waiting for Christ’s birth yet the season to declare
that God is already among us. Advent is a season of warnings but it is also a
season of expectation and longing. Advent holds in tension the reality of the
now but not yet; the reality of what we have and what we hope to have. In a way
the whole of life is an Advent of sorts.
An article in a recent issue
of “The Christian Century” tells about a Christian Community in
The Gospel is optional for
each of us individually, for the church collectively, and the world as a whole.
If it were not so God’s coming would have been a cataclysmic event, instead of the
complete vulnerability seen in a newborn child.
The cry of those who came out
to see John today was “What shall we do?”
And the answer in Advent is wait and hope. Unfortunately those sound like very
passive things, but the call of Advent is not about being passive. For hope is
not only an act of will it is also an act of imagination and courage. Hope
deals with what has not yet happened. Hope allows us to see beyond what is and
to imagine what could be. Experience tells us only where we have been, like
looking in a rear view mirror, while living hope is meant to guide you into the
place where you have not yet been and into becoming the person you have not yet
become. For our lives always contain the seeds of what we will be tomorrow.
When John preached that God
would lay the ax to everything that was dead he was not saying that God hates
dead wood. He is simply stating the fact that if we have no capacity for growth
or change, then there is no life left for the Lord to reach. That is true of
every situation you can think of, in the world, in the church, in every individual
life.
Yes, we are people of the
present. We can only live in each moment, but we are called to live into each
moment doing what we can to help form the future. Each new moment is pregnant
with all sorts of possibilities. Each new moment is pregnant with the future
God longs for us to find.
Sadly, when it comes to
Christmas, we have turned it into a mood rather than the action of God coming
among us, giving us the means and the ways to make things that are wrong right,
things that are dead-ended new. The Lord comes not only to save us but to
change us, to turn stones into children of God. The Lord comes as the one who
will turn everything upside down; even us. This potential we are given by God
makes hope not just a word but a power, the power of God within us and among
us.
For when all is said and done
Advent is about power; God’s power, God’s power to come among us and change us
and the world. Today we wait amid tinsel and holiday cheer, for the Jesus we
expect, the God we often keep safely at bay. We say “God’s will be done” but we often say it with our fingers crossed
because we know it is a scary and
risky thing to say. We must remember that Zephaniah didn’t know exactly who the
king would be who would lead
The gospel is optional. We
cannot force it upon the world. We cannot even force it upon the church. And if
we accept it into our own life we need to know that because it is the
transformative power of love, like a stone thrown into the sea, the
ramifications from what is set a trembling will be far reaching. As the great
theologian Paul Tillich once said, “In
every moment of genuine love, we are dwelling in God and God in us.”
In a way I think God waits as
much upon us as we wait upon God, in this Advent or any Advent in our lives.
For hope rests not just upon promise but upon action, footsteps planted firmly
upon a journey we must be willing to make if our worlds and the world as a
whole hope to touch the hem of Christ’s garment.
Frederick Buechner writes of
a time in his life that I’ve always identified with very much. He writes of
going to the Episcopal monastery of the Holy Cross in
Buechner writes, “As much out of politeness as anything, and
because I thought maybe he would let me go, I said ‘yes’, so he indicated that
I was to kneel and down on the stone floor I knelt…and he signed me with the
cross and blessed me. And when I arose he said ‘You have a long way to go my
son’…and indeed I did, and do, have a long way to go”.
Only in our willingness to
make the journey do we give God permission to mold us and make us new. And
because of the glorious potential in that action, our waiting can be joyful and
our hope can be exciting and transformative. And then, with a catch
of our breath, we will truly know what it means to say with Paul, “Rejoice, again I say rejoice”!
AMEN
The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett,
D.Min.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church