December 15, 2024 - The Third Sunday of Advent
My friends, I speak to you today in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.
Good morning, Epiphany. I am, as you likely know, incredibly thankful to be here with you this morning... and also to still be standing at all, after a very busy and joyful day