Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent, Year C

Text:   Philippians 4:4 (with reference to Zephaniah 3:14-20 & Luke 3:7-18)

As most of you will appreciate when it comes to preparing for worship each week one of the things a person has to do is look at the readings for the Sunday and think about how they shape the worship for the day:   songs, sermon, prayers.   So two or three weeks before a given Sunday I try to look at the readings for the day…

…and then every once in a while you get a set like those for today:   “Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!”   “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!” and then… “You brood of vipers!   Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

And you have to stop and think.   Somewhere along the line the church fathers thought that these three readings would make a nice “set” for the third Sunday in Advent.   Somewhere along the line the Spirit moved his prophet and apostle and evangelist to put them together into the one book—into his Word to the world.

It’s no wonder, really, that ‘the world’ sometimes thinks we Christians must be mad—preaching “joy, joy, joy” one minute and then really “sticking it into people” the next.

Is that what Christian repentance is—a form of spiritual ‘knocking joy on the head’?   Is that what Christian hope is—a spiritual ‘feel good while you can because in the end the truth is going to come out’?

One of the things that we need to think carefully about when we hear the preaching of John, or read the exhortation of Paul, or sing the prophesies of Zephaniah, is that these words were first spoken into a context that was not thought of, initially, as deeply personal and internal.   These were words that were about changing nations, shaking up the whole world.  

“What should we do?” the people ask when they hear words that suggest something ‘eventful’ is about to take place.   “What should we do?”—a question that we place today in mid-December, in the middle of the silly season leading up to a day of feasting and gift-giving—and it evokes in us a response of “I don’t really feel like doing much of anything….”   “What should we do?” sounds much different…say…on the day after the 11^th of September in New York, or the day after the 6^th of August in Hiroshima, or on any number of days for cities and nations around the world when the thoughts are about life-changing events that might just happen—could just happen even to us—out of our control—“What should we do?”   What if the world would change?   What if my world would change—not just inside here, but around me—out of my control—not by my plan—and yet it would still be my world, and I would still be in it….?   “What should I do?”

“Rejoice!” is what the prophets would say.   “Rejoice!” is what John would say—repent and rejoice!   And do them in the same action!

You see, the “turning away” of repentance is not a turning this way and “No that’s not quite right”…so try turning that way and “That doesn’t seem to make much difference”…and if I keep changing directions surely I must end up facing forward at some point….

The “turning away from sin” of repentance always implies turning “to the Lord”.   Repentance is not really an inward action, but a belonging to God’s very real and dynamic saving action—for the world.   When John says “turn away from your sins and be baptised” he immediately says “and God will forgive your sins”!   When he says “clear the path”, “get rid of the rubbish”, “remove the bumps and troughs and all the obstacles”—he says this because the Lord is coming and “all mankind will see God’s salvation”.

The John who shouts in the desert, “Repent!” is the John who—you know what his name means, don’t you?   The name John means “the Lord is gracious”—this rough, loud, the-world-is-about-to-change-because-the-Lord-is-coming prophet proclaims by his own name, his own being:   the Lord is gracious!

Another way of saying “repent” is to say “turn away from your sin”; and another way of saying “turn away from your sin” is to say “turn to the Lord”—“turn to the one who is gracious”—“turn to the one who saves”—in other words…“Rejoice!”—know joy—because into the world, into your world, is come the Lord who is gracious.

God’s Spirit—even when we are called to examine ourselves—God’s Spirit does not call us to look inward to find something that will help us feel better.   The whole problem with “sin”—full stop—is that it is the symptom of each of us being blindly, hopelessly, impotently curved-in on ourselves.   No, the Spirit, even in the call to repentance, calls us to look in and notice the emptiness so that we look out to the one who can do something about it!   The call to “rejoice” is not to find a happy feeling in oneself—it is a call to see what God is doing around and beyond us.  

Zephaniah says, “Rejoice!” at a time when Judah’s position as a nation was most precarious.   And yet he says “Rejoice!”—not to the political structures or the social order, which were full of rubbish—the world needed a change in direction—but he says “Rejoice!” to God’s faithful people.  Why?   Because “t he LORD has taken away the judgments against you ….the LORD, is in your midst….he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”   Not everything in your world or your lifestyle is OK, people of Judah, but God loves you!

Paul writes to the Philippians “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice….the Lord is near…..d o not worry about anything” (because the Lord is near and you can put your concerns into his hands and let him worry about you ).   [And God is a better worrier than you and I—more faithful—and never panicky, because he knows the plans he has for us, plans for good, not bad, no matter how bad things might look from our perspective….]

When the crowds come and ask John “What should we do?” at his call to repentance—he responds with instruction to people living in a world full of suffering and oppression.   His response to a people under foreign military occupation—and especially to those who have been pressed by one means or another into becoming “part of the system” is—“Change!”   The Lord is gracious.   He is coming and in his coming he changes the order—Grace rules!   So be gracious, like your God, in whose image you were created, (and, he could add for us, in whose image you have been re-created—by grace).

When change goes from bad to good, from imposing suffering to showing care, from excluding to including, from hurting to healing, from hatred to love—this is the direction repentance takes—this is what brings rejoicing into the lives of God’s people.   (And, in fact, into the lives of God’s people yet to be!)

So…people of God:   Repent and Rejoice!   Like John, proclaim with your very being, “The Lord is gracious!”

Amen.