Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent, December 15, 2024

Zephaniah 3:14-20+Canticle 9+Philippians 4:4-7+Luke 3:7-18

I am unable to come to this Third Sunday of Advent in Year C of our lectionary cycle without remembering the first time I preached on these readings. It was my last year of divinity school in 2012, and I was invited to preach at the church Tim attended while I was away and where we had deep connections going back a decade. The rector knew I would be home on break, and so in the midst finishing up papers and studying for exams, I wrote what I thought was a pretty decent sermon about rejoicing and John the Baptist and headed home for break on Thursday, December 13, giving me a couple of days to settle in before Sunday. On Friday, December 14, however, I started receiving messages from friends in Connecticut about other friends doing their internships in Newtown. And then the news feed began to flood with images and reports from Sandy Hook Elementary School where, we would learn, 20 six- and seven-year-olds and 6 adult staff members were gunned down. The gunman, having also killed his mother earlier in the day, died by suicide at the scene.

How does one preach about rejoicing when there are 28 people dead in a tiny Connecticut town?

How does one preach about rejoicing when twenty beloved children who had been looking forward to the winter holidays with their families were suddenly gone, many of them unidentifiable because of the damage from the high-powered assault-style weapon used in the attack?

How does one preach about rejoicing when, for the next dozen years, certain media types will make a fortune off denying that it ever happened, that it was all a great conspiracy?

How does one preach about rejoicing when our trans neighbors are in danger of losing medical care?

How does one preach about rejoicing when a killing on a subway and an insurance executive being gunned down are both celebrated but by very different constituencies and for very different reasons?

How does the prophet Zephaniah go from a detailed list of grievances God has against the people of Judah and suddenly come to

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
shout, O Israel! 

Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem! 

The Lord has taken away the judgments against you,
he has turned away your enemies. (3:14-15a)

How does Paul write to the Philippians to "Rejoice in the Lord always" when he himself is sitting in a Roman prison?

Well at least we have good old John the Baptist to relieve the relentless calls to rejoice as he thunders at the people - not just the leaders but those who came to seek him out for baptism. It is all of them that he calls a "brood of vipers" (3:7). Nope, no rejoicing here.

Or is there?

"So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people" (3:18) - this is how our reading today ends. Good news.

When the crowds claim an inheritance as children of Abraham as if to make their case that they are chosen of God, John as much as points out to them that it doesn’t matter how long they've been members of All Saints Church or that their parents are buried in the churchyard of such and such a place, or that their grandmother gave the money for the stained glass window above the altar. No, each of us is expected to bear good fruit, whether you walked through those doors for the first time today or your family has been around so long that your ancestor's name is inscribed on one of the windows.

The people want to know what it is they are to do. Share your food. Share your clothing. You don’t have to give everything, just that extra coat and the food you don't need to survive.

He doesn't even tell the tax collectors to stop collecting taxes, just to be fair in their dealings. And the same with soldiers. Go on and do your job, just don't make life harder for everyone around you by cheating and violence.

He then deflects their assumptions that he might be the Messiah. Nope, not me. The one who is coming is more powerful than me, and he will expect even more of you.

That sounds a bit like "wait 'til your father gets home" said by a mother weary of trying to get the children to behave.

And at first, that's what John seems to be saying, but when he talks about clearing the granary floor and separating the wheat and the chaff, I'm not so sure we can read that as one set of "good" people being the wheat and those other "bad" people being the chaff. Maybe we are all wheat and chaff at the same time. In fact, I know I've got both the good stuff and the not-so-good stuff warring within me sometimes, and I think that's true of all of us. Part of being human is to be a bundle of contradictions, and hopefully it's the wheat - the good stuff - that we manifest in the world at least most of the time. And maybe Jesus is coming to help us get rid of some of that chaff that holds us back from embracing the abundant rejoicing that he's calling us to.

So, how can we rejoice in a world gone mad?

Because it is into this world that Christ comes. The Messiah did not wait for John the Baptist to clean up the mess for him. John just pointed the way toward the one who was coming. People, get ready.

Trappist monk Thomas Merton summed it up best, I think:

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.[1]

To that, I say along with Zephaniah and Paul and even old John who proclaimed Good News that didn't always sound like Good News, "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say rejoice."

Come, Lord Jesus.

[1] Thomas Merton, “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room” in Raids on the Unspeakable, pages 51-52