Advent 3C
In the name of God: our joy. Amen.
This really does put you in the Christmas spirit, doesn’t it? It calls to mind the nostalgic feelings of youth. Sitting around the fire with your family in your cozy pajamas… Drinking cocoa… Flickering candles and twinkling lights… And hearing the wild man wandering through the wilderness yelling at people. We always hear about churches putting on living nativities around this time of year. Why don’t we ever hear about live reenactments of John the Baptist?
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!”
But seriously, these words from John the Baptist really do slam the brakes on us, don’t they? We’re getting down into the depths of December, and I’d bet at least some of us are starting to feel the Christmas spirit. It’s starting to feel almost real. And then, along comes John to slow us down, and to make us question what we thought we knew.
All the other readings appointed for today do feel a little more seasonally appropriate. This is the time of Advent that some traditions have typically set aside as “Joy” Sunday. And we do hear that in the other readings. In our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Prophet Zephaniah says, “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! [God] has taken away the judgments against you, [and] has turned away your enemies.”
That sounds like good news! That’s joyful and hopeful.
And then the response in the First Song of Isaiah calls back in kind. “Surely it is God who saves me; I will trust in God and not be afraid.”
The Epistle today even also keeps that same vibe going. Paul, in his letter to the Philippians says, “Rejoice in [God] always; again I will say, Rejoice!”
And then comes John. The disheveled street preacher, wandering through the places where most respectable people wouldn’t dare to go. The people had come to him to be cleansed of their sins – to have him wash them away; to have him unburden them. And like a brick through a plate glass window, he yells at them and starts calling them names.
The thing is, though, I do sort of get it. I do sort of get where he’s coming from. This wasn’t his first day on the job. He had been preaching to the people and calling on them to prepare the way for a new understanding of God – a new understanding that would exist right there, in front of them. A new understanding that would strip down the world that they had always known and plant in its place something better. But they needed to prepare themselves or they just might miss it. And it seemed like maybe the people weren’t catching on.
Once you get past the harsh beginning, though, the essence of John’s teaching really isn’t all that hard to swallow. “What then should we do,” they ask. And his answer is pretty simple. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t be greedy. Don’t abuse people. Do your job – do what you’re supposed to be doing, but do it with kindness; be who you are, but be you generously. Don’t go out of your way to make life harder for people, instead make it a little easier. You don’t have to suffer, but you don’t have to make anyone else suffer, either. Just, try to be a little nicer to each other.
As the busyness of this season heats up, that’s advice I think we could all use. But more importantly, once the nostalgia has faded and once we’ve gotten back to normal, that’s advice that we should still hold on to even after Christmas.
Several years ago, when Michael and I first moved to Kinnelon, we spent our evenings trying to settle into our house and make it a home. We stayed busy unpacking and painting and hanging pictures and organizing where things would live, and all that. It was exhausting work.
There was one evening when we’d been working particularly hard. The TV had been on while we were working – mostly as background noise.
When we finally decided to stop for the evening, we both fell onto our couch, basically unable to move. There was a show on TV that we’d never watched before, and that had become a sort of point of stubbornness for both of us – all of our friends were watching, but we both self-righteously refused. The show was RuPaul’s Drag Race – a reality TV competition show for drag queens.
The funny thing is, we both always appreciated drag as theatre, as a kind of performance art. But I was (and largely still am) unwaveringly against so-called reality TV. So, we both just refused to watch it.
On this particular night, however, we were both so tired that neither of us was willing to lift our arm to get the remote control and change the channel. So, we sat there watching. Before we knew what was happening, we’d become engrossed. Now, all these years later, we’re superfans. We’ve seen every episode of all the American versions and quite a few of the international versions. We’ve seen several of the queens perform live. We even rewatch our favorite seasons again and again. All because we were too tired to change the channel that one night.
The elements of the show shift and evolve each season, but a lot of features can be counted on from year to year. One of the moments that I’ve come to really appreciate is near the end of each season, as we get down to the very last finalists, RuPaul will hold up a picture of each of the queens as a very young child and ask them: what advice would you give to this younger version of yourself.
It's always an emotional exercise. These drag queens know what it’s like to be on the fuzzy end of a lot of lollipops. Very often they’ve been bullied and abused. Sometimes they’ve been cut off from their families. And hearing them call out the advice they wish they had received is a kind of calling to all of us to do better in the ways that we interact with each other.
And, of course, it always makes me wonder for myself – if I could give some words of wisdom or encouragement to a four, five, or six-year-old version of myself, what would it be? I’ve thought about it a lot through the years, and I think if I could go back, what I’d say would be pretty simple. I think I’d just say, “I love you.” I would want to model to that younger version of myself how to love himself – something that sometimes through the years felt a little bit hard.
If you could go back, what would you say to yourself?
The thing is, we can’t go back. We can only go forward. And that’s where John the Baptist comes in. He wasn’t saying we had to reinvent creation. He just said we should do a little bit better. We should be a little bit gentler with each other, a little more kind toward each other.
We can’t go back and give ourselves what we’ve come to know was missing back then, but we can go forward and give it to someone else who needs it. Last Sunday we heard John say: Prepare the way – make the paths easier to navigate, smooth out what’s rough. Fill in the holes and tear down the obstacles. Make way for a clearer understanding of God.
This week, we get some practical steps for how to do that. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t be greedy or abuse people. Be kind. Be generous. Don’t go out of your way to make life harder for people, instead make it a little easier.
We can’t correct the mistakes we’ve been making throughout our history, but we can correct the mistakes we’re making right now. We can’t fix the past, but we can fix the future.
The thing about Christmas is, we tend to think of it as a day. But most of the observances of the church aren’t memorials to some one specific thing gone by – mostly they’re meant to be laboratories for us to practice being more faithful when we’re not at church. Christmas isn’t about remembering that Jesus was born. It’s about remembering that Christ comes to us when we least expect it. It’s about remembering that even the forgotten people among us can help us to know God better – remembering that they can even embody God for us. And it’s about remembering that God loves us so much that God wants to walk alongside us – not just as a distant ruler, but as a fully present neighbor, as a friend and a guide.
And Advent is about shaking ourselves up enough to get that message through the fog that builds up around our day to day lives. John’s words were harsh. But maybe that’s what we need every now and then to clear out the fog. Maybe that’s what we need sometimes to understand more deeply what it means to rejoice, and to mean it.
We are called to rejoice.
Rejoice, because God is near.
Rejoice, because God loves us.
Rejoice, because God is using us to bring purer love into the
world. Rejoice, because God rejoices
over us. Rejoice, because we are
being renewed. Even now, God’s
love is being made new in us, and we are being made new through
God’s love. Amen.
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