Zephaniah 3:14-20
3:14 Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!
3:15 The LORD has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more.
3:16 On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak.
3:17 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
3:18 as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it.
3:19 I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.
3:20 At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the LORD.
Isaiah 12:2-6
12:2 Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.
12:3 With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.
12:4 And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted.
12:5 Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth.
12:6 Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
Philippians 4:4-7
4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
4:5 Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.
4:6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
4:7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Luke 3:7-18
3:7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
3:8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.
3:9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."
3:10 And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?"
3:11 In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."
3:12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?"
3:13 He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you."
3:14 Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
3:15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,
3:16 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.
3:17 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."
3:18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.
Our text today actually comes from Walter Brueggeman, in his comments on wisdom:
And it has left us with deep anxiety that seeks scapegoats along with the zeal to dispose of the others if necessary by violence.
That's it. That's all we need. That one sentence, about the roots of the anxiety of our age being sunk deep in the false wisdom of the world, the wisdom that thinks wealth and power purchase wisdom. Why then, aren't we wise? We are wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice; so wealthy we think we are still poor. There's a wonderful scene in the recent BBC re-telling of the Dracula myth (it is modern myth by now, having long ago transcended Bram Stoker's work). Dracula has "slept" for centuries, to "awaken" in the present day. He confronts a soon-to-be victim in her modest English countryside home, and tells her he's lived in castles and dined with kings, and if they had what modern life provides (TV, refrigerator, stove, easy access to plenty of food, comfortable furniture, bedding, warm dry house, a car to take you anywhere with the least effort on your part), he assures her they would never leave the house. Who would? Of course she knows he's a monster about to kill her, and his words make no sense to her. But how true! What a perfect perspective on all the mod cons (as the British say) that we so take for granted they aren't enough!
Why, again, aren't we wise?
The reading from the gospel of Luke is a bit ironic for today. This is Gaudete. In the Advent wreath, it's the pink candle, indicating a day of joy and rejoicing in the four weeks of preparation for Christmas day. Advent is sometimes considered a "little Lent," because in the church it's not all snowflakes and jingle bells and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town ("You'd better watch out!"). It's solemn preparation for the solemn event: "Christ is born." Except Gaudete, which is supposed to be cheery, a little relief from the gloom of winter and Advent preparations of the soul. What's cheery about "brood of vipers" (sons of snakes) and chaff being thrown into unquenchable fire? Is that us? Are we the chaff?
O, if only we had some wisdom!
I will venture into deep waters here, and offer the proposition that our national and social and cultural and even individual problems today, are problems of the spirit, fundamentally. I don't mean the "human spirit" generally, or the Holy Spirit specifically. I mean matters attended upon the fact that as much as we are material and emotional and psychological (even sociological, if that's your framing) creatures, we are spiritucal creatures. And we are not very good at recognizing it.
I don't mean "woo-woo" spirituality and I don't mean Holy Roller spirituality. I mean we are spiritual as well as social as well as familial, creatures; and we neglect that aspect of our lives terribly. No wonder we don't shout aloud with Zephaniah or draw water from the wells of salvation with joy, as Isaiah says we will. We don't know how. We don't understand. Water is a substance, wells are holes in the ground, joy is for...buying something? Getting the gift of something? Obtaining a little bit more of whatever material good we don't yet have? If we are truly material creatures, and that is all we are (as Dracula was, in that portrayal of the character), why are we not as content as fat Buddhas? Why are we so miserable? Why are we so anxious? Why do we "seek[] scapegoats along with the zeal to dispose of the others if necessary by violence"? Because it's apparent some not insignificant portion of us do. Or at least we make death threats as if we do. Or we complain on the internet; or just go home to our families and take it out on them. Where we teach our children well; not what we actually mean to teach, but we teach them well anyway. And what we don't teach them, is wisdom; because we have so little wisdom ourselves.
I'm not preaching doom and gloom here. I'm not saying we're damned and corrupted and our only salvation is Jesus Christ. Frankly, I don't even know what that means. I understand various notions of soteriology, but "salvation is in Christ" is not a simple concept, and I won't try to peddle it as the answer to anything. Like the famous Peanuts cartoon, where Schroeder walked by with a sign proclaiming "Christ is the answer!", followed by Snoopy equally solemnly carrying a sign that asked "What is the question?" I'm not proposing "spirituality" is the answer to our questions, either. What I am proposing is that, unless we understand there are spiritual issues which require spiritual understandings, we are spinning our mental wheels.
If only we had some wisdom.
If you go back to John, there, he sounds frightful; real fire and brimstone stuff about trees not bearing fruit getting cut down and tossed in a fire. Sounds like hell, doesn't it? Sounds like damnation of souls? But how could it be? Even in Luke's time (after the crucifixion, long after the days of John), no one in his audience would have that concept in mind. So did Luke mean Jesus was coming to separate the damned from the saved? Or was John speaking more metaphorically, the way the young especially do (I remember when I did), about a life with meaning? Somerset Maugham wrote about a life of meaning, using a character based loosely on Christopher Isherwood, a book that was probably one of the triggers for young people of means to travel to India in the '60's, seeking "enlightenment." They sought it partly because European Christianity had effectively crushed the life out of its heritage of Christian spirituality (but that's another discussion). Young people today want to "make a difference," want to save the planet from global warming, or society from hatred for LGBTQ+ and any person not considered "white." I recognize the desire; it was mine, too, 50 years ago.
It still is. But the solutions are spiritual as much as they are legal or political. The solutions can come from seeking wisdom. In Christianity and its roots in Hebraic scripture, Wisdom comes from God. Indeed, it is an aspect of God. When John declares Jesus the Logos in his gospel, he means Jesus is how we know the wisdom of God. John uses the Greek concept of Logos; but he means as well the Hebrew concept of sophia. O that we had some wisdom! But we do; we do.
Consider John and the burning trees. Are those souls facing damnation? Or just obstacles being removed by the new, by the one who is coming to make all things new? Is John threatening his audience with death? Or with obsolescence? And not so much obsolescence as merely inconsequence? Who, after all, wants to live a totally inconsequential life? Do you remember the words of Dylan? Because they could be the words of John, here:
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'
...
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'
...
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'
That's John's message. Not eternal damnation, but being left behind, because something new, something completely new, something revolutionary, is coming. Or, we would say 20 centuries after John, has already come; is already here. If only we have the wisdom to perceive it. Our anxieties, our fears, our need to place blame, are all misguided. The line has been drawn; the old road is rapidly aging. Is that terrifying? Is that disturbing? Well then, on this Gaudete Sunday, I leave you with this; and with the prayer that it may be unto you, according to your faith.
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.
Amen. Which is to say: let it be so with you, and among all of you.
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