Between noon and three

This sermon was preached at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, on the Third Sunday of Advent, December 15, 2024.

Collect: 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; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Ecce Deus (Canticle 9), Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-18

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

“Sing aloud, O daughter, Zion, rejoice and exult with all your heart!” “Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.” “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice.” Except for the Gospel, our readings today all sound the clear note of rejoicing. They are full of so much joy that when we heard the Gospel just now, I started to suspect that John the Baptist must not have gotten the memo. 

“Rejoice greatly, Rejoice, Rejoice always;” and John says, “You brood of vipers!” He urges the people to turn away from their besetting sins: tax collectors from greed, soldiers from extortion, the rich from hoarding. And he goes on, with images about axes lying at the root of trees, the unfruitful being thrown in the fire, the Messiah coming who will baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit and fire. It comes as almost a bit of comic relief to hear St. Luke conclude, “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.” Good News? Really?

On the face of it, our lessons stand in stark contrast to one another. But on further examination, they’re really not so far apart after all. For John, the good news is that a new life is in fact possible, that turning away from greed, extortion, hoarding, and other sins does not lead to a diminishment of human life but to an enlargement. For Paul and for Zephaniah, the same is true: that despite our many sins, God has chosen for us not justice but mercy; and in his mercy,  created a new society, a new humanity.

In many ways, explicit and implicit, the season of Advent makes it clear to us that all the good news, all the prophecies, all the exhortations to joy and hope, all coalesce in the person of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God — so his coming birth is an occasion of great significance, a feast of high celebration and thanksgiving, that opens our eyes, opens doors of possibility beyond whatever confines or constraints we currently experience. This is the reason for so much happiness and joy in our readings and in the Christian celebration of Christmas.

But if you’re like most other reasonably normal human beings, all this is frequently more difficult than it sounds. Despite the great theological depth and nuance of what Christmas celebrates, our wider culture seems to take the holiday as an excuse to tell us all how to feel: How many seasonal paper coffee mugs are plastered with words like “joy!” and “peace on earth!”? And how much incessant jangling muzak everywhere you go implicitly demands that we put on a smile and look the very picture of holiday cheer as the price of admission to polite society? 

Newspaper editorials, political speeches, and advertisements are all full of mysterious references to “this time of year,” as if we all just understand that this is a time to pretend that serious disagreement doesn’t define our public life, that long histories of abuse and neglect simply take a vacation right about now, that the hospitals aren’t full and mom isn’t an alcoholic, and dad isn’t dying, and I can get away with neglecting my health for a little bit longer. All this just gets swept under the rug in a collective decision to go stark raving mad, fa la lalling all the way — and if we don’t consent to the madness, or happen to face some inconveniently timed personal crisis, then the implication is we “just haven’t really gotten into the spirit of the season yet,” and well-meaning friends think all we need is a peppermint spice latte to cheer us up.

If this is you this year, or if this has ever been you, then I’m delighted to tell you, the Church, anyway, is not here to tell you how to feel, at Christmas or at any other time. Well that’s a relief, you might say, but then why go to so much trouble telling me to rejoice all the time? Or, for that matter, telling me to repent? It sounds like you want me to feel good and then bad, or maybe it’s bad and then good — either way all the back-ing and forth-ing makes me seasick.

And the Church replies, Yes! This is exactly the problem: as human beings we are captive to our emotions, desires, wants, and fears; captive to the up and down rollercoaster of our hearts, our material needs, and the attention economy by which modern capitalism runs. The Gospel we preach is a Gospel of freedom: freedom to move and be shaped according to the goodness of God, and not according to the myriad ways we have learned to shame, manipulate, or coerce certain responses out of ourselves and our neighbors.

That may not sound like much of a difference, but it’s really critical and quite profound. The Church’s exhortation to rejoice at the coming of the Savior is not a command to put on a happy face, no matter your present pains or anxieties. Rather it is to suggest that the Kingdom of God is built of deeper, more lasting architecture than my own condition at any given moment. And, further, that in this deeper, more lasting architecture, even my present pains and anxieties, by some great mystery, have some coherence: they are not detractors, not evidence to the contrary, rather they sing in harmony with God’s peace. And whether I feel like singing or not, that this is cause for joy. If I cannot now take up the song, then it will be waiting for me when I am ready, And when I do finally open my mouth, I will discover that I have indeed been singing all along.

Because — and this is a yet deeper mystery — as human beings, as the world was created, our natural state is not the neutral posture of dispassionate observation so beloved by scientists, judges, and journalists alike. Our natural state is rather one of continual joy and wonder at all that God has made, at the heights of beauty of which creation is capable and the dazzling complexity of human personality and ingenuity; to rest in a loving thankfulness offered in praise back to God. 

The Gospel we preach, the Gospel Christmas celebrates, makes it possible to affirm that even grief and loss have been visited by Emmanuel, God-with-us, and that by his touch they blossom and grow in ways we cannot begin to guess or control. Freedom in Christ means, among other things, a restoration to this natural state of rest, where wonder and love comes as easily as breathing, and peace is deep enough to hold and encompass every pain and anxiety.

So, on this third Sunday of Advent, whether you welcome or resist today’s many exhortations to rejoice, I pray that at some point in this coming Christmas season, a door opens for you, from whatever your present circumstances may be to the wide world of grace and love which God has placed at the root of each soul and every created thing. That in whatever narrow place you find yourself, the horizon begins to grow and new possibilities emerge of forgiveness and faith, just as the one born in the manger will rise from the dead and break every chain. And, that something of your self will be restored to you, which perhaps you did not know that you had lost.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.