Year C / Advent / Week 3 / Sunday
Readings: Zephaniah 3.14-18a / Psalm: Isaiah 12.2-3, 4, 5-66 (R/v 6) / Philippians 4.4-7 / Luke 3.10-18
“I want, I want,” cried Daniel, my two-year-old nephew. He stretched out his hands, eager to receive his birthday presents. Receiving them, he ran excitedly to Mommy and Daddy. Then, he gleefully tore the wrapping paper apart, letting out an “Oh” and a “Wow” with each unwrapped gift.
Who amongst us here have not witnessed our own children or our nephews and nieces doing the same at their birthdays and Christmas? We note their good cheer. We see their attention on the gifts. We hear parents and grandparents instructing them on opening their gifts.
Today we hear John the Baptist instructing the crowds who have come to him seeking their own deliverance. He instructs them to be charitable and just and to live by God’s commandments. Listening to him, they are excited; he appears to be the Messiah they have long awaited to save them. But John announces that there is another to come who is mightier than he is. He directs them to look beyond him to the coming Messiah, Jesus.
Don’t we sometimes find ourselves like the crowd at Advent time? Caught up as we are with checking off on the To Do List all the material preparations needed for Christmas—as well as all the Advent prayers, retreats and rituals that we feel obligated and rule-bound to complete—only to realize sadly that Jesus is absent in our hearts and in our minds as God-with-us, coming to stay for us? Aren’t we like the little children so fixated on our presents that we forget that presence of the ones who gifted them to us?
We receive more than a present at birthdays, Christmas or Lunar New Year. What we hold in our hands is another’s love and care for us, even her interest. Indeed, what I am really being gifted with is the presence of a family member or a friend. Long after I have torn apart the wrapping paper and found the gift, Mom’s presence will remain. And after the birthday guests have departed, the gift of the book I now read will remind me of my friend. Indeed, at the heart of all the presents we receive is the gift of another’s presence.
And so it must be with God at Christmastime: that through Jesus, with Jesus and in Jesus, God’s present to us, we have the presence of God, no longer just in heaven but on earth with us. Today, we focus on this truth by looking ahead more expectantly to our coming celebration of the Incarnation.
We call today “Gaudete” Sunday. We have rose-colored liturgical vestments; they remind us that we can look ahead joyfully. We sing more upbeat Advent hymns; they prepare us for the coming Christmas cheer. Our readings explain why we can rejoice: God is truly coming to dwell amongst us.
Zephaniah tells a timid, disheartened people: “Fear not, be not discouraged...God will rejoice over you with gladness”. The psalmist calls us to cry out with joy and gladness for God is among us; no matter our fears, weaknesses, and sinfulness, this good news should make us confident and unafraid. Paul instructs the Philippians who squabbling among themselves and fearing communal division: “Be unselfish. Dismiss anxiety from your minds. Just trust our God and present your needs.” This is how God’s peace and harmony will come into their lives and prevail in community. And with John, we hear this joyful news, pregnant with expectancy: the Messiah is very close.
And didn’t this hope come to pass with the angels' glad tidings that first Christmas: that God has come and is with us, one like us, and for us and our salvation? Don’t we echo this refrain of God’s goodness each Christmas in liturgies, prayers, songs and even in gifts exchanged? Peace on earth and goodwill to all peoples—this, the Advent promise.
Peace and goodwill, you say? How can that be when so much of our world is in pain and suffering? How can the Advent messages of happiness and hope lift us up when many are still hungry, still in poverty, still imprisoned unjustly, still gunned down senselessly, and still marginalized cruelly for race, gender, sexuality? What if Advent just doesn’t work for some of us because the holier-than-thou among our community have judged who can and who cannot receive God’s mercy in communion and confession?
How are we—the ones hurt by the Church, disappointed with the world, betrayed by others—to reconcile ourselves with the Advent promise and prepare meaningfully for Christmas? Can we find that joyful reason to consider ourselves worthy to come before Jesus in the manger?
So much of our Advent preparation should challenge us. No matter how well our preparations are proceeding, or if we are just beginning to prepare, even now, Advent can help us confront the stark truths of who we are as we prepare to come to Jesus. The individual burdened by anxiety. The self weighed down by ego. The troubled person. The small-minded man. The self-serving woman. The self-righteous believer. All of these—us, really—faithful Christians struggling with repeated sins and bad habits we want so much to stop but keep failing because of our human condition.
But it is precisely in this confrontation and struggle with our diminished selves, our losses, our sadness, and our weight of sin that Advent is most gracious and merciful. It affords us time and strength, hope and reason to take those first steps, once again, to move out of this darkness and to journey into God’s radiant light that dawns with Jesus’ coming.
It is in this movement into God’s light that God will burn off those dark and shadowy, melancholic and burdened parts of us. God will do this with the fire of love. And who else is this fire of love but Jesus? “I am baptizing you with water, but there is one to come who is mightier than I”, John declares today. “He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn in unquenchable fire”.
John’s words are not meant to scare us about who is saved and who is lost. Instead, they are to encourage us to welcome Jesus who redeems with fire. “Fire is not the fate of the lost, but the refining of the blessed. We all have our chaff, our dross, our waste”. We need to winnow out these parts of ourselves, and with God’s help. “And it is the fire of Christ that will burn them away. The burdens we carry do not make us unfit for Advent’s message. They qualify us as prime candidates”*. Who amongst us then cannot rejoice in God who finds us worthy for salvation in Jesus?
Today, you and I are being invited to look more deeply into John’s announcement so that we can better discern Jesus’ imminent coming and the redemption he brings. This is how our joy of receiving Jesus can be more complete at Christmas.
Maybe our joy, then, will be a lot like the joy I believe my nephew Daniel has come to know growing up: that it’s in giving love that the giver is the true cause of joy and the reason for smiles. Now, wouldn’t receiving God in Jesus like a child help us to better grow up, smile and rejoice at Christmas time?
This homily was first written on 12 December 2015
* John Kavanaugh, SJ
Penned whilst on retreat at De La Salle Brothers’ Residence, St Patrick’s, Singapore
photo: huffingtonpost.com
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