Advent VI / 3C: Zephaniah 3:14-20; Canticle 9 (Isaiah 12:2-6);
Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18
The Rev'd Cameron Partridge
December 15, 2024
Cry aloud, inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy,
for the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel. - Isaiah 12:6
Good Morning, St. Aidan’s. This morning our Advent journey has brought us to the sixth Sunday in our extended observance, the third for churches in the more widespread four-week pattern. This penultimate Sunday of the season is known as Gaudete Sunday, from the Latin “rejoice!” As Advent developed in parallel with Lent, Gaudete Sunday became a counterpart to the mid-Lenten “Laetare” Sunday which translates in basically the same way. Both issued an invitation to “‘be glad’ with [a] lessening of the somberness and discipline of the season,” I read this week in a commentary on the liturgical year. Both use “rose” colored vestments to signal the dawning of new creation, redemption, and deep hope amid the gloom. (Apparently when you use blue for your Advent liturgical color, rather than purple, “it is not displaced by rose.”[1] But why? The passive voice did not say. When you can only use rose vestments on two days of the liturgical year, you take your opportunities.) If we take up this call to rose rejoicing with a bit of liturgical rebellion, so be it. Perhaps that spirit is in keeping with the odd combination of readings we heard today: rejoice and exult! (Zephaniah); rejoice in the Lord always! (Paul to the Philippians); You brood of vipers! (John the Baptist). So… Rejoice, you brood of vipers?
It isn’t only the combination of readings today that offer this sense of whiplash. The closing line of our passage from the Gospel of Luke does it as well: “So, with many other exhortations, [John] proclaimed the good news to the people” (Luke 3:18). And what exactly about John’s exhortations was good news, you might have been wondering? John was in the wilderness where the word of God had come to him, as we heard last week. He baptized people with what last week’s passage describes as a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 3:3). As crowds approach him for this baptism, as we heard today, he berates them, saying “you brood of vipers! Who warned [the likes of] you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Luke 3:7) There was nothing in their approach to indicate that they had repented of their ways of being in the world. An appeal to heritage or ancestry would not cut it (Luke 3:8). John was not there to simply give a pass to people who had no intention of changing their ways. He was there to orient people into a new trajectory, and not by sparing anyone’s feelings, either. As the people asked him what they should then do, if their approach on its own was not enough, he replied with concrete, straight-forward suggestions. Those in positions where it was all too easy and common to exploit people – tax collectors and soldiers – should not do that. If you have more than one coat, he said, give one to someone who needs it. If you have more food than you need, share it (Luke 3:10-14). In other words, lift one another up – don’t push each other down. We seek to do this in so many ways here at St. Aidan’s, from the Food Pantry to Diamond Diners and the Thanksgiving Meal to the Christmas giving opportunities listed in our booklet announcements. If all around the globe were to engage such practices, that would be very good news indeed.
But then further, in keeping with John’s prophetic mantle, he announced and prepared the way for the coming of Christ, the one who, we hear, would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire (Luke 3:16). It is fearsome, this clearing of the threshing floor, this separating of wheat from chaff, the grains from their surrounding husks (Luke 3:17). Jesus’ baptismal ministry marks a deeper and more fundamentally re-creative cleansing than the waters in which John stood.[2] And this is why baptism as we practice it incorporates, expects, and proclaims a fundamental turning, new birth into the collective body of Christ, into the life and ministry, the death and resurrection of the One who ultimately declared behold, I make all things new (Revelation 21:5).[3] John the Baptist, the prophetic forerunner, cried out in the wilderness, calling us into the deep challenge of turning and welcoming the coming of the Christ. He exhorted the people amid a Roman Empire suffused with evil, even as clouds gathered. He proclaimed the good news of the world-upending, transformative, and finally hope-renewing ministry that Jesus inaugurated and embodied.
This is where the call of Gaudete comes in: rejoice, not because everything is alright now, not because vipers are somehow vanquished from the world. We know better than that. God most certainly does. Paul says, “do not worry,” in his letter to the Philippians (Philippians 4:6), not because there was nothing to worry about, but because he knew there was. “I will trust in God and not be afraid,” we prayed together in the canticle from Isaiah (Isaiah 12:2), again, not because there is nothing fearful in the world but precisely because there is. John and his prophetic forbears will not let us forget the danger all around us, nor should they.
And as we keep our eyes open, joining John in ministries of preparation even as we receive invitations to rejoice, all of that is founded upon an active posture of trust, as Isaiah intoned so beautifully. Trusting in God places our most challenging emotions into God’s hands: our despair, sadness, fear, and/or anger –– knowing that anger so often covers and channels fear. Our emotions are crucial barometers, worthy of our awareness and attention, and we, like our ancestors in faith, are well within our rights to feel them, whatever their combinations may be. At this season especially, our emotions can be challenging to hold, as our Blue Christmas service this afternoon was created to honor. Amid this acknowledgement, we are finally invited to entrust them in truth-telling faith to the God who receives and welcomes us in the fullness of our humanity, the God who in Jesus Christ promises a renewal, a cleansing so far reaching and deep that we can only begin to imagine it, even as we are drawn to participate in its transformative unfolding. Draw renewed vision and possibility, strength beyond strength, from the life emerging even amid the gloom, the green blades rising on the hillsides, the trickling of the seasonal streams. The kingdom, the dream of God (to use Verna Dozer’s language[4]), in which justice, gentleness and compassion flow, in which the peace of God finally reigns, is drawing near. Hear the promise of God, proclaimed by Zephaniah:
I will remove disaster from you,
so that you will not bear reproach for it.
I will deal with all your oppressors
at that time. (3:18-19)
All who are being cast out by our world, whose bodies are being dishonored by an oppressive regime, whose lives are not seen in the beauty of their fullness. The shame insidiously projected upon our hearts and limbs, all too often by a distorted version of our own faith: in the promise of God, that shame is taken up and taken on, transformed “into praise and renown in all the earth.” In the face of a world that displaces and deports, that relegates people to trash heaps, God proclaims, “I will bring you home.” I will gather you. God will “restore your fortunes before your eyes” (Zephaniah 3:19-20). The God of transformation calls us into a hope beyond what our eyes can see and our ears can hear. God in Jesus Christ draws us into the divine project of renewal, even now. And so today we wear rose, we are invited to claim joy amid the whole range of our emotions, to sing praise to the God for whom nothing is impossible, in whom truly all things become new. Amen.
[1] Philip Pfatteicher, Journey into the Heart of God: Living the Liturgical Year (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), 53.
[2] Justo Gonzalez, Luke: A Theological Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 51-52.
[3] The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Church Publishing, 1979), 302-303.
[4] Verna Dozier, The Dream of Call: A Call to Return (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Press, 1991)
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