Advent 3 2024
Today is the third Sunday in Advent, known as Gaudette Sunday. I like it because we light the pink candle, and pink is my favorite color! Advent in the church is supposed to be a somber, reflective time where we prepare ourselves and our souls for the coming of the baby Jesus but today, we take a break from that somber mood and find great joy in our Scripture readings. Well, that’s mostly true…
In our first reading, Zephaniah, the prophet, praises God and tells the people to rejoice and exult, to be in high spirits, to leap up even. This prophet offers words of encouragement, jubilant hope and joy to a people living in turbulent times.
Next, we read together the song of Isaiah, beautiful words of praise for all the great things God does for us. And then, in the short reading from Philippians the apostle Paul reminds us twice to rejoice. He says, "Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, Rejoice."
Then we encounter the cheerful prophet John the Baptist, with his harsh, jarring words, "You brood of Vipers." Not exactly welcoming words for the crowds who have come from miles away to hear him preach! After all the beautiful, joyous words in today's opening scripture passages we get, "You brood of vipers." It’s like running into a brick wall, we're stopped dead in our tracks. But he obviously held the attention of the people for no one left, in fact, tax collectors and soldiers joined the crowd.
He chastises these people who may think that because they are Jewish, they are favored by God, and there is a lot of scripture that would bear this out. But John makes clear that having Abraham as an ancestor doesn’t make a bit of difference. They don’t have favored nation status anymore in God’s eyes.
There is great urgency to his harsh preaching: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the tree and if it doesn’t bear good fruit, it’ll be chopped down and thrown into the fire.” Yikes! I bet the crowd is terrified by this point, asking ‘are we bearing good fruit? Are we going to be chopped down?’ But they don’t leave. Instead, they ask: “What then shall we do?”
John’s answers seem rather mild, even a bit lame. John basically tells the crowd that they need to be kind (“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise”), be honest (“Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you”), and to work hard and don’t be a bully (“Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”).
Be honest, be kind, work hard. Really John? That’s the whole deal? We learned that when we were little kids. If we do these simple things we’re not getting thrown into the fire with that useless tree?
Apparently, according to John, the answer is, yes! When we follow Jesus, every part of our lives is affected. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, not when we do huge, public good things but in the simple daily acts of sharing, being honest, working hard and not being a bully.
This advice that John gives is all about justice and he tailors it specifically to each of the people asking for guidance. John doesn’t issue vague, general pronouncements like, “Try to be a decent person,” and “Don’t be awful to other people.” He speaks directly to the lives of these people and tells each of them how to live the right way. John tells them how to do justice right where they are, now, in their own lives.
This justice starts very small, one act at a time. How do you treat your family? How do you treat your boss or your teacher? How do you treat the cashier at the grocery store? How you treat these people is how you treat Jesus.
These things sound simple but imagine what it would be like if our politicians and leaders, at all levels, followed these rules. What would it be like if everyone in the world just tried a little harder to follow these simple urgings?
John tells his crowd that he is just the one preparing for the REAL guy who is coming. He says: “I baptize you with water; but the one who is more powerful than I is coming, and I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.”
Now listen carefully to the next, scary part: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Again, I say, “Yikes”. Remember that to process wheat in those days, it was vigorously thrown up into the air on a windy day. The good stuff, the wheat, settles back down but the bad stuff, the chaff, gets blown away. I’ve always disliked this verse because it sounds like God is such a tough judge, throwing people up into the air and separating the good from the bad and burning the bad ones up.
What about this? What about if the wheat and the chaff are all inside of you? Each of us has our good sides and our bad sides. Perhaps this verse is not about separating the good people from the bad people but separating within each of us the chaff that needs to be burned away so that the wheat of our lives may remain.
I’ve been thinking about this all week and looking into my soul, into my life to identify that chaff that needs to be gone. I’m very impatient. That’s chaff. I spend way too much time looking at my phone. Big chaff. I can be quite judgmental. More chaff. I need to work on all of these! I encourage each of you to think about this within your own lives. How can God help you to burn away some of the chaff in your life?
God helps us to clear out the bad and hold onto the good. With God’s help, we can make ourselves better people. We can try harder to be honest, be kind, and work hard.
It would seem like such a small thing if we just left church today determined to be just a bit kinder, more honest, harder working. But according to John, and Jesus, there are no small gestures but rather contagious acts of kindness and honesty that really do make a difference in the world. There have been good studies showing that when you treat another person with kindness, they are more likely to also treat others with kindness.
We face a world that is full of distress and one can feel helpless in the face of this reality. All we can do is carefully tend our own little corner of the world. And, with God’s help, we can make a real difference. When we do so, we make God joyful. Rejoice! Again, I say, Rejoice!