Always Rejoicing

Reading

Luke 3:7–17 NRSVue

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore, bear fruits worthy of repentance, and 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. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” And the crowds asked him, “What, then, should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” 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.” 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 strap 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.

Please pray with me.

In all things and in all times, may we look to you, God of possibilities, and know that you are there with us. Lift our eyes to you and let us always say, Rejoice.

Whew, that’s a lot to process. I think I’m gonna need to get a little bit more comfortable before we take this on. [Take off alb] Happy Gaudete Sunday ya’ll. The day of liturgical pink!

Here at New Hope we follow the four blues tradition for Advent. There are 4 blue candles and a Christ candle on the Advent Wreath. The blue matches our blue paraments. Blue being the color of hope and promise. But other denominations use the penitential color of Purple for Advent because in this time of waiting and anticipating the coming promise of Jesus, we can concentrate on self-reflection and contemplation. If you use purple, the tradition is that the Third Sunday in Advent is Pink or rather rose in color because it is a lighter hue signifying joy in the midst of the season.

Gaudete Sunday. Why do we call it Guadete Sunday? Because of Paul. In the second reading today, Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he say, “Rejoice in the Lord ALWAYS; again I WILL SAY, REJOICE.” In Latin, “Gaudete in Domino semper. Iterum dico: Gaudete!”

What was Paul talking about to the Philippians when he wrote these lines. What was going on? As Paul writes to the church in Philippi, they are undergoing persecution from the local authorities. The Romans didn’t understand Judaism and they most certainly didn’t understand the Christians which they thought of as a strange version of Judaism. They had a difficult time understanding how these folks could believe they way the did and still be Roman. It was all quite countercultural. So Christians got the blame for all manner of things from the government.

They were also experiencing conflict inside the church with disputes among two prominent leaders in the church. So there was pressure from the outside and dysfunction on the inside and Paul says, Stop! Rejoice in the Lord. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Greek here for gentleness is epiekis, which is a really rich word that doesn’t translate really well into English. It encompasses justice and forbearance as well as gentleness. The Greeks themselves described epiekis as, “justice and something better than justice.” So let your kind, gracious application of justice be known to everyone. Let them see a Christian and let them admire how even tempered and honorable and kind and gentle they are. See how they care for each other even as they have disagreements.

The Lord is near, Paul proclaims to them. Just as in our Advent Season where we anticipate the coming of the Christ child, Paul is telling the Philippians that Jesus is returning soon. He impolores them to find great joy in this knowledge that all the injustice and suffering will come to an end when Jesus comes to establish God’s just kingdom in the world.

So then he tells them not to worry about anything, but to pray, ask God for guidance, and be thankful to God. It is always a transformative thing to stop and take stock of what we have to be grateful for. If you stop for a second and think about it, the blessings are embarrassing. Even in the hardest of times there are things in our lives that we can give thanks for: a dear and loving friend, a spouse, the singular affection of our favorite pet, the ability to walk, wonder, and explore the world, the chance to get up and do living for another day. We could go on for hours making our lists. For all of the toils that trouble us everyday there exists just next to them the things that give us life and joy and if we lift our cares to God, if we give what troubles us to the loving creator that made all that is, we have more space to consider the wonderful things that are all around us that make our lives better and more interesting and more survivable. That’s not to say ignore the broken things. We still have problems and troubles to work on but they need not weigh us down, because worry never solves anything. It just takes the joy out of life.

If you spend time in prayer and thanksgiving, Paul tells us that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Guard our hearts and minds.

It’s remarkable that as Paul writes this HE IS IN PRISON! All of this talk of casting off cares and praying and trusting, this massively uplifting passage of scripture was written by a person rotting in jail. And yet, Paul is full of Joy, Hope, Peace, and Love. Here is another crazy tidbit. Scholars suggest the the word “guard” in this passage, because of its placement and usage might very well have been suggested to him BY HIS JAILERS. Paul, always the evangelist, was so powerful and insistent in his faith and sharing it with others that his jailers were helping him! Regardless of the gravity of his circumstances, Paul trusts in the Lord and keeps doing the gospel work of the Lord. The setting was immaterial, the faith in Christ and the gospel work was always Pauls comfort and motivation.

How does God guard us. How does Jesus protect our hearts. How does an unsophisticated carpenter from the back country of Palestine do anything for us? Because that carpenter, we will find out in another week and some days, was the incarnate word of God made flesh in the universe. That is the most amazing thing, that the God that created the Vastness of this universe cared so much about these squishy little meat suits called people that God would give up God’s cosmic otherness to be a mortal feeble human.

Vastness. It is hard for us to understand the scale of all things. We lose sight of how big God is, how beyond our understanding God is. [HOLD UP BALL] This is earth. If this is earth, then the Sun is about about the width of this chancel and down 1092 at the Dove Country apartments before you get to Tornado Burger. Mars would be a little smaller and down the street the other direction at the iStorage facility. And Neptune would be about two feet across and in DOWNTOWN ROSHARON 14 miles down the road. Scale that up to actual size it it blows your mind.

And this is just a tiny insignificant solar system in among billions of stars in billions of galaxies. Brain freeze! Cannot compute. Error 404! Blue screen. It’s completely beyond the tiny finitude of us. And yet, that God became one of us. Lived with us. Loved us and ultimately suffered death on a cross to fully unify with our experience and in doing so lifted all of us into redemption. In the suffering on the cross, Jesus, the incarnate manifestation of the cosmic God that is beyond time and space, identified THEN and identifies with us NOW and will identify with our ancestors to come in all of the suffering we experience in this life. Suffering big and small. God suffers with us. Thus even in our suffering we can look to and see God. We can lift our own weekness and frailty to God and say I can’t do this. And God says take my hand and let’s do this together.

When we give all things to God, Paul then tells us that the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, all of our ability to comprehend, to even imagine, will keep our hearts and minds protected from the crushing harshness that can be the pathway in this life.

In that peace we find joy. Not happiness. Happiness is fleeting. That is one of the great failings of our culture today is that a lot of people think that being faithful and grateful means being happy all the time. If you are happy all the time you probably should see a councilor. It’s not normal. We all have ups and downs, twists and turns, wins and losses, triumphs and tragedies. Happiness only follows the good news but Joy carries us through the bad. Joy leads to Hope. Hope leads to peace. Peacefulness allows us to love. All of the Christian attributes of Advent interconnect and flow from the joy we have in Jesus Christ.

The Gospel reading today is a wild ride. People called vipers and snakes. Sinful people finding a wild crazy prophet screaming for baptism and preparation for the one that is to come. There it is again. Waiting and preparing. Waiting and preparing for the just gentle kingdom of God to come. But what do they do in the meantime? John tells them to start by being decent people, doing the right thing by each other. Treating each other with justice and then something more than justice.

There is a lot of fear in the world today. It is one of the driving forces of our culture. There is upheaval and persecution and infighting and arguing today just like there was for the Philippians 2000 years ago. And just like 2000 years ago, with prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving, we give it over to God. The God who knows our suffering and walks with us through valley of shadows, who is united with us and gives us the peace that surpasses all the things known and unknown so that we can live into the joy that frees us be the just and loving servants doing the justice of God’s way in the World. Hope, Peace, Joy and Love be yours this advent season, Christmastide and in the new year to come. Gaudete in Domino semper. Amen.