3rd Sunday of Advent: Cycle C 21-22
THIRD ADVENT OF SUNDAY
Zephaniah 3:14-18a | Philippians 4:4-7 | Luke 3:10-18
Oh God, who see how your people faithfully await the feast of the Lord’s nativity, enable us, we pray, to attain the joys of so great a salvation and to celebrate them always with solemn worship and glad rejoicing. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.
That piece of music always draws me into a source, a source that I believe is in me and in you and in all of us, where I go, and I say, “What does all of this mean? What are you trying to teach us? What are you trying to say to us with these images, these strong and powerful images that we just listened to?” And what’s interesting about this third Sunday, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, is that there is this image of a time when we are engaged in something that is lighter, more interesting in the sense of igniting in us a confidence that we should have in our relationship with God. There’s something really interesting about human nature. When we think about divinity, we tend to think of this great distance between a God who created us and who we are, these human beings filled with all kinds of jealousy and envy and anger and sexual needs. If we don’t wash we don’t smell good, all this kind of crazy stuff about how imperfect we are, and yet in the Psalm, there’s a wonderful phrase that is there that says that we should sing to praise the Lord for his glorious achievement — his glorious achievement. What is the glory of God’s achievement? The world, existence, nature, animals? No. No, the greatest thing that God has created, and I say this because he has revealed it to us, the greatest thing that he did was to create human beings. It was an adventure for him, an exciting adventure to create something, and the thing about it that I think we should always pay attention to, it’s the only thing that God created, when he looked at it, he said, “This is a reflection of me. This is who I am, because I’ve made these people in my image and likeness.” Nothing that God created was created in his image and likeness. We’re like God. He’s like us, and it makes total sense that we have that image of a God who has created something not equal to him in any way, shape or form but like him enough that a relationship of intimacy is possible, because that’s the whole core direction I see that the God that created us, from the time of Adam and Eve until this present day, has been engaging us in an adventure with him so that he can say, “I want to have a relationship with you where it is transformative, not informative but transformative.”
It’s amazing how we can take religion and reduce it to something so much less than it is, and there’s an image in the gospel that helps me explain what I mean by that kind of statement, because John the Baptist was considered by many to be the Messiah. He was the one that was coming into the world to save us. So they were paying close attention to everything that John was saying, and he kept saying, “You need to change. You need to go through a transformation of some kind.” And he said, “We’ve got to understand that the real challenge of living on this planet, with a God who is revealing himself slowly to us, is to understand something about forgiveness.” Forgiveness, he was onto something that was core. He was talking about the importance of a baptism of forgiveness, and what is the main topic that Jesus came into the world to discuss? Forgiveness, the awesome belief that the God who created us has come into the world, after having a long relationship with us where we’ve been judged and found wanting and been corrected, and through pain and suffering of our choices. And then we lose God’s relationship, it seem, and then he comes back to us when we turn back to him. And that whole Old Testament story of distance and closeness and distance and sin and regret and all of that, it’s all loaded in there, which leaves us with a kind of understanding of the distance between humanity and divinity.
But that’s all about to change, and it did change with the coming of an incarnate God. He radically changed that relationship so that we can’t go to the Old Testament and learn much about the kind of relationship we’re supposed to have with the God that created us. We have to focus on the New Testament, and look at the image of the old to the new in the person of John the Baptist. He’s the pivotal point between the two. He’s the link between Old and New Testament, and what is it that you could see in this gospel that seems to imply that John is part of the Old Testament? He’s talking about a new birth, a new baptism, a new way of seeing things. He’s talking about a coming of someone who is going to turn everything upside down. I don't know that John understood completely what it was all going to be like, but he certainly knew that he was the one to announce it and he wasn’t the one that they were waiting for. And so you see something in the way in which his ministry was flowing, because he kept talking about a new way of existing with people, forgiving them for their faults, loving them more, all of that. And so when people came up to John and said, “All right, if you’re the Messiah, tell us, what are we supposed to do? What is it we’re supposed to do?” And look at the advice that he gives. It’s so interesting. He gives advice to three groups, in a sense, to the average person that comes up and says, “What am I supposed to do in this new world you’re creating for us?” And he said, “Well, the thing you should be doing is loving. You should be caring for each other.” Now, that’s so core to what we understand Christianity to be, but in the Old Testament, it wasn’t about caring for everyone. It was about having an exclusive membership in a club that was called the temple, and you did things as the temple taught you to. And you followed every regulation, every rule, and you didn’t have much freedom and choices. But your main task was to do what you were told, and so still we see, in the person of John the Baptist, someone who is acting like the temple, telling people what they should do.
It’s like you go to a church, and you listen to a homily, and sometimes a homily sounds like a lesson on what you should do as far as homework between this week and next week, telling you things to do. And that’s not what Jesus is about. He’s not the one that comes into the world to tell us what we should be doing. We’ll get to what he’s really doing in just a minute, but let’s look again at this advice. The first thing, to the ordinary person: do something that takes care of your brothers and sisters, and then for those of you who have a position of a little bit of power over people, you have something you market, something you make, something you do, whatever you do, stop charging more than is prescribed. Don’t be greedy. And the soldiers asked him, and they have real power over people. And he said, “Whatever you do, don’t use this power to abuse someone. Don’t do extortion. Don’t use your power over someone to get something from them, and be satisfied with who you are and what you have.” Those are all really good, solid advice, and then he goes on to say, “But there’s something more coming.” And what he says is coming is the most important thing for us to understand to understand what it is about this Sunday that says we should be joyous, because what he’s going to begin to talk about is something that God is going to reveal to us that was never there before, and it’s going to be radically transformative.
