Good News for a New Year
Zephaniah 3:14-20 Philippians 4:4-7(8-9) Luke 3:7-18
Advent is a unique season in the liturgical calendar. It initiates the church’s new year about a month before the world’s New Year. It anticipates Christ’s incarnation – his birth – Christmas – even as the world is intensely immersed in trying to extract value from that celebration.
During Advent, the Gospel readings point us toward the Christ who was and is to come to a people, to be revealed as the chosen one of God. But these readings let us see those people as they prepared for that coming and revealing.
And these readings call us to examine our own role in Christ’s present coming – his coming to a hungry, anxious, fearful world. Throughout this season we hear the Good News that is to help us find true joy in living our ordinary lives even if that Good News shakes our concepts of what is good – what is comfortable and safe, what demands nothing of us…
John said to the crowds… "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee … the wrath to come? … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.
Good news, Gospel, comes in different ways to different folks. But somehow, the Baptist’s exhortations don’t sound very much like ‘Good News.’
Perhaps we need a different perspective than that of the relative comfort of a warm building with carpet and nicely kept pews in a lovely village with the services necessary to life, with the mobility of traveling quickly to larger cities where a wider range of goods and services are readily available, and, for the most part, wealth to easily acquire things beyond what even kings could have imagined a couple of centuries ago, an abundance of food, water, and energy, access to medical care and communications – yes, hard indeed for us to grasp the goodness in the Baptist’s words that announced the One who would come “with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
Yet, if Advent is to have its impact in our spiritual lives, the idea of a soon-coming Lord must light up the darkest place in our lives. We must look beyond the seeming comforts of our culture to the eternally present hunger in our spiritual selves – the hunger that drives much of the consumerism to which we all bow down but is never satisfied by the things with which we fill our lives.
John announced the coming of a light to a nation, a people, who were dwelling in darkness. It is a wonderfully apt metaphor for Israel’s condition at that time. Their zenith, the high point of the shining star that Israel represents, at least in their collective memory, was symbolized by the Great Temple of Solomon. But the ultimate destruction and rebuilding of Jerusalem, their conquest by Alexander, their alliance with Egypt and ultimately their capitulation to Rome represents a descending light.
And so it is that John, in the opening words of his Gospel, would describe Jesus’ advent as:
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.And not surprisingly, the question people asked was, “What should we do?”
When one sits in darkness for a long time, light is terribly uncomfortable at first.
Spiritually speaking, we have been in the dark, blinded by the gods of our age, for such a long time, that we have forgotten how to live in the light and our question should be, “What should we do?”
How do we prepare for the light?
John’s reply is, I think, a high point in the annals of preaching -- very down-to-earth, practical:
"Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?" He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
For years I read this in the obvious sense as being addressed to individuals caught in the ordinary occupations of humankind, occupations which seemed to lend themselves to abuse and to maintaining the status quo of Roman power. Then I realized that God is also speaking to the greedy, judgmental, power seeking, and abusive shadow side of myself, of all our selves as individuals.
The extent to which I deny my need, claim self-sufficiency, or protest my innocence on legal grounds, for the Pharisee or lawyer in me – there is no hope of redemption – I have cut it off.
But to admit, to embrace the dark side of my soul, and lay it before the Lord – to ask, “What shall I do?” -- is to find hope, strength, and freedom. It is so easy to deny that imperfect part of myself, but John Baptist brings Good News indeed when he says that I can come out of my darkness into the light.
No part of who I am -- the loving, comforting, sacrificing self AND the selfish, fearful, greedy, dominating self – is refused a place in God’s kingdom. I can begin to act as though I am a child of God; that I am a citizen of a kingdom in which love and mercy and grace rule over raw power and intimidation and shame. My greed can become the source of sharing, my cheating can be redeemed, and my desire for “power over” can be converted into “love for” others.
But, I ask, “John Baptist, how can I do this?”
How do I turn what I would rather not acknowledge into a source of joy and satisfaction?
“Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us …” I need the power of the Lord to lift me from the pit, to illumine the shadows of my soul, to deliver me and to set me in that place of grace and mercy. And the good news on this 3rd Sunday of Advent is that
· The light is coming to overtake the dark,
· I have been delivered,
· I am a child of God, and
· I am welcome at his table, as are we all!
I must add a personal note here – Gloria and I had a 'conversation' a couple of weeks ago. It began with her statement that she was put off by the responsive phrase in Eucharistic Prayer C, “Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.” She felt that because of the redemptive work of Christ our sins have been forgiven, we have been cleansed, and we are no longer sinners in the sight of God. While I appreciate her understanding of this phrase, I argue that it is more about identification with those to whom the Lord came – sinners – than about the quality or condition of our relationship with God.
Two weeks ago, Edie led us in the prayer of commendation as we remembered Dick Linge in our worship service. That prayer captures the concept of what it means to identify with those for whom Christ came in the words:
Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming.Do not let the Augustinian concept of the fallen sinner demean the fact that God has made you and you and me to be the people of his pasture, the flock of his field, the children of his kingdom.
Barbara Crafton, writing about today’s reading from Luke reminds us that, “We are never reducible to the worst thing we've ever done; no matter how bad it was, there is still more to us than that. The greatest of our sins is not larger than the mercy of God, and the loving power of God is more than a match for our own weakness.”
Paul’s words to the church in Philippi capture the spirit of this Advent lesson well when he writes:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God…
Rejoice.
Dawn is breaking; light is overcoming darkness.
The table is set, come and dine.
That is Good News!
Amen
The Rev. Deacon John Dryden Burton
December 17, 2006