December 15, 2024 – The Third Sunday of Advent
Zane Scaarlett
The season of Advent is meant to be a penitential time with a somber tone as we watch and prepare ourselves for the arrival of Jesus as both baby and as Messiah. But today is different. On the Third Sunday of Advent, we lighten up a bit to rejoice in that anticipated arrival. Today is called Gaudete Sunday, Gaudete being Latin for rejoice. So the rose colored vestments and Advent wreath candle. Our Old Testament reading for today says “Rejoice and exult with all your heart …The Lord has taken away the judgments against you.” The Canticle reads “with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…Shout aloud and sing for joy.” And Paul’s epistle says “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, Rejoice.” Then there is the Gospel with John preaching what sounds like a Gospel of fear with fire and brimstone. As they used to sing on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others. Did they make a mistake when they put this Lectionary together? With that in mind, what is John up to down by the riverside?
Last week we heard that the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah in the wilderness and he went to the region around the Jordan River and preached baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. When that word of God came to John, he didn’t just listen, he acted, he did something about it. As Mother Mary put it two weeks ago, he was willing to get his hands dirty. John followed the word of God, and like others who act on God’s word, he was changed. He was no longer John the son of Zechariah; he became John the Baptizer. John was in the wilderness when the word of God came to him. I like to think of this as the wilderness of his mind. He was confused, lost, unfocused in his life. John was the son of a priest, he was part of the privileged class, and he had been taught in the ways of the established beliefs such as that sinners were to be shunned. But if they are shunned and not allowed to be a part of the religious community, how can there ever be any hope for them. And John was all about hope. Like many of us, John was searching for that something that was missing. Hearing God’s word can provide clarity, direction, and meaning, it gives us new understanding and purpose. John allowed himself to be changed by God. Many of us are afraid to change, so we may hear the word of God and choose to ignore it. Or we can ignore our fear and allow God to act in our lives. That is repentance. That is what happened to John. He came to know his purpose was to prepare the way for the Messiah and the salvation that was to come. He had a mission, but he did not really have direction as to how to achieve it. Make the road level and straight and smooth? What does that mean? Maybe the best way to prepare the Lord’s path was to prepare the people for their path to the Lord. So John preached to the people that they needed to repent, and the people were eager to hear it. You see, these were poor, oppressed people. They believed that God had forgotten them because they were sinners and that their poverty and political oppression was punishment for not following God properly. And their religious leaders did not give them hope. They needed to be led out of the wilderness. John wanted to lead them on that straight and level path that would lead them to the coming Messiah. John told them that they COULD be saved. Repent and be baptized. Wash away the guilt in the river. And the people loved it. They came in multitudes to hear this and to be baptized. But were they really hearing the word of God in a way that changed their lives?
Saying you repent and being baptized is easy. It is like magic words and ritual, and we are always ready and willing to try the easy formula for success. This idea will do until the next one comes along. This makes us like those squiggly, squirmy vessels of venom that John called a brood of vipers. If things are not working out over here, we will squirm away and go over there. If anyone has an idea we disagree with, we are ready to spew our venom and hate. To make us ready for the Messiah to come, we have to truly repent. We must be willing to let God change us and to cut out that self-centered, self-serving, get-ahead-in-life way of thinking. That is our wilderness life. That is the wilderness of OUR mind. That is where we must let the word of God come to us so that we really hear it. And that is where we must allow the word of God to change us. We must allow God to take the axe to our roots and completely and truly change us by chopping out that old way of thinking and throwing it into the fire so that we can never go back to it.
Being baptized in and of itself doesn’t mean your life is changed. You have to show your repentance in the way you live your life. Being baptized is just the beginning. What do we do while we wait for the arrival of Jesus? The people asked John what they should do. It is a question that keeps being asked. Remember the rich young man who asked Jesus what he should do? I think we still ask that question. John’s answer and Jesus’s answer were the same, it is the answer that we still must hear – share what you have. Pass along the love that God has for you. John said to bear good fruit. I would call your attention to a new photograph on the counter in the Narthex. It is a photograph of a family with their new home that this church helped pay for and this church helped to build with Habitat For Humanity. That is good fruit. Bear good fruit that shows your understanding of God’s love. God’s love for you, but also God’s love for those around you. God will give you enough love and more to spare, and if you realize that other’s needs are just as real as yours, give away all the love you can. By doing that, you are helping to make the pathway straight and level for the coming of Jesus.
It is an easy answer, but I know that it is hard to put into practice. Life gets in the way. Concerns cause us to keep our attention on ourselves and overlook the needs of others. We continue to fail. John said that the coming Messiah would bring judgment with a pitchfork. He will separate the wheat from the chaff. The chaff will be thrown into the fire. Luke’s gospel goes on to say that with many other exhortations John preached the good news. Wait, what? Is this judgment good news? Did the multitudes hear this as good news? Do we hear the good news here? Why do we say today to rejoice as we wait for the arrival of Jesus the Messiah and His judgment? Remember that the wheat and the chaff are parts of the same plant. The good and the useless are parts of the whole. I like to think that God is able to separate those bad parts of me and get rid of them, while gathering the good fruits into his kingdom. And look, it says that the fire that the chaff is thrown into is an unquenchable fire. That fire has the capacity to take all of my bad that Jesus can throw at it. Jesus will keep forgiving me as I keep failing. God made us, God understands us, God loves us. As our Old Testament lesson from Zephaniah reads “The Lord has taken away the judgments against you… He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will renew you in His love.” That is good news that should cause us to rejoice. Again I say, rejoice. Jesus is coming.