And let’s go back to the first reading and realize that one of the things we were saying is that, when this Messiah comes, one of the things he’s going to do is remove all judgment against us, and he’s going to turn away our enemies. No more judgment against us. What is it most of us struggle with when we think about our relationship with God? That we’re not good enough. The sin of Adam is right there in our face. When he wanted to become just like God and he didn’t want to have to do anything other than the things that he knew were right and wrong, he was wanting an autonomous relationship with God, and God is saying, “No, I want an intimacy with you. I want you to depend upon me, and I work in you, and we will change the world.” And so the one thing he’s saying is coming with the coming of the Messiah is no more judgment, no more condemnation. You know where most of our condemnation comes from? It’s that inner voice, that critic that chews at us all the time, especially at 3:00 in the morning. That’s got to stop. It’s got to end.
And then the next reading, it’s clear that the next thing that he’s saying about this world that Jesus is going to establish is that there is this wonderful thing that he’s going to do, and that is he’s going to take away all of our anxiety. No more judgment, no more inner critic, no more anxiety: that’s the promise. If that is true, if that is what God is asking, we find ourselves in this place of self-criticism, criticism of the way the world is working, why God isn’t doing more. If we start realizing this anxiety that eats away of us, if we realize all of that is what God came to take away through this person Jesus, then we have to say, “What is it I need to do? Do I need to be nicer to other people? Do I need to be less greedy? Do I need to be all these other things we might think that we’re told to do?” No, those are not things you’re supposed to do. They’re things you’re supposed to become, and the difference is you don’t discipline, through your mind and your will, yourself into the person that God wants you to be. It’s not about behavior modification. It’s about transformation. That’s why John the Baptist says, “Look, I’ve come to baptize you with water. It’s a cleansing of the outside of the cup, so to speak. I’m reminding you of all the things that you could be, should be, and yet I know that somehow I am not the one who is — or this process I’m using is not the way in which you’re going to be changed. The way you’re going to be changed is that there’s something that will happen to you that’s like fire and spirit.” Something is going to be burned out of you, and something is going to be infused inside of you. The critic is burned out of you. Judgment against yourself is burned out of you. Anxiety is burned out of you. In its place comes this incredible spirit that’s so delighted in what he’s created that he wants to share in it in the most intimate way of saying, “I want to come inside of you, live in your heart and be the source of the things we need to do together,” totally different than the Old Testament.
I think it’s so interesting that, when we think about this image of being purified, we have to realize that this is something that is not within our capacity, to purify ourselves, but to simply say, “I cannot become the person I am called to be by doing what I’m told, but I can do it if I allow something to happen to me, if I allow someone to enter into me and to do the work for me.” And one would think, “Oh, that’s so much easier than struggling to do it on your own.” No, it is so hard to do, because it means we have to let go of the most basic weakness human beings have of this need and desire for autonomy, to be on our own, to be self-sufficient. It’s so clear that there’s a thing inside of all of us that would say, “I’d rather be in charge of my life than somebody else being in charge of it.” And it’s not that we give it completely away, but we do have to allow someone to enter into us. It’s like living with someone when you’ve lived your life alone all the time. And they’re going to have their opinions and their direction, and it’s going to be very unsettling. Intimacy with God, I wish it was easier, because I know how effective it is, but in my whole life as a priest, I resisted it, resisted it and resisted it and wanted to be just the one who takes care of everybody and does what’s expected of them. And that seems like, “Well, that’s enough, isn’t it?” No, it’s not enough to do your best by thinking through what you should be and trying to be that. No, the thing you need to do is surrender to the realization that the only way you can be who God has called you to be is to allow him to enter into you, dwell within you and slowly, patiently, lovingly, convince you that nothing you can do is ever going to separate you from the joy that God has in you as a creation. He made you exactly as you are, and he delights in it. And when you discard it, when you say it’s not worthy, when you say it’s no good, you’re insulting the one who created you.
So what are we asking — what is God asking us to do then? Well, it’s called love. We have to love God for who he is, allow him to enter into us, trust him that he’s not going to destroy us but bring us into fullness. We have to love everything that God has created, our neighbor, but most especially, we have to love ourselves, deeply, deeply appreciate the uniqueness that we are and not listen to the critic in other people or in ourselves. Instead, listen to something that is stirred inside of everybody by this amazing experience called the descent of the Holy Spirit into the world, not just into the world, into your world, into my world. That’s a brave and courageous and risky thing to do, yet it’s the only way that we can make this transformation from the old to the new, from a place of excessive responsibility of who we are to acceptance of everything that we are, both the good and the bad, and allowing a loving Father to be the source of guiding us through the most exciting transformation that anyone could ask for. Everything in us that’s chaff, that’s lies, that’s nothing important he burns out, and he saves everything that is life-giving. That’s not about separating sheep from goats. It’s separating illusion from truth. Amen.
Father, your love for us is hidden from us by our own misunderstanding of who you are and why we’re here and what this whole world is about. If we are the greatest thing that you’ve created, if we are your crowning glory, then we should be having enormous reverence for exactly who each of us are and know that we’ve been damaged, and we’ve been hurt, maybe, throughout our life. Maybe we’ve inherited that from another, earlier generation, but whatever it is we’re struggling with, we should never, ever imagine that the brokenness that we experience is a turn-off for you. It’s a turn-on, and you want so much to bring us out of darkness into the light, into love, into self-acceptance and into allowing you to transform us. And we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.