Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent

I preached this morning at my former home parish (where I still have deep roots and Tim continues to attend). The response to my sermon was so overwhelming that I thought I would share it here.There were a lot of moist eyes in the congregation, and I admit that I choked up a couple of times as I spoke, but at least I now know that one can weep from the pulpit and survive.

12.16.2012

St. Peter’s in the Great Valley

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:7-18

This is not the sermon I had planned to preach today. I had a witty, thought-provoking sermon filled with great amounts of Yale Divinity School erudition to share with you. But that was before. That was before a young man with guns slaughtered 20 children with crayons. It was before this one in a long litany of national tragedies where innocents are murdered for no other reason than that, though they had every reason to believe that they were in the right place, they were actually in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was before people I know and love were practically at each other’s throats over gun control or separation of church and state or the absence of God from schools, as grief expressed itself in anger and judgment because to argue over politics or religion is really so much easier than sitting with the questions: why? how?       

So I returned to the readings for today to see if I could come up with something helpful to say on this 3^rd Sunday of Advent, something to say that would let us gathered here feel more deeply God’s presence in our darkness. And what did I find? 

The prophet Zephaniah proclaims:

Rejoice and exult with all your heart,

O daughter Jerusalem!

The LORD has taken away the judgments against you,

he has turned away your enemies.

The apostle Paul exclaims:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 

And Luke tells us of John the Baptist:

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

Rejoice? Proclaim Good News? Where does one even begin to proclaim Good News in the midst of such grief and loss? When I reread the lectionary for today, I wondered: why can’t I preach on John’s text that says, “Jesus wept,” or Matthew’s, “A cry was heard in Ramah…Rachel weeps for her children?” And then I prayed, a lot. And then I remembered.

The prophet Zephaniah was a contemporary of Jeremiah, and life was not exactly pleasant for them. The northern kingdom of Israel had fallen a century before and they could see on the horizon that Judah was about to undergo the same fate. An invasion from the north threatened to wipe them out, and after a long recitation of woes upon the people, Zephaniah then says what we heard this morning – yes, all these bad things are going to happen, but don’t be afraid. God will not abandon you and will bring you home. So sing aloud and rejoice. God is here, even in this darkness.

And Paul? He was in prison when he wrote his letter to the church in Philippi. In his lifetime, Paul had been beaten, tortured, shipwrecked, and imprisoned, yet he could still write some of the most beautiful words in all of scripture:

 

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 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 what about John the Baptist who did nothing but go around yelling at everyone? Notice, though, that John did not go into Jerusalem to call people names. No, he’s the hairy, smelly dude living in the beat-up Volkswagen bus down by the river. To get yelled at by John the Baptist, you have to go to him!

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’d go out of my way to find this guy. Why would anybody?

Well, I think you would have to be pretty desperate, wouldn’t you? When the world feels turned upside down, tragedy strikes an elementary school, and none of it makes any sense. That’s the kind of desperation that might lead us into the wilderness to find someone like John.

It’s the kind of desperation that puts us on our knees and makes us realize that nothing that we have - power or possessions or privilege or prestige – none of it will protect us from sadness and sorrow, from tragedy and failure any more than it will make us happy or carefree or keep our children safe or our marriages together or health strong.

When we’ve hit rock bottom, that’s when we go down to the river to hear crazy John shout at us. But don’t forget: Luke says that it’s Good News. No, it doesn’t sound like good news, this business about throwing the chaff in the unquenchable fire, but what John is announcing is that the Messiah has finally the come. The long-hoped-for savior of Israel. This is why these desperate people have come out here to be insulted and criticized. Messiah. The Anointed One. He will make all things right, but we need to be ready, and in order to be ready, we have to make some changes. And John is going to tell us what we have to do.

            Repent. Repent. Repentance is not about beating ourselves up. It’s about turning around. When nothing makes sense and whatever is going on in our lives and the world around us seems upside down, turn around.  Turn away from our broken selves and turn toward a new way of being. “One who is more powerful than I is coming.” Turn toward that one.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

          Archbishop Desmond Tutu, no stranger to tragedy and suffering, included a litany in his African Prayer Book, part of which says:

When will we ever learn, when will they ever learn?
Oh when will we ever learn that you intended us for Shalom,
for wholeness, for peace,
For fellowship, for togetherness, for brotherhood,
For sisterhood, for family?
When will we ever learn that you created us
As your children
As members of one family
Your family
The human family— Created us for linking arms
To express our common humanity.
God, my Father, I am filled with anguish and puzzlement
Why,oh God, is there so much suffering, such needless suffering
Iam dumbfounded and I am bewildered
And in agony
This is the world
You loved so much that for it
You gave your only begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ,to hang
From the cross, done to death
Love nearly overwhelmed by hate
Light nearly extinguished by darkness
Life nearly destroyed by death
But not quite
For love vanquished hate
For life overcame death, there
Light overwhelmed Darkness, there
And we can live with hope

          You may have noticed that we lit a pink candle today. It’s gaudete Sunday – a Latin word that means "rejoice." It comes from the tradition of the introit, or sung prelude, on the 3^rd Sunday of Advent being gaudete in Domino semper – rejoice in the Lord always. There’s that word again. Rejoice.

The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything. Go on. Go down to the river and get yelled at. It may be hard to hear, but our very lives depend on it. Even in the darkness of the past three days, we can turn toward the light that we know is coming.    

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.

Turn around. Our savior draws near.