Advent 3 (C)
God’s Joy Is Justice
by The Rev. Canon Whitney Rice
[RCL] Zephaniah 3:14-20; Canticle 9; Philippians
4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18
Today is the third
Sunday of Advent, traditionally known as Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is the Latin word meaning “rejoice,” and the origin of this
name for the third Sunday of Advent comes from the beginning of our reading
from Philippians today: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say,
Rejoice.”
Advent is actually a penitential season like Lent, something many people
don’t realize. Just like how in Lent we use the time to prepare for Easter and
reflect on things like our mortality and sin, we do the same in Advent to
prepare for Christmas. Thinking about how much we need Jesus helps us get ready
to welcome and greet him. It makes the contrast between the penitential season
and the major feast leading to a festal season all the greater, and our joy at
Christmas and Easter all the brighter. That’s why we light the pink candle on
the Advent wreath on the third Sunday of Advent. Pink says joy and celebration!
So now that you have perhaps a bit of new liturgical knowledge to pull out
at cocktail parties, let’s take this concept of Gaudete Sunday to our
scriptures. The theme is readily apparent not only in the text for which the
Sunday is named, the Philippians “rejoice” text, but also in Zephaniah, which
begins, “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and
exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!” In our canticle from Isaiah,
we say, “Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of
salvation,” and “Cry aloud, inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy.” So far, so
good. We have got this rejoicing thing down. It is all about Gaudete around
here.
Until we get to our
Gospel, where John the Baptist commits a major party foul: “You brood of
vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?... Even now the ax is
lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good
fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” John! Don’t be such a downer! No
wonder no one invites you to parties. Your living in the wilderness by yourself
is starting to make more and more sense.
So, at first glance,
it’s hard to understand why this is our gospel for Gaudete Sunday. But let’s
look at it another way. Who else might want to celebrate Gaudete Sunday besides
us? How about God? Maybe God would like the chance to be joyful once in a
while. If we take that as a possibility, we have to ask ourselves: what makes God
joyful?
And there is where our
text from Luke starts to make sense. In this gospel, John the Baptist is
functioning as a sort of ethical consultant. People are coming to him and
asking him for advice on how they should live their lives. The crowds ask him
what they should do, and he says that if they have two coats, they should give
one away to someone who needs it. Tax collectors, notorious as a group for
being unscrupulous and exploiting the people they collected from, ask him what
to do, and he tells them to collect only what is owed and no more.
Even Roman soldiers go
to John for advice. That is a remarkable thought, that members of the occupying
army are seeking out this fringe Judean prophet on the very margins of society
and religious acceptability, and asking him for direction in their lives. And
John provides it, freely and very specifically. He tells them, "Do not
extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with
your wages."
So, what can we learn
from John’s words? What principle is John demonstrating to these seekers that
they must embody if they are to do God’s will? Justice. John’s words are all
about justice. They are all tailored specifically to the situation 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 right into the lives and contexts and specific circumstances of these
people and tells them how to live ethically. John tells them how to do justice
right where they are, now, in their own lives.
Often, we think
justice is something huge and sweeping, accomplished only with massive
movements of people and charismatic leaders and negotiations between heads of
state. Justice does often require forces that big to move us past our
prejudices and habits of oppression. But justice starts very small, one act at
a time, just as John the Baptist is preaching. How do you treat your waiter?
How do you treat your boss? How do you treat the cashier at the grocery store?
How you treat these people is how you treat Jesus.
People tend to get
antsy when “God” and “justice” come into the same conversation. We think of
justice as the opposite of mercy, and as full of wrath and condemnation of us
and our sin. John the Baptist is certainly not helping our discomfort with his
preaching this morning. “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees;
every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into
the fire." That sounds kind of scary, doesn’t it?
But we’ve already
learned that justice and joy are partners in God’s kingdom. God is not out to
get us. God is not waiting for us to trip up on some silly sin and then
cackling with glee and hanging us over an abyss. God’s will is our growing up
into the full stature of Christ, becoming capable of partnering with God in
bringing God’s justice to fruition on the earth. So how does God do that?
Well, consider John’s
words about Jesus: “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.” We
often think of the wheat and the chaff as two different groups of people. The
wheat are the virtuous people we wish we could emulate, and the chaff are the
poor clueless sinners that we’re all too certain we’re lumped in with. It’s not
a very hopeful message.
But what if they’re
not two different groups of people? What if we’re all the wheat and the chaff? We’re all wheat, brought
in as part of God’s harvest, and Jesus in his love for us will cleanse and
purify us with his holy fire and burn away those useless things that hold us
down and hold us back from fulfilling God’s will. It may not be particularly
comfortable, but it will be liberating. That puts rather a more hopeful spin on
it, doesn’t it? We’re all a little chaffy, but there is good wheat underneath
those obscuring, besetting sins, and Jesus’ love can burn away all the
obstacles that prevent us from following him faithfully.
This is news worth
celebrating on Gaudete Sunday. This is news worth rejoicing over. This is the
knowledge and the truth that we have the ability to make God rejoice every time
we act for justice—every time we repent of racism, every time we stand in
solidarity with the oppressed, every time we refuse to doggedly hang on to our
own ill-gotten power. And, as John the Baptist tells us, these grand ideas are
brought to life one interaction at a time, one conversation at a time, one
relationship at a time. We might wonder if we have what it takes to live out
God’s justice in the world. Well, Jesus comes to us and burns our chaff away so
that our wheat might be gathered into the granary, to be used to make the Body
of Christ, the Bread of Heaven.
So, the next time you
set aside your own preferences and your own self-interest and act with justice
and kindness, remember that you are making God joyful. No matter how small the
action you are offering of your heart, you are saying to God, “Gaudete!
Rejoice!” And God hears you.
The Rev. Canon Whitney
Rice (she/her/hers) is an
Episcopal priest who serves as the Canon for Evangelism & Discipleship
Development for the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. She is a graduate of Yale
Divinity School, where she won the Yale University Charles S. Mersick Prize for
Public Address and Preaching and the Yale University E. William Muehl Award for
Excellence in Preaching. She has taught undergraduate courses at the University
of Indianapolis and has contributed to Lectionary Homiletics, the Young Clergy Women’s Project
journal Fidelia’s Sisters, and other publications. She has served
as a researcher and community ministry grant consultant for the Indianapolis
Center for Congregations and is currently a member of The Episcopal Church’s
Evangelism Council of Advice. A communicator of the gospel at heart, she writes
and teaches on a wide variety of topics, including rethinking evangelism,
stewardship, leadership, women’s theology of the body, mysticism, and spiritual
development. When she’s not thinking about theology, particularly the
intersection of evangelism and justice work (which is all the time, seriously),
you’ll find her swing dancing. Find more of her work at her website Roof
Crashers & Hem Grabbers (www.roofcrashersandhemgrabbers.com).
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermon/gods-joy-is-justice-advent-3-c-december-15-2024/
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