Rejoice in repentance

a Sermon for Advent 3C
Text: Luke 3:7-18

Let’s begin this morning looking back 20 years. It was a particularly memorable Christmas for me. We had extended family around, including cousins, which was unusual. And on the morning of Christmas Eve, I came down stairs to find a big box under the tree with my name on it.

As every 10 or 11 year-old knows, the hardest thing about seeing a big box for you under the tree before Christmas morning is having to wait all day, staring at it. It was like a beacon, calling out to me. “Drew! Here I am! Open me!” And I could hardly resist. I couldn’t stay in the same room with it.

Making matters worse was this was 1988/89 and my Christmas list contained only one item. Normally the list was full: GI Joe, Transformers: but not this year. This year contained just this: The Nintendo Entertainment System.

I had been bugging my parents for months and talked about it constantly. We had inherited an Atari 2600 the year before, but this was evolution! This was proof of progress! This was countless hours of entertainment and fascination! Well, when I saw that box, I became convinced that what was inside was the NES with its two controllers, the light gun, and Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. I could hardly wait to finally make that game mine.

The next morning, the first thing I race for was that big box, and when it was my turn to open a present, I ripped the paper off of the front and inside was a big model of the space shuttle. I was heart-broken. And I’ll admit it—my expectations kept me from appreciating the present that was given to me. More tragic is that my Dad had bought this model to build with me and my 10 year-old self couldn’t get that. I was focused on other things.

In many ways, our expectations get mixed up in the “holiday season”. We’ve had some challenging readings here in Advent so far, and this morning’s is no exception. We’re all looking ahead to Christmas with its carols and its egg nog and its presents and its fellowship. The season is naturally pregnant with expectation. At the same time, that expectation leads us to ignore the signs around us. Just as my 10 year-old self knew that the box was the wrong shape—hours spent staring at the NES box behind the counter in KB Toys told me that—we look at life, and the season, through expectant eyes, not eyes of observation.

This morning, we finally get to hear that grating and persistent message of John the Baptizer’s that we talked about last week. We get to hear the jarring language (“You brood of vipers!”) and the threats (“but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire”) that we might be quite tempted to overlook—to ignore in our attempt to get happy about Christmas. To be joyful at the coming of Jesus.

We know John comes to prepare the way for Jesus. And talking about John at the beginning of the church year is appropriate. It makes chronological sense. It makes theological sense. But I wonder if we take seriously the notion that he came to prepare the way for Jesus…to lead us on the way. That the Good News is first revealed by John and begins here.

John has this big crowd of followers who are all wondering if he is the long-expected Messiah. He looks like what they expect the Messiah to look like, and he talks like what they expect the Messiah to talk like, and he behaves like what they expect the Messiah to behave like…but they still aren’t sure. That’s interesting, isn’t it? So this disparate group has just been put in their place by this potential Messiah and they still ask “What then should we do?” John responds by telling them to be generous and fair with what they have. If you have two coats and you see somebody without one, give it to him. Pretty simple. Then the tax collectors ask what they should do, and John tells them not to cheat people. Take only what you are instructed to take. And the soldiers are told to be happy with the wages they receive, and not bully others and take from them. John’s instructions come to us as no-brainers, don’t they? Especially in light of what we know our faith to be about. But let’s pause at this window for a minute. If we look inside, we see a culture in which safety and security required that you look after yourself first. Having two coats meant you had a spare in case something happened to the first one. It meant having coats for different kinds of weather. It might have even meant that it was the only luxury you had. As for the tax collectors, most of their income came from collecting more than was prescribed—marking up the taxes. Like a merchant that sells goods from a manufacturer to a store, the income has to come from somewhere. And for the soldier, brutal treatment and extortion was a means of keeping the peace. John’s teaching isn’t so common sense in that context—and can seem eerily similar to our own world.

But John’s teachings here are about fairness. We should read them in the way that our guts tell us to. Despite the expectations the world has for us, we should be fair and generous to others, collecting only what is needed, while taking nothing for ourselves. That’s a pretty solid way of operating. But I think it does more than that—I think it gets our focus off of ourselves and onto other people. It isn’t what I can do for them, but for what can be done for them. See the difference? Just take the ‘I’ out.

John is preparing the way for Jesus, not physically: scuffing the ground from Bethlehem to Jerusalem or sweeping the dust off of the road: and not emotionally as a pre-Messiah herald because people couldn’t figure it out. John prepares the way by helping people let go of themselves. Letting go of self-sufficiency. Letting go of personal consumption. This is repentance. This is John’s preparation. For us to see Jesus as the Messiah, we must first repent and give up that devotion to self and materialism and macho bravado and ladder-climbing and all of that stuff. So we can just let it go. Hand it over.Because that understanding of expectation, that sense of ‘what I’m going to get’ keeps us from understanding Jesus as the Christ. John prepares Jesus’s way by altering our expectations of the Messiah.

This morning, we celebrate Gaudete, as is traditionally symbolized with a pink candle in the advent wreathe and is an ancient practice that is being renewed in the church. The word gaudete is Latin for “rejoice” and has been used to infuse some joy into an otherwise penitential season. I’ll admit that I had a hard time seeing the joy in this reading when I started. The others, I definitely could. But this Gospel lesson is about joy. John reveals the Good News that will be brought to new life in Jesus. That is joyous. That our calling is to give to others what is missing in their lives is joyous. That our calling is to not take from others and to treat them honestly and fairly is joyous. And most of all, that we can give away the pressure and the anxiety of self-sufficiency to our Messiah so that we might live our lives in joy and generosity—that is joyous.

Today, we can rejoice in our new expectations for the coming of our Lord. May his name be praised forever.