Third Sunday of Advent 2018

Zephaniah 3:14-20 and Philippians 4:4-7 and Luke 3:7-18

‘Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! … The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.’ Zeph. 3:14, 17-18a

‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.’ Phil. 4:4

Today is the Third Sunday of Advent. The moment of light relief in the season of aching and longing for Jesus to return. The week when, if we are using three purple and one pink candle in our Advent wreath, we light the pink candle: the lighter, brighter hue. Gaudete Sunday: the Sunday when our readings from the Old Testament and from the New Testament Epistles exhort us Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice! [Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus ex Maria virgine, gaudete: Rejoice, rejoice, Christ is born of the Virgin Mary, rejoice] And the Sunday when we hear, again, the good news as proclaimed by John the Baptist.

Our reading from the prophet Zephaniah is an incredible piece of poetry, that speaks of great and glorious reversal. The Lord has taken away the judgements against his people; their enemies have been turned away; the fear of disaster, ended; actual disaster, removed; reproach, spared; oppressors, dealt with; the lame saved; the outcast gathered-in; shame changed into praise and renown; exiles brought home; fortunes restored. Why would a community not rejoice at such a proclamation? And yet, at the very heart of it all, something even greater: that God’s people are invited to rejoice because to do so is to join in with the Lord who rejoices over them.

These words have an original historical context, but they have survived, passed down to us, because they still speak to us. In the context of Advent, they remind us that, at the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in his sight—not through any merit of our own, but because God’s righteous and justified judgements against us have been taken away by the same Lord, through the victory over death of Christ who opened wide his arms for us on the cross. Who sings over us on a day of festival.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” writes Paul to his sisters and brothers in Philippi. Writing from prison. Writing, hoping to be released and reunited with them on this occasion, but understanding that sooner or later faithfulness to the Lord Jesus will mean that he, Paul, will die in a similar manner. Rejoice, in the face of trials, because the Lord is near. If you listen closely, we might even catch the strains of his singing.

“You brood of vipers!” said John to the crowds that came out to be baptised by him, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Strong words. Can’t we just have Zephaniah? Well, if we take Zephaniah as a whole, there are plenty of words as strong and stronger there. His message begins, ‘I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, says the Lord,’ as he proclaims the coming judgement on Judah, first, followed by judgement on all the surrounding nations; on Jerusalem, and all of the peoples. This is a process of judgement, of purification and restoration. A process of separating the wheat from the chaff.

John doesn’t speak to exclude the crowds. He would spare them ruin. And the crowds understand, and respond, “What then should we do?” There is a necessary outworking of repentance, of this great reversal. As the Dutch priest Henri Nouwen put it, “You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.” There is a new dawn, a new day, to be lived into.

Today is a moment to raise our heads. A moment for the weary to find our strength renewed by the joy of the Lord. For those whose love has run out to find ourselves renewed in his love. For those who have been brought low to find ourselves raised up by his singing.

Why is this moment given? Because tomorrow we must return to the upheaval of the new thing the Lord is doing in our midst. We must attend once more to marking the fears of imagined disaster we need ended for us. We must attend to making room for the outcasts being gathered-in, and the exiles being brought home. We must attend to the removal of our mantles of shame—and we have a wardrobe full—and the putting-on of garments of praise. There are things to be done, in response, in order to live our way into a new kind of thinking. So today, we rejoice at the resources given us. Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus ex Maria virgine, Gaudete.

The work of the people, in response to these texts:

What reasons do we have to be joyful?

How do (or, how might) we as a community express joy?

As a society, we live with well-rehearsed and regularly renewed fear of disaster in relation to Brexit. How might we speak of the Lord’s declared intent to end fear of disaster?

What oppresses us today?

Who are the outcasts in our context, and how might we as a church live out the prophetic action of gathering them in?

Guilt refers to a sense that we have done something wrong. Shame refers to a sense that who we are is somehow wrong, that there is something fundamentally wrong with our identity. Where do we experience shame? And where have we experienced shame changed into praise?