SERMON GIVEN December 13, 2015
♦ Advent III, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Worthington, Ohio ♦
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3: 7-18
This third Sunday in Advent has two names in the tradition. I always need to check the Advent wreath to see which one the parish knows about. If you light the rose-colored candle today, you are marking Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is the Latin word for Rejoice, the first word of the opening ancient Roman prayer assigned to this day, and the opening word of the passage from Paul’s Letter to the Church in Philippi, which we just heard:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
We will get back to Paul in a few minutes, I hope, but there’s another name for this gathering. This is “Stir Up Sunday,” a name that echoes the opening prayer we heard this morning:
Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.
I suspect that John the Baptist wouldn’t have much patience with all that rejoicing stuff. If anything could stir us up, it would be John the Baptist at the riverbank, standing at the crossroads, forcing us to a place of decision. His language is uncompromising, like a pruning ax lying at the root of the trees:
You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 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 to from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.
“We have Abraham for our ancestor.” To John, that meant nothing. Taking refuge in your illustrious ancestors, or in your own familiar traditions, is no defense, neither in his day nor in ours. It’s not really fair, I suppose. I don’t see a brood of vipers out there. I mean, we are among the steadily decreasing numbers of American Christians who show up to church on Sundays. Some of us come from long lines of churchgoers, “cradle Episcopalians” even.
As president of Bexley Seabury, a federation of Bexley Hall and Seabury-Western seminaries, two of the oldest institutions in the Episcopal Church, I feel immensely privileged to be preaching from the founder’s pulpit, in Philander Chase’s olde parish. Here we are, gathered in an historic building that is something of a shrine to the spread of Anglicanism in the old Northwest. We might not claim Abraham as our ancestor, but it’s not that hard to make a claim that’s equivalent, certainly in this sacred space, and especially as Americans, who have tended always to consider ourselves rooted in something special, a people set apart.
John the Baptist would have had no patience with us. It’s painful to hear. This morning’s gospel stirs us up, and not in a good way. When standing in the clear light of this gospel, there’s no use our appealing to our distinguished family trees, or our illustrious founders, or our inheritors’ rights, or for that matter, to that deep-rooted assumption that we Americans are somehow different or better or wiser than other people, or that we Episcopalians have somehow got it all together, gathering in historic churches like this to worship God as our forbears did, in decency and order.
As far this gospel is concerned, nothing about who we’ve been or what we’ve been or who we know or what we’ve claimed about ourselves really matters. What matters is only who we are prepared to be here and now, how we act toward ourselves and others here and now, how we exhibit and share here and now what he calls the “fruits of repentance.”
Bear fruits worthy of repentance, John tells the crowd. As John uses the word, to repent means to make a turn-around, re-orient your life, to learn to negotiate the world with a new compass, with a fresh map of things, to recognize that the world God creates and loves is larger than the world we are used to, or the world as we want it to be, and that we can only begin to bear fruit in our lives if we pause, stop in our tracks, turn around and see things new.
It’s not that the world will be different. That’s the irony of this repentance thing. The world is what it is. What changes is you and me. What’s different is us. What matters is how we act in the light of this Gospel, how we respond to the challenges of a world grown more treacherous by the day. What risks are we willing to take? What fruits can we bear worthy of such a turn-around?
That’s the question the crowds asked him. And he didn’t hesitate to answer: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise…Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you…Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusations.” I’m sure he could have gone on, depending on who was asking the questions. All of these answers made sense to the seekers and the soldiers and the tax collectors of his day.
But that was then. This is now. What would he say to us, in this time, in this place, when danger seems all around us, when vipers propagate more vipers, whether in Paris or Beirut, in Colorado Springs or San Bernardino, and there seems to be no one whom we can trust?
The past several weeks have been cruel ones. Advent is supposed to be a time of joyous expectation. Instead these past several weeks have been weeks of unremitting anxiety, weeks of unresolved fear. How many of us have had second thoughts in the past few weeks about visiting public places. How many of us have found ourselves newly wary of strangers, of people with foreign accents, of the Muslims in our neighborhoods and schools and shopping malls, of police equipped like soldiers or of angry young men in our streets?
And let us not forget anxiety and fear is a two-way street. As The New York Times reports, young Muslim Americans are feeling increasingly isolated and alienated, as anti-Muslim rhetoric mounts, extending the “chronic trauma” they have felt since 9/11.
To respond in fear to a world grown treacherous is nothing to be ashamed of. Fear is real, and it’s invidious. Fear affects our comings and goings when we least expect it, in ways we are barely conscious of. But we need not be defined by fear. It was a remarkable thing to see the way the Canadians welcomed the first small stream of Syrian refugees to Toronto yesterday, people who have lived in fear for months and months, people who could hardly believe their good fortune. “Welcome home,” said the Prime Minister, “You are at home now.” I was reminded of the promise of the prophet Zephaniah that we heard a few moments ago:
I will deal with all your oppressors…I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise…I will bring you home.
In this time of fear and anxiety, can we turn it around, can we risk the harvest of repentance, the fruits of our own great turn-around in Christ? We all must work out our salvation in these days, as Paul puts it, in fear and trembling, each in our own way. But it must be in a spirit of love, and not of fear. Jesus says it time and again in these gospels: I would not have you be afraid.
I can only speak for myself in this, but I pray that we as Christians can be granted the grace to turn around and gather the outcasts and the exiles—those upon whom we can so easily project both our present fears and our ancient prejudices. May we find the grace to accept insight, wisdom, even salvation from the most unlikely places and from the most unlikely people: from a scruffy John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness; from a refugee couple forced from Nazareth—or Damascus—seeking lodging in a hostile town. May we find the courage of the Magi, carrying a fresh map and following a new compass, one that points East toward a manger in Bethlehem, a cross on Calvary, and an empty tomb. May we know and feel, even in these unsettled days, that death and the fear of death can have no dominion over us. On this Gaudete Sunday, may we stir up the courage to rejoice, as Paul this morning urges us:
Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.
In these violent, polarized and ungentle days, may your gentleness be known to everyone. And may the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen. The Lord is near.