Online Sermons
The Third Sunday in Advent : December 13, Ellen Bruckner
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online SermonsPraise and honor to you living God for John the Baptist, and for all those voices crying in the wilderness who prepare your way. May we listen when a prophet speaks your word, and obey. Amen.
Isn’t that a beautiful reading from Zephaniah? The call is to Jerusalem to rejoice because the sentence of destruction has been lifted and God is in their midst. God promises to remove disasters, to deal with the oppressors, to save the lame, and to gather in the outcasts. And when God gathers the people, God will bring them home and make them known among all the people of the earth. What a vision for the people of Israel, that God will unite them with all the peoples of the earth. As Episcopalians, we play a part in this vision The Catechism of The Episcopal Church reminds us that we believe the Hebrew people were the ones to bring all the nations to God and as a Church we are to work to reconcile the world to God. Our mission, our purpose as a Church is tied to this beautiful promise of joy proclaimed in Zephaniah. As good as this sounds, it is a vision and in today’s Gospel John the Baptist reminds us, that we humans are not always able to see clearly. God’s vision of unifying the world remains a challenge for us today.
Peacemakers throughout the centuries help us keep this vision of unity in sight despite strife and hardship. People like St. Francis, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abraham Lincoln have preached respect for creation and each other. Archbishop Desmond Tutu captures this concept of the unity that causes God to rejoice and therefore the people of God to rejoice when he explains what it means for people to live in unity.
“Africans believe in something that is difficult to render in English. We call it ubutu, botho. It means the essence of being human. You know when it is there and when it is absent. It speaks about humaneness, gentleness, hospitality, putting yourself out on behalf of others, being vulnerable. It embraces compassion and toughness. It recognizes that my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together…
…In our African language we say ‘a person is a person through other persons.’ I would not know how to be a human being at all except I learn this from other human beings. We are made for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence. We are meant to compliment each other. All kinds of things go horribly wrong when we break that fundamental law of our being. Not even the most powerful nation can be completely self-sufficient.”
Our Church keeps trying to reconcile when it asks us to learn from each other, when it asks us to respect the dignity of every human being and when it asks us to strive for justice and peace – promises we make in our Baptismal Covenant.
Even though I can see many of the connections to the vision throughout the centuries, thinking about this living in unity makes me a bit anxious. Do you know how difficult it is to live in unity with people I like let alone with people I don’t know and may not like. So I’m sure there was no promise of this journey toward living in unity being easy. There was no mention from Archbishop Tutu of ubuntu being easy. Ubuntu means understanding the way of living that leads us into being fully human. It may be a struggle, but God rejoices in our striving toward this unity of humankind. And what’s in it for me is a better understanding of who I am which means I can rejoice in each and every one of you who are part of me be who I am. This whole way of life is probably not be about easy, but it probably is about joy.
Paul tells the Philippians the same thing. Don’t worry, rejoice! Be gentle, be grateful and remember to stay in relationship with God. There is no assurance of an easy life, but both Zephaniah and Paul proclaim a way of life that brings joy. Being in right relationship with God brings joy. Being in right relationship with each other and neighbors brings joy.
Okay, this is great, the first two readings are pretty clear about a way of life that produces joy. So why do we now hear John the Baptist ranting about snakes! “Brood of vipers” is pretty strong language and not very joyful. But I think John does know where the joy lies. John the Baptist is so intense and committed; he does not hesitate to tell us when we stray from the path toward the vision. John chastises the Pharisees and Sadducees who were coming to be baptized thinking their ethnic heritage alone assured them of salvation. God certainly does not need to depend on the physical descent of Israelites in order to accomplish the redemptive work and John reminds all those who claim Abraham as their father, regardless of whether they lived by faith and practiced righteousness, that God can raise up children to Abraham even from the stones in the desert. The Baptist’s exhortations are directed at all of us who think that because we have been Christian all our lives, or because we have been going to church all our lives, we have a direct route to salvation. It is about the way we live our life that matters, not our ancestry, our status, our vocation, or our bank account. The way we live our life depends on us knowing who we are –and knowing who we are comes from living in unity with others as we have heard from Zephaniah and from Desmond Tutu.
So how would you react to the ranting of a pretty wild looking, intense, itinerate preacher who fearlessly proclaimed that in order to experience the kingdom of God, one must live a life of repentance. Some of us would turn away – a bit miffed at someone, not like us, having the audacity to tell us how to live. Some of us would probably smile and think – he doesn’t mean me, of course, and continue to relish seeing others being chastised. Some of us would take John the Baptist’s message seriously and ask, as the crowds did, “what must I do?” And John, not just a ranter, did have “suggestions” as to what people needed to do in order for their lives to bear fruit. I think this is where the joy part comes in. When we truly repent and turn to living lives that keep us in relationships with others, we have the opportunity to be filled with the joy of knowing who we are and to whom we belong. The Baptist tells us relationships are built on the foundation of recognizing and responding the best we can to “the other” in need; of dealing honestly with others; and of being content with and giving thanks for what we have. These are the basics; the foundation upon which our repentant lives must be built. These are not radical ideas. These ideas are certainly within our capabilities. However, it is up to us to respond. John’s message will have no lasting effect unless each of us is ready to repent and turn our lives toward the hope and joy.
John’s message in this passage also includes the promise of the Messiah. John is preparing the way. He is telling us, in concrete terms, that we need to look carefully at every moment of our lives, determine where we need to change, and then change. We are to open our hearts to receive this Messiah and accept this new way of life, Jesus’ way of life, a life filled with hope and joy. John may or may not have known what kind of kingdom Jesus would bring. The journey will not be smooth. It was not smooth for the shepherds in John the Baptist’s day. We know there are hardships. We know people are suffering and the earth is being used up. We experience the power struggles that lead to war. We also know we humans have the ability to move our cultures toward peace and respect – toward living in unity. The crowds to whom John the Baptist, Zephaniah and Paul preached held on to the hope of the good news, and we, too, have been gathered in and prepared to live repentant lives – ubuntu lives – so that through the grace of God in our lives, God’s purpose is carried out and the spirit of the kingdom emerges around us.
May you experience the joy that comes from living repentant lives.
Thanks be to God.