Third Sunday of Advent 2021

 

Lectionary readings: 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 has taken away the judgements against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more.’

Zephaniah 3:14, 15

‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’

Philippians 4:4-7

‘As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. 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.’

‘So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.’

Luke 3:15-18

On the Third Sunday of Advent, the Church remembers John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus, and in keeping with this, the readings set for this day are full of joy. Luke quotes John as saying, of Jesus, that, “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.” Good news, right? Well, yes, it is. Really good news. Here’s why.

This is an image taken from the harvest, when a local community gathered in the grain that would feed them until the harvest next year. Grain is composed of a nutritious inner heart, the kernel, and a protective outer casing, the husk. Some of the grain would be set aside for planting, to produce next year’s harvest; and the husks would prevent the grain from rotting in the barn. But the husk is inedible, and before you can turn the grain into flour for making bread, must be removed. This was done on a threshing-floor, a flat area of exposed rock. Grain would be poured onto the floor, and a threshing-sledge dragged back and forth over it: a heavy wooden bar with iron teeth on the underside, pulled by animal-power. This process broke the husks open. Then someone would take a threshing-fork and throw the grain into the air. The heavier kernels would fall back to the ground; and the light husks, now known as chaff, would be blown away by the breeze. Not far, but far enough to sweep off to the side, and pile up for fuel for the fire. Waste not want not. So, this is an image of Jesus separating the husks from the kernels. But what has this to do with joy? As it happens, everything.

The American professor of social work, Brené Brown, states, “When we lose our tolerance to be vulnerable, joy becomes foreboding.” When we lose our tolerance to be vulnerable, joy becomes foreboding. Brown continues, “In moments of joy, we try to beat vulnerability to the punch, by dress-rehearsing tragedy.” What does she mean? Joy is an intense, overwhelming emotion. Those of us who are parents may have experienced joy as we look at our sleeping child. Or perhaps you have experienced joy looking up at the night sky, or when you come upon a particularly pleasing tree, or on seeing old friends for the first time in a long time. But we need to be vulnerable to experience joy: it cannot coexist with anything defensive such as cynicism. Yet we all know what it is to lose our tolerance to be vulnerable. We’ve all been hurt, and perhaps you reach the point where you promise yourself that you won’t allow yourself to be hurt again. We all have our defence-mechanisms against vulnerability, and the cost of that, Brown notes, is that we reach a point where joy becomes foreboding. That is, the moment we experience that intense joy emotion, our response is to contain it. To say, it won’t last. To imagine losing the thing that has given rise to that joy.

There is a neuroscience to foreboding, or the fear of disaster. The more we go down that path, the more well-worn that path becomes in our brain. There is nothing that gives me greater joy than being with my wife, Jo. We are such a good fit, we often have the same thoughts at the same moment, join in to finish one another’s sentences in unison, and laugh at the simple wonder of it. And when Jo is out longer than I expect, I find myself literally pacing up and down the room and wondering how long it is reasonable to wait before calling round all the hospitals to ask whether there has been a serious accident on the A19 and if she is lying on a resuscitation table with a crash team fighting to save her life. It bears no connection to reality, causes me anxiety, and tempts me to withdraw when I am with Jo so that it won’t hurt so much if it happens—though the real tragedy is that nothing can protect you from the loss of a loved one, and pre-emptive withdrawal only robs you of the present. And you can laugh at me, or feel sorry for Jo, but such scenarios are played out in countless minds.

And I am really glad that Jesus comes to break open the protective husks of the grain of my heart and mind, that he gathers up the kernels of joy, and that he has an unquenchable fire so that the chaff is consumed and need not blow grit into my eyes and the eyes of those around me. That really is good news.

There is also a neuroscience to joy, and it is possible to disciple the brain by habitual practices, to enter more often and more fully into the joy Jesus hopes for us (on the night he was arrested, he prayed that the joy his disciples knew might be made complete). Again, Brené Brown notes that those people whose lives are joyful have one thing in common: they regularly practice gratitude. Not some vague ‘attitude of gratitude,’ but actual, concrete disciplines, practices, such as writing down three things each day for which you are grateful; or going round the family at the dinner table and everyone sharing one thing they are grateful for today; or asking friends on Facebook to share something they are grateful for this week. The apostle Paul had a gratitude practice of praying for the churches he knew, calling to mind—with his travel companions—specific people and specific things about them that he was grateful for. And then he wrote letters to let them know he was thinking of them, with deep gratitude, and, therefore, great joy.

Gratitude is the threshing-sledge that breaks us open to vulnerability and transforms foreboding into joy. As we choose to be grateful, Jesus is then able to step in with his winnowing-fork, dealing with the chaff, the defensive mechanisms, the trust issues that prevent us from knowing joy made complete. So, if you want to know the joy of the Lord, take up a practice of gratitude. Try one you like the sound of, or which you think might work well for you in your life right now and give it a go, between now and Christmas, and see how you get on. And then, perhaps in addition to writing down three things every day that you are grateful for, or whatever it may be, you might choose to pause, any time you experience joy, and, instead of catastrophising, respond with gratitude: thank you, God, for this moment, for this sunrise, for this person in my life; I’m grateful for this gift.

I say this not as an expert witness who has got it all worked out, but as one who needs to hear the good news, yet again, on this Third Sunday of Advent as we prepare ourselves for Jesus to come in glory. As one who has habitual patterns of thought that need re-wiring, but who knows that this is possible, by the grace of God and the wonder of the mind and the decision to follow Jesus and be a disciple, to live a disciplined life, a joyous life. Come, Lord Jesus! Amen.