Something to be joyful about?
121612 Advent 3c
readings
Isaiah reading filled with joy….Philippians tells us to
rejoice always…then Luke’s reading, all that judgment and doom and gloom and
ending with this is good news.
Really? This good news John preached
got him imprisoned then beheaded. Good
news? This weekend of all weekends? The candle of joy in the advent wreath shines
faintly as anything but joy wreaks havoc with the lives of 27 families in
Connecticut. Something to be joyful
about? Really?
So many of us on Friday, and since, have been driven to TV
and radio and social media….some of us were even driven to our knees,
to weep
and wail
to wonder and wait
John the Baptizer came on the scene as a wild man, reminding
the people then of the fragility of their surface society, as did that wild man
on Friday. Perhaps as with John, the
wildness and fragility draws us back to the God-who-comes, the Advent
God….the God who confronts and judges as well as comforts
Let’s look at this awful text on this awful day, first in
its CONTEXT, the where and who of it.
John doesn’t come into the comfort of the churchy temple places, he
comes in the wilderness, the unsafe and unsettled places….outside the
comfortable. Today, that’s good news.
And who comes to hear him?
In Luke’s version it’s the outsiders, the misfits: the poor, the
criminal tax collectors, the mercenary soldiers…apparently no-one is beyond the
reach of God’s call
Today, that’s good news.
And then the CONTENT, the what of John’s message…repent (remember
Chris’ sermon last week about changing, literally, one’s mind?) and prepare
Repent, this isn’t being sorry for something you’ve
done wrong; many of us are pretty ok at that.
Repent means to DO something to make sure you never do it again. It’s an action, often a repeated, habitual
action until its ingrained and the brain IS literally changed as Chris
said. Those people listening to John
knew that’s what it meant so they ask, so what do I do?
Practice sharing
Stop exploiting
Quit
warmongering for gain.
Ouch.
And prepare. Get
ready to be judged. The God-who-comes,
the Messiah, isn’t a warm fuzzy. You
think my message is tough?
This one who’s coming is going to sort out the wheat from
the chaff by that old winnowing activity (explain)… and then we get all that
fire language that the Church has used badly over the years to suggest hellfire
burning. This is not about hell fire for
the unsaved after they die. This is about here and now in our encounters
with the God-who-comes.
Fire is a purifying element.
Jesus is born, God comes, over and over and over in all of us, to sort
out what’s worth keeping in me, and to toss aside all the rest. A painful process, but a healing one.
One writer I read this week said whatever is based in Christ will survive the fire, what isn’t is
burned up…. And this is good
news? Yes, because we know two things
from our deepest spiritual life experience:
judgment is for our ongoing good and growth and the one who judges is the one
who loves us the most. (John Petty)
Remember who God is.
God is Love. Today, that’s good news.
First to go in the winnowing process has to be this image of
God out there somewhere, who chooses to interfere or not, to let stuff happen,
or not….the God who is being evoked all over the place at the moment. That God image is Chaff to be blown away or burned.
God’s presence is in here, not out there. God’s activity in
the world depends on OUR activation of that Presence/Love. Wheat to be gathered and used to nurture a
starving people.
We ask what kind of world it’s become that Sandy Hook can
happen (really assuming that “they”, whoever they are, have made it that
way). We really ought to be asking
ourselves what kind of world have WE allowed this to become by our failure to
act for good and God as strongly as
others manifest evil. Especially at this
especially sweet time of year, when the power of Good does seem strong, we
should not be surprised that the power against good is also strengthened.
A couple of weeks ago, Marketta Gregory, newspaper columnist,
wrote about retelling the Christmas story differently. She says, talking about the manger’s
humility, in a way that rings poignantly true this weekend,
Jesus welcomes
everyone, the grieving, the sick, the financially strapped, the less than
perfect and the far from perfect…..Angel, please continue to tell the good
news. Light up the sky and invite people
to come as they are to Christmas…
Everyone means the angry families of Newtown
Connecticut and Fairport NY, those whose Christmas has been stolen from them by
a rampant gunman, and those whose children die every day from malnutrition or
poverty or preventable illness, but whose deaths don’t evoke our compassion or
action or prurient fascination….today that’s good news for them
and Jesus welcomes
everyone means us too, those of us who haven’t yet allowed the Advent
God to judge us into the kin-dom, who
still need to learn to
Practice sharing
Stop
exploiting
Quit warmongering for gain.
Start activating the Love.
Markeeta’s words also echo beautifully what we heard at the
Cantata last week, words that remind us that God DID come to those places in
the dreadful humiliation of Mary’s pregnancy,
in the awful humility of Jesus’ birth, in the dirt and mess of field and
stable….God came then as now, through people, who activated the Love: the Josephs
who said yes in face of all the no’s around them…..the shepherds who left behind the daily to follow an impossible
dream…..the wise ones who kept moving forward in new directions in spite of
political opposition…the Mary’s who “rejoiced”, yes rejoiced in God even in the
midst of a humiliating experience.
Through them, through us if we choose, God comes still. And that’s good news. That’s what lets us
sing “rejoice” and “he has made me glad” and light the candle of joy. Thanks be to the God-who-comes.
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