Made for Joy
Today on this third Sunday of Advent, we light a candle for joy. For we are people who were created for joy.
Our first three readings this morning remind us that we are made for joy.
“Rejoice and exult” proclaims the prophet Zephaniah. “Ring out your joy” sings Isaiah. “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice” urges Paul to the Philippians. We were made to be joyful.
And yet . . . .
We are not always joyful. Often it seems like moments of joy are few and far between. Stuff gets in the way, weighs us down, holds us back. There are things that rob us of joy.
We talked about some of that last week when we went into the wilderness. Life can be hard. Some things need to change. Sometimes we need to change.
That’s the beginning of what we call repentance. The realization that something needs to change, that we need to change our lives. To live the right way. To be people of joy.
But repentance is more than just the awareness that something needs to change.
John proclaimed a baptism of repentance in the wilderness. And the crowds streamed out to the wilderness to be baptized by John. They realized that something needed to change. That they needed to change.
And John greeted the crowds by saying, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
Now there’s no way that we would make John one of our greeters, welcoming people as they come into church on a Sunday morning. Let’s just say that greeting doesn’t seem to be one of John’s gifts.
Yet there are times in each one of our lives when we need a wake-up call. When we need to be challenged. And John’s challenge to the crowd, though harsh, conveys a certain dignity. It presumes that we can rise to meet the challenge. And that is the second part of repentance. It’s not just the realization that we need to change our lives, it’s the rising to meet the challenge, the commitment to doing something about it, the turning from the things that weigh us down to the God who can raise us up.
“Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” John tells the people. That’s the third part of repentance. Do something about it. Bear fruit worthy of repentance.
And to their credit, the crowd gets it. They ask the question that we should all be asking: “What then should we do?”
John’s response is deceptively simple. No heroics required, no complicated religious practices. Just do the right thing and don’t be a jerk. If you have two coats, give one to someone who has none. If you have some sort of power, like a tax-collector or a soldier, don’t use it to benefit yourself at the expense of others.
This is all quite doable. Yet, as we know, it is not always done. Which is why perhaps that John continues with language that we find harsh.
“I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming. 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 granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
“So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”
Does that sound like good news to you?
We tend to recoil from language of burning, separation and judgment. With good reason. Too often these images are interpreted to say that there are good people and bad people, and that what we need to do is separate the bad people out from among us and punish them. Kind of like a Star Wars movie.
But we know that’s a misunderstanding of what it is to be human. The Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was imprisoned and spent 8 years in a Soviet forced labour camp, when he reflects on human nature and the problem of good and evil, Solzhenitsyn writes:
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
We were made for joy. But stuff gets in the way. The wheat is the person we were created to be, the one made for joy. But every grain of wheat has a husk, or chaff. The chaff is all the stuff that gets in the way, all that holds back, weighs us down, oppresses us, robs us of joy. A farmer removes the chaff from the wheat so that every good grain can be preserved. Our chaff will be removed so that we can become the people that God created us to be.
What is the chaff in your life that you yearn to see removed, removed forever, burned in an unquenchable fire? Again, we talked about some of this last Sunday. Addictions. Apathy. Resentment. Fear and doubt. Suffering, sin, shame. All the things that oppress us, sometimes it’s our own stuff, sometimes it’s the actions of others, sometimes it’s things that are beyond our control. We long to see the wheat separated from the chaff.
What then should we do?
John’s initial answer is straightforward. Repent! Live the right way. Share your stuff, don’t exercise power over others, live a life that’s better aligned with God’s purposes. This we can do, we can rise to this challenge.
But sometimes we need help to get beyond the things that weigh us down. And for this we turn to God. That’s where John points us next. He points us directly to Jesus, the one who is more powerful, the one sent by God. He will baptize you, not just with water, but with the Holy Spirit and fire.
When we turn to God, when the Holy Spirit enters our lives, our lives begin to change. The Spirit can do things that we can’t. It doesn’t always happen right away, life won’t be all rainbows and unicorns, but in God’s time, the chaff will be removed. That’s the promise. Because we were made for joy. And we can have that joy now, even in the midst of the challenges of life. Rejoice, again I say rejoice, Paul writes, even as he languishes in a prison cell.
In a few moments we will have a baptism. Baptism is our symbol and sacrament of everything that I’ve been talking about this morning. Three times I will ask parents and sponsors if they turn away from the things in life that hold us down, that rob us of joy. Then three times I will ask them if they turn to Jesus Christ, to the one who raises us up. This is the baptism of repentance. The realization that there are things that weigh us down and that our lives must change. The commitment to turn from the things that weigh us down to the God who raises us up. Then, our response to the “what then should we do” question, which are the promises that parents and sponsors and all of us will make to do the right things and to live a life that is aligned with God’s purposes.
Because we were made for joy. Each one of us. God is with us, the chaff we long to be rid of will be removed, and for this we can rejoice even now. So be people of joy:
Rejoice and exult.
Ring out your joy.
Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.
Amen.
Homily: Yr C Advent 3, Dec 15 2024. Trinity
Readings: Zephaniah 3.14-20; Isaiah 12.2-6; Philippians 4.4-7; Luke 3.7-18
Photo by Eva Bronzini
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