Year C
 Zephaniah 3:14-20
 Canticle 9
 Philippians 4:4-7
 Luke 3:7-18

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

Have you ever had the experience…  of learning about something…  of being confident that you were right… and acting on that knowledge…  of making decisions perhaps even critical decisions based on what you knew…  only to find out later on…  that what you knew wasn’t the whole picture…  that you weren’t just a little bit off-base…  but you were way off base…  and that what you did…   based on what you thought you knew… or what you thought you understood…  had unwarranted consequences for someone else or for yourself…

For example…  when I was in the Air Force…  I worked as a medical laboratory technician…  and one day…  I measured the potassium level on blood that had been drawn from a patient who was in hospital…  and it was low…  not terribly low…  but low enough to warrant an injection of potassium…  something equal perhaps to eating six bananas at once…  only to find out that I reported the correct result…   but for the wrong patient…  it wasn’t life-threatening…  but it did delay the right person getting the supplement…  and I sure got a talking to by the officer in charge of the lab…

Another time…  I was cleaning up and deleting some files on an old PC I had…  and I deleted a file that I didn’t recognize and never used and couldn’t imagine needing…  but the next time I went to start my computer…  it wouldn’t start…  turns out I had deleted a critical system file that was…  well critical…  and what I had done comes under the heading of knowing just enough to be dangerous…

These errors are the kind that some of us make…  thinking we know something about something…  or mis-understanding something that someone said…  or drawing conclusions and making decisions that cause some difficulty…

But today is supposed to be easy…  like Jesus’ easy yoke and light burden…  the day we shift more of our gaze from the eschatological and penitential nature of Advent…  to the joyful anticipation of Jesus’ birth…  today is supposed to be easy…  and we call today Gaudete Sunday…  gaudete is the Latin version…  of the Greek word…  in today’s Epistle…  when the apostle Paul…  exhorts the Philippians to rejoice…  even though Herod has put Paul in prison…  for upsetting the status quo just a little bit too much… 

But there is no getting to Bethlehem…  without first hearing the rough prophet in the wilderness call us to repentance…  trying to avoid or sugarcoat John’s words is just not possible…  because arriving at the manger in faith…  and bearing fruit…   requires the careful self-examination and recommitment called for by John…

The Rev. Marcea Paul of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Austin, Texas reminds us…   that we have been experiencing tough times these last few years…  and with the suffering…  loss…  uncertainty…  and state of our beautiful and broken world…   how can we hear John’s words and rejoice? In our minds…   joy tends is associated with happiness…  and happiness is often connected with what is happen-ing to us and around us…  but happiness usually lasts for just a season…  when we are discouraged and afraid…   rejoicing in God can be a hard sell…  but the truth is…   that joy is not usually inspired by happy circumstances…  poet and author David Whyte writes…  “to feel a full and untrammeled joy…  is to have become fully generous…  to allow ourselves to be joyful…  is to have walked through the doorway of fear…”   and joy…  unlike happiness…  lasts…  no matter what the challenges are…

And so when John anticipates…  that the gathered crowds might exempt themselves from bearing fruit worthy of repentance by pointing to Abraham as their ancestor…  he says…  big deal…  God can take those stones over there and raise up children to Abraham…  so don’t think that your family name…   or your genetic inheritance is enough to excuse you from doing what needs to be done in the here and now…  because there’s still much to be done…  

The crowds came out to listen to John…  tramped out into the wilderness…  so they had some idea what they were getting in to…  even tax collectors and Roman soldiers came too…  and so when John exhorts them to bear fruits worthy of repentance…  that’s really helpful…  because another way of saying it is…  if you truly repent…  then you won’t just say I’m sorry…  and continue the same behavior as before…  if you repent…  if you truly turn back to God…  then what you’ll bear will be worthwhile fruits…  what you’ll do will be in line with…  or at least more in line with…  God’s will…  and John is specific…  he told the crowd who asked…   if you have two coats…  give one to someone who has none…  but maybe the ones who asked suffered from scarcity thinking and wondered if they’d have enough…  after all…  didn’t they work harder for what they have than others had…  and the tax collectors who have done well with their thumbs on the scale…  may have wondered…  can we take a cutback in revenue…  and maintain our standard of living…  and the soldiers…  who during that time pushed people around…  may have wondered who would know they were soldiers…  if they stopped bullying people…   stopped threatening to denounce them falsely…   and stopped making a little on the side…

This change in behavior is given expression in a line from The General Thanksgiving at Morning Prayer…  and we pray…  give us such an awareness of your mercies…  that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise…  not only with our lips…  but in our lives…  and we can make these difficult changes not one our own…  but because of the one who was to come after John…

John’s advice to all of them…  is practical and pointed…   his answers reflect his knowledge of the vocations and values of those who ask the questions…  and his answers all involve acts of mercy and justice…  and center on money…  on the economics of grace…  and on the redistribution of wealth and property…  and we can resist when we think…  well…  if I have two coats…  and give one away…  then maybe the stores that sell coats would sell one less coat…  and if everyone in Grand Rapids…  who had two or more coats…  gave one to someone who had none…  then maybe some of the stores which sell coats would have to close…  and some employees would be laid off…  so for pity sakes…  don’t give any coats away…  buy one or two more… keep the economy going…  and it does go…  except for those who can’t buy their own coats… 

During Advent…   we are the crowd along the river…   John’s words crash through our lives…   his pronouncements batter us like waves of judgment and hope…   one after the other…   because so many of us point to what we think we know…  or are confident that we’re right…  and perhaps make critical decisions… and we too are left baffled about what this Messiah will mean for our lives…    and so in the company of soldiers and tax collectors we too ask…  And we…  what then should we do?…  it’s the question at the heart of Advent…  how will we answer it… 

And for us Christians…  the arrival of Jesus on planet earth…  is the reason we can find joy in a troubled world…   Jesus entered the world not only to share our messy existence…  but to rejoice over us…  Jesus renews us in God’s love…  and comes as God’s presence to give us hope beyond sorrow…  and the mystery of incarnation…  the mystery of death and resurrection…   the mystery of the Christ’s presence with us still…  it is all reason for joy…  and perhaps this is the mystery of our salvation…  that God becomes most divine…  when God becomes most human…  and when we live in the image of God…  then we too are fully human…  and this is true because we don’t think ourselves into a new ways of living…  as much as we live ourselves into new ways of thinking…  Holy God…  make it so…