Third Sunday of Advent, rcl yr c
Sunday, December 15th, 2024
ZEPHANIAH 3:14-20; CANTICLE 3 (ISAIAH 12:2-6); PHILIPPIANS 4:4-7; LUKE 3:7-18
Surely, it is God who saves me;
Let your gentleness be known to everyone.
I don’t recall ever hearing anyone say “I love John the Baptist.” I can’t imagine ever saying it myself, either. Is he compelling? Sure! Fascinating Absolutely! But “Oh yeah, I love that guy!” Not so much!
This is not to say that John the Baptist shouldn’t be the object of love. I imagine his mum Elizabeth loved him very much. No matter what he smelled like. And we are all loved, to be sure! But he doesn’t, aside perhaps in the dank cold cells of some especially severe and austere monastery, inspire many of us to say “I love that guy, and I want to be just like him!”
Most certainly he makes for a harrowing model for a pastor. I do hear, once in a while, a request for more practical advice in my preaching. “Tell us what to do, Preston. Give us some guidance.” I’d rather not though traverse into such dangerous territory too often. What if I did say what John the Baptist says? His preaching is extraordinarily practical! “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” And “ … be satisfied with your wages.” There are few of us who are able to live up to such a command, let alone give it: one coat; no pantry full of food; no request for a raise at work.
The harsh preaching of John the Baptist appears at great odds with what we hear in Philippians. “Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” This, for St. Paul, is the fruit of a prayerful relationship with God: “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
My suggestion is that this is a matter of love, and different kinds of love. We love people like John the Baptist differently than we love the Lord. We love John the Baptist because we too are all the objects of love; we are each loved by God no matter how harsh the message—both the harsh truth of John the Baptist’s message of justice, or even the harshness of the difficult person acting out of spite, or pain, or trauma. We love each of these because God not only first loved them, but because first loves us. We love others because God makes this love possible.
There’s another reason though that I’d rather preach grace than ethics, that I’d rather preach about what’s so extraordinary about God’s abundant kindness and goodness towards us, than to command you in the ways of being a good Christian. And that’s not because I have any issues with the preaching of John the Baptist—quite the opposite.
It has to with the way grace operates in the Christian life. Perhaps I could put it this way: I could quite easily harangue you, and guilt you, and berate you into doing what is clearly the right thing: Share your wealth! Be satisfied with what you have, because for most of you, it’s more than enough! If you have two coats, share with anyone who has none; if your larders are full, share your food with the hungry. Be satisfied with your wages.
It might work, I suppose; John the Baptist most certainly attracted crowds, both those who followed what he said, and those who wanted to see what must’ve been a really weird show down by the river.
On the other hand I could simply preach grace, forgiveness, reconciliation in Christ. And to say “sure, sin, sin in the knowledge that you are already forgiven.” This is something I do leave myself open to.
But here’s the thing about grace, about the way God’s love operates: grace changes you. To know grace, to receive the proclamation of forgiveness and reconciliation in Christ, is to be transformed into the likeness of God. Or perhaps, already having been made in the image of God, the likeness of God is restored is restored to us through this grace. To receive grace, pardon, reconciliation is what empowers us to act likewise towards others—and justice towards our neighbour is most certainly part of that transformation.
Perhaps more technically I might say that guilt is not the enabling condition of justice, it’s grace that is the enabling condition of justice. I can’t harangue you into kindness, but if the word enters your heart by grace, grace will beget grace, grace will lead to love, grace will even give way to justice.
I figure this is why St. Paul can say “Let your gentleness be known to everyone. It’s because he’s preaching to those who know the grace of God, who have experienced reconciliation, who have grown in the understanding of God’s kindness in Christ.
St. Paul is writing to a people much like you, I’m afraid. I don’t know how you ended up here today. But you can’t leave now without the knowledge of God’s grace towards you; you are about to have the forgiveness of God proclaimed to you; you are about to be reconciled in Christ by the sacrament that binds you to one another and to God by the Holy Spirit.
John the Baptist’s proclamation can feel like it gets ahead of things; but in Advent we are reminded that what John the Baptist is preaching is a peeling back of the curtains of reality, it is the revelation of God’s hidden work in the world: that God in Christ, and in us by the Holy Spirit, the arc of history is bending towards justice, equity, righteousness.
It’s just good to be reminded that the path to this, in the meantime, is not guilt, blame, or fault-finding. The path to justice is grace; and by God’s grace we are gentle towards one another—even the most difficult among us.
And by God’s grace and God’s gentleness, and the impossibility of our resistance to a grace and gentleness that begets grace and gentleness; by God’s grace and God’s gentleness, God bends the arc of history—in us, and in the world he made—towards justice.
The Revd Preston DS Parsons, PhD