Third Sunday of Advent, December 12, 2021 – Zephaniah 3:14-18A; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:10-18

Today is called Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday of joy. It’s why we switch from wearing purple vestments to wearing rose colored vestments. But joy is an elusive thing. Most of the time now when I hear the word “joy” I think of is “Jeremiah was a bullfrog. He was a good friend of mine.” In that song, joy is equated with pleasure. The singer sings about the pleasure of getting drunk and the pleasure of sexual intimacy. But joy and pleasure are not always the same. Pleasure gives us joy, but joy doesn’t necessarily give us pleasure. 

When I was growing up, one of the most famous poems that people would recite on special occasions was “Casey at the Bat.” And it ends with the line “... somewhere men are happy, and somewhere people shout, but there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out.” If that doesn’t seem like an issue for people, just look at the success of television show “Friday Night Lights,” in which an entire little village, or town, in Texas is consumed with what happens on the football field among high school boys on a Friday night. Sometimes you get all caught up in things that are ephemeral. And joy is one of those things that seems to be ephemeral. 

We woke up this morning to a headline in the Times Herald Record - a very clever headline - just the two words “Uh oh,” where the “O” was made out of a coronavirus germ. “Uh oh.” We thought there was light at the end of the tunnel. Now there may be another tunnel at the end of the light. 

And so, we come to this day, not really understanding all that well why the church says we should be joyful. If you look at the scripture readings, they’re supposed to reflect joy and inspire joy, but they’re a mixed bag. You wouldn’t know this, we read from the prophet Zephaniah a beautiful passage about being joyful. “All the people should be joyful because the Messiah will come someday.” It’s the only passage in the entire book of Zephaniah that is not dark and gloomy. Zephaniah is one of the smallest books of the bible, and he just goes on a rant about how terrible the people are, how they have failed Yahweh and Yahweh’s going to punish them severely. And then, at the very end of the book, there’s this brief poem about being joyful. Most scripture scholars are almost certain that that little passage was not written by the author of Zephaniah, but was stuffed there by someone else who was disappointed at how gloomy the book was. Probably something borrowed from the writings of Isaiah.

You get to the second reading, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. He talks all about being joyful, but he’s writing from prison, which is not such a joyful experience. Then listen to the gospel. The last line is a pip. St. Luke says that John the Baptist said, “The chaff he’ll burn in unquenchable fire.” And that‘s how John the Baptist preached the good news. Isn’t that sort of a contradiction in terms that being burned in unquenchable fire would be good news? And we don’t know what happened just before this passage in Luke’s story of John the Baptist.

This is how the gospels are constructed. St. Mark’s gospel is the first one. Fifteen to twenty years later, both Matthew and Luke used Mark as their outline, and added information that was part of their own personal tradition. Matthew and Luke shared some things in common. Both of them also had other source material of their own not known to any other scripture writer.

So Matthew and Luke have this remark. John the Baptist begins his preaching by calling all of the audience who’ve come to see him a brood of vipers. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I came to
Mass some Sunday, and the priest began his homily by calling everybody who had come to Mass a bunch of snakes, I would walk out. I wouldn’t allow myself to be that insulted. But all the people stay to listen to John the Baptist, even after he has called them something terrible. Now, Matthew’s gospel says it was the scribes and Pharisees that John the Baptist insulted that way, but Luke says that John the Baptist called all the people – all the people who had come out to hear him from near and far – a bunch of vipers.

And then we have this morning’s passage. We have this bunch of snakes, these vicious, poisonous people, ask John the Baptist, “What are we supposed to do?” What are we supposed to do? It’s such an innocuous question. But it’s a loaded question, because most of them know what they’re supposed to do. They just want to hear it said out loud by somebody else.

The answer that John the Baptist gives them is the key to the joy of Gaudete Sunday. He says, “If you’ve got two coats, give one away. Give some of your food away.” And then the tax collectors, who are the most despised people in Jewish society because they’re the agents of Roman taxation, say, “What are we supposed to do?” “Don’t cheat people. Just take the allotment that you’re supposed to take.”

The most interesting thing is the soldiers. Who could these soldiers possibly be? Certainly Roman soldiers would not have come to hear a Jewish preacher. So, St. Luke is adding to the story the situation of his own people in his own day, where there was still the burdensome tax among all people, not simply Jews, but also where many of the first Christians came from the Roman soldiers. Why?

Because most of the soldier, except for the officers, were drawn from the dregs of society. Slaves were given their freedom on condition that they join the military. People who were impoverish, who had lost their jobs, were often encouraged, or sometimes forced, to join the military. And so, the soldiers were a mean, ugly, brutish lot of people. And St. Luke deliberately places them in a crowd where, historically, they would never have been, so that they can ask the question, “What are we supposed to do?” And the answer can come in the gospel, “Well, don’t extort people. Don’t arrest people unfairly. [Does that sound contemporary? It sure does.] Don’t brutalize people.”

All of these things that John the Baptist says are almost too obvious to say. They’re so simple, but so hard to do. Charity. Kindness. Honesty. Justice. Mercy. All those things are so simple to do and yet, just like those crowds, we need to hear them said back to us aloud. Because, very often, we get so caught up in the moment that, unless what is happening in our lives gives us pleasure, we do not see that there is joy.

All through Christian history, many saints have said this same thing. And I found a quotation in a non-Christian source that sums things up very nicely. The author is an Indian poet - I’m not sure if he was a Hindu or not - but an Indian poet from that spiritual tradition. And this is what he wrote. His name was Tagore. His first name is unpronounceable, but his last name was Tagore. He died in 1941. He said, “I dreamt that life was joy. I awakened and I saw that life was service. I finally took action and I saw that service was joy.”

Mother Theresa, one of our most recent saints, was admired by the whole world, Christians and non-Christians alike. One of the few people to make the cover of Time magazine more than once. She said, “Don’t worry about trying to do great things. Do little things, do simple things, with great love.”

“I dreamt and I saw that life was joy. I awakened and saw that life was service. I took action and saw that service was joy.”