Advent 3 – 15 Dec 24

Readings: Zephaniah 3: 14-20; A Song of Isaiah; Philippians 4: 4-7; Luke 3: 7-18.

We continue the story of John the Baptist this week. Every time Libbie and I read of John the Baptist, we think back quite a few years now to Sacramento, the capital city of the State of California. We were at the railway station waiting for our train – we were on our way to Chicago. We noticed on the adjacent bench someone lying down, head on his backpack. He was tall, ragged, unkempt and had a sort of wild look about him. Shortly before the train was due, he got up and went to one end of the waiting hall. He began to preach and whether people were listening or not, his message was one of repentance and doom. We were not called a brood of vipers, but I can certainly remember something about the wrath to come. He was a strange figure, nothing joyful about his message, nothing that seemed like good news. I didn’t get the opportunity to ask him about his diet. The crowds certainly were not coming out of Sacramento. They might have been going out of the waiting hall. And when we got on the train, guess who sat across the aisle me. But that’s another story.

The theme of this, the third Sunday of Advent is summed up in one word. Rejoice! The third Sunday of Advent was once known as “Gaudete Sunday” from the entrance words of the Latin Mass for this day which called on the faithful to rejoice. The colour of the candle in the wreath changes from solemn purple to a joyful pink. Some parishes have, or used to have, pink vestments. Each of the first three readings picks up a sense of joy in anticipating the creative transformation at the coming of the Holy One of God –and there are hints in the gospel as well.

We hear little in our lectionary readings from Zephaniah, one of the so-called minor prophets. Scholarship traces the Book of Zephaniah to the time before the destruction of the temple and the exile in Babylon of the people of Jerusalem. The first two chapters are warnings against idolatry. In the middle, however, the tone changes completely from warning to consolation, a promise that out of destruction there will be renewal and transformation. The people are called to rejoice for the promised renewal. God’s never-failing power to raise up good possibilities from evil circumstances is revealed as the ground of rejoicing. It’s not some shallow or self-centred celebration, but a deep sense of the good possibilities that God has in store – the kind of deep, maybe understated, joy that is the hallmark of the Advent season, the season of the active expectation of the presence of God with us.

The Song of Isaiah was written around about the same time as Zephaniah’s prophecy and addresses much the same themes as Zephaniah. It’s a song of restoration and renewal for the exiles and they rejoice they shout and sing for joy – in anticipation of the fulfilment of God’s promises – which did happen.

Paul encourages the Christian community at Philippi to rejoice – and to go on rejoicing. He has been urging the faithful to press on, and he’s given some dire warnings about the fate of those he calls the enemies of the cross, but he goes directly to rejoicing because, he writes, the Lord is near. There was a strong sense then that Christ would come again soon – a view modified substantially in some of Paul’s later letters. However, Paul’s admonitions about prayer and thanksgiving are timeless. It is by growing in faithful relationship to God in Christ through prayer and worship in our time now that prepares the way for fulfilment and peace. Through prayer, the Philippians will come to know the peace of God that surpasses all understanding – familiar words to us all from the blessing used liturgically on the Sundays after Pentecost. It’s because of the nearness of the Lord, both as goal and as present inspiration and strength that the Philippians are to rejoice.

When we turn to St. Luke to continue the story of John the Baptist begun last week, we encounter something different. I imagine someone was in the habit of calling a congregation “a brood of vipers” wouldn’t get very far at a presentation board meeting these days. Certainly, John has a fiery uncomfortable message. But Luke has a slightly different take on him. Mark and Matthew present John the Baptist straightforwardly as an uncompromising apocalyptic preacher. John in his gospel presents John the Baptist as some kind of visionary who recognises Jesus as the Messiah before anyone else does. Luke retains the apocalyptic approach of Matthew and Mark, but then he does something different. The crowds respond to the call of John the Baptist by asking ‘What should we do?” Luke brings the preaching of John the Baptist into the present lives of those hearing him. What should we do? The same question is asked by three different groups of people – the crowds, the tax collectors and the soldiers, all representing different constituencies if you like. The general population, the collaborators, and the ruling authority. And to each of them John has a specific instruction. The ordinary people are to share the essential necessities of life, represented by clothing and food, with those who have little. The tax collectors are to collect only the prescribed amounts – everyone knew they lined their own pockets. The taxation system depended on greed. And the soldiers are ordered not to extort money from the people over whom they exercised the power of a conquering military authority. It was common practice for them to supplement their meagre wages by extortion. John tells them to be satisfied with what they have. These instructions for good and ethical living, notes the American commentator William Willimon, hardly seem like the actions of radical repentance. Not at all the same as separating themselves from society to live pure lives in the desert, preparing for the coming battle between darkness and light as some think the strange group called the Essenes taught John to do – many think that John came from the Essenes. Luke seems to be more concerned with transforming relationships in this present life than with continuing the apocalyptic theme. He seems to be more concerned with how people live their lives now, than with the destruction of the world, or the end of history. The ethical teaching Luke ascribes to John the Baptist is not really an end time ethic, but much more like instruction on how to live good lives within the structures of the world as it is. What John was preaching was a radical change, especially for those represented by tax collectors and the military. He was calling for a shift in relationships from those based on exploitation and coercion towards right relationships for well-being of everyone. For some, it was revolutionary, hence the question as to whether John was the Messiah – something he immediately denies. But John’s answer to that speculation describes a messiah who will come in judgement over everyone, not to win a glorious victory over Israel’s enemies as the popular tradition held.

Luke interprets John’s preaching as good news. This might surprise us even today. Outspoken prophets are no more welcome today when they attack established power structures as John did. We even look askance at essentially harmless people trying to speak of repentance in public places. One of my own heroes of the faith is, I believe a neglected Anglican saint. I’ve spoken of him before. His name was Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy, known as Woodbine Willie for the cigarettes he handed out to the troops in the trenches of World War 1 France. After the war, he became a real prophetic voice in England of the 1920’s racked as it was by unemployment and poverty. He became a champion of the poor – but he upset people. He once wrote “Nobody worries about Christ as long as he can be kept shut up in churches. He is quite safe there. But there is always trouble if you try to let him out.” When he died in 1929, aged 45 and exhausted, he was refused burial in Westminster Abbey. When the request was made, the then Dean of Westminster is reported to have said “What? Studdert-Kennedy? He was a socialist!” He was buried in Worcester, thousands attended his funeral and veterans threw not flowers, but packets of Woodbines as the hearse passed.

So, what should we do? Well, firstly rejoice! Rejoice that even in what may seem to be the worst of circumstances God can be with us to recreate and renew, to bring good possibilities out of bad. Secondly, however, to be able to recognise the presence of God with us we need to be continually working on our relationship with God – attending to things that deepen and strengthen that relationship – prayer, study of the scriptures, worship and so on. It’s difficult to recognise God with us if God is some distant figure. And thirdly to demonstrate by the quality and depth of our relationships with each other and with an unbelieving or indifferent world that being Christian does make a difference – to examine ourselves and our relationships – to put aside things that smack of exploitation or coercion and move towards generosity, mutuality, love, justice – things that with the impetus of the coming of the Messiah with his winnowing fork will in time remake our world from the inside out.

Advent gives us the chance to do all these things – and that is indeed good news.