Isaiah 12:2–6 ESV

“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: “Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted. “Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth. Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

Luke 3:7–18 ESV

He said therefore 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? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And the crowds asked him, “What then shall we do?” And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.” As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. 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 barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people.

I just love this time of year. Everyone is talking about peace and love and kindness.  There’s this sort of warm fuzziness around everything. It’s just cuddly and nice. Unless you happen to be talking to John the Baptist. John the Baptist is not fuzzy and nice. What a funny guy to encounter on the “Joy” Sunday of Advent. “You BROOD OF VIPERS!” he yells at the crowd! The weird thing is that this  crowd was, presumably, not made up of Pharisees or zealots or other radicals. They weren’t the typical group of folks who John and Jesus tended to get wound up about. 

Joy in the Darkness

Joy is often conflated with happiness. We think of it as an emotion, but scripture gives us joy as a way of life. Just like the other three Sundays of Advent: Hope, Peace, and Love, Joy is not just something we feel, it’s something we do. Joy is deeper than just an emotion. And just like the other three, joy is connected intricately to the way we treat others. Joy is a state of our heart, not just our emotions. Joy is something that bubbles out of a heart living in true repentance.

John the Baptist is a funny guy to encounter on the “Joy” Sunday of Advent, but here he is in our lectionary passages today. “You BROOD OF VIPERS!” he yells at the crowd! And then he tells them to start giving away their stuff.

John tells the crowd, “put your money where your mouth is.” “Walk that walk, don’t just talk the talk.” Without the actions of giving, of sacrifice, of consideration of the needs of others, their repentance was just a way of running from the things that frightened them – namely, the Roman empire and hell itself.

John sensed something about these people, though. They didn’t really know what the good news meant. They seemed to know they needed it. They seemed to know that they were in a scary place without this baptism that John offered, but they didn’t really get what repentance was. “Produce fruit.” John tells them. “put your money where your mouth is.” Or “Walk that walk, don’t just talk the talk.” Without the actions of giving, of sacrifice, of consideration of the needs of others, their repentance was just a way of running from the things that frightened them – namely, the Roman empire and hell itself.

John the Baptist is talking here about how to live a joyful life. He isn’t giving anyone the “key to happiness” but he is telling them how to live into joy - which is a different thing entirely. John tells the crowd, “put your money where your mouth is.” “Walk that walk, don’t just talk the talk.” This is where you find real joy - in living into the ways of God.

The people have come to him claiming repentance, but he’s warning them that you can pray like crazy, you can go to worship regularly, but true repentance shows itself by kindness, generosity, good stewardship - the things that not only tap into deep and real joy in our own lives, but share it with those around us. True repentance changes the way a person handles their money and physical assets. It changes how a person conducts themselves in regards to public service and community involvement.

Listen, John says, you are the children of Abraham, but you can’t rely on the faithfulness of your ancestors for your own repentance and security of future. They have spent centuries relying on their status as the chosen children of God and now John rips that carpet of safety out from under them. God doesn’t need them. If God wanted it, the stones would rise up and become the children of God, leaving the unrepentant people alone and without God – tossed in the fire. 

How incredible then, that God doesn’t do that. We are offered repentance: the real repentance that John is talking about. It’s a repentance that is marked by community renewal and revival and rejoicing and celebration and by acts of unbelievable kindness and hospitality.

John says in this speech, if you have two shirts or coats or pairs of shoes and you come across someone who has no shirt or coat or pair of shoes. . . give them one. If you have a hearty meal and another person has no food, share that meal with them. Be fair in all your business transactions and deal with everyone holding yourself to the highest standards of ethics and fairness. Don’t extort or weasel money from other people and don’t bully anyone. Don’t accuse people falsely of evil deeds or even intentions. 

This sounds a bit like John is just giving an ethics lecture at first, but what he’s doing is connecting full transformation – including transformation of ones ethics and values and the deepest state of the heart– to true repentance. True repentance is marked by such vibrant gratitude for the incredible grace given to us by God that we turn around and do wild, incredible, wonderful things for others. Our whole way of being changes – not just our spiritual way of being or our religious practice. 

When we embrace this life of joyful giving and robust generosity, it not only allows space in our own hearts for joy, it passes that joy on to those around us.

The people in this crowd in had out the tools from the “religious” compartment, but hadn’t cleaned out the old rusty tools in their “ethics” or “stewardship” compartments for quite some time.  The problem with storing the pieces of your life in a tool box is that we forget how much they are all woven together. Instead of seeing life like a bunch of pieces, let’s look at it like a tapestry or a cross-stitch project. 

I keep my embroidery thread in a chest of little tiny drawers. It’s all ordered by color – big shock, I know. But until I take it out, it’s just a box of little drawers with a bunch of different pieces in it. It’s not until I take them out and stitch them together into a picture that they become something new. And that’s repentance. A changed life means changed in all ways, because all parts of a person’s life are so deeply connected.

We can’t separate our lives into little tiny compartments full of different things. That’s just not how it works. Our lives aren’t toolkits, they are tapestries. All the different aspects of who we are and what we do are intricately woven together into a picture of you.

We cannot separate our spirituality from our ethics or our stewardship or our values, or any other part of our lives. We can’t just walk out this door at the end of the service and put back the “church” piece into it’s little “God” compartment and move on to something else.  This compartmentalization of our lives robs us of the ability to be a whole person - it steals our joy.

This spirit of giving out of our excess brings joy.

Once upon a time, there was a couple traveling in a foreign land. They didn’t speak more than a half dozen words of the local language and neither of them had ever been there before. They didn’t know anyone in the whole country and they were by far in the religious and ethnic minority there. 

When they arrived at the airport in a tiny town in the middle of the country, they waited at the luggage carousel for their suitcases to pop onto the belt. Many suitcases came and went, but theirs were nowhere to be found. They were in the middle of nowhere in a place they didn’t speak the language and all they had was their id, their money, and the clothes on their backs. 

They were clearly frightened and very anxious. Trying to calm them down, one of the security guards shouted loudly to see if anyone could translate. After a few moments of the crowd looking around at one another and shrugging, a young man stepped forward and said, “I can translate for them.” He led them through the process of filing the claim about their luggage and gave them all the paperwork, telling them to give it to the desk at the hotel and they could help them sort it out. The couple teared up as they thanked the young man and shook his hand gratefully. He smiled and told them he was happy to give them his time. 

When the couple got to their hotel, tired and hungry, and late in the evening, they did as they were instructed and the hotel staff was indeed able to help them figure out when and where they could be reunited with their luggage. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be until the next day. When they asked about finding something to eat, he informed them that at this time in the evening in this small town, all the shops and restaurants were closed. It was a holy holiday and all the town was home eating with their families. Deflated and hungry, they sighed heavily – defeated. 

“Wait wait!” Exclaimed a second man behind the desk. “I know a place! I’m going now! Come with me!” Confused, the couple shrugged and followed him. They were so tired and hungry, they were willing to try anything. He led them to a closed restaurant and in through a side door. They climbed the stairs to the rooftop terrace of the restaurant where the family who ran the restaurant were sitting down to share their holiday feast together. They gladly offered seats at the table for the strange foreigners and served them a four-star, multiple course meal. “Are you sure?” The couple managed to ask, with the help of their dictionary and their new friend from the hotel. “Of course!” they were told. “We have plenty and you are hungry. Nobody should be hungry or alone for the feast day!”

So that night, Tim and I made a whole family of new friends in the middle of nowhere in Turkey. We broke the Ramadan fast by feasting with a kind Muslim family who took us in when we were tired, anxious, afraid, and hungry. We will never forget the kindness of that family and of the young man, Mustafa, at the airport. We were, the next morning, united with our luggage and moved on through our trip. But that night on that rooftop, we learned a humbling lesson about what true giving and hospitality look like. We were shown what it looks like to share with those who are hungry. We were shaken out of our comfortable American mode of always having enough and in that place of vulnerability, we saw God moving in a very surprising place – a Ramadan feast.  That was the most joyful moment of that whole trip - that evening when we were shown such incredible generosity and kindness.

In retrospect, I wish we’d kept in touch – gotten some contact info to email Mustafa and the rooftop restaurant family. I would like to thank them for their unhesitant generosity. I would like to ask them if they need anything now in the midst of the flood of refugees fleeing Syria into and through Turkey. I would love to tell them we’re still praying for them and thanking God for them – these kind people who took in a couple of weird Christians on their holy day. But sometimes, we are called to give to people we’ll never see or hear from again just for the sheer joy that comes from loving God’s creations. Sometimes, giving is totally unplanned – someone just literally showing up on your doorstep with nowhere else safe to go or nowhere else to find food or shelter or warmth. And that’s the most powerful sort of giving. That’s the kind of fruit that John is talking about in . 

It is not just a matter of ethics, it is a matter of repentance. It’s not just a matter of willing ourselves to do the right thing, it’s a matter of living into joy so that it spills over into how we interact with all those around us. It is a matter of living in the grace that is given to us in Jesus Christ. It’s a matter of embracing the unexpected joy that comes from following God’s commands to be kind and generous to all people. We don’t just give a little sometimes because that’s what makes us nice people. Don’t just talk about joy, LIVE JOY: Be someone who sees someone hungry and doesn’t just give them dinner, but gives them dessert too. LIVE JOY: Be someone who doesn’t just toss a little change in the offering plate, but who truly invests in the future of their community. LIVE JOY:Be someone who doesn’t just pray for the families who don’t have much but who buys gifts for them.

Joy, pastor. I thought you were talking about JOY today.

LIVE JOY.

I have not been sidetracked, dear ones. This is where joy comes from. Joy doesn’t come from the stuff or the way people greet us, it comes from participation in the Kingdom by living Christ-like lives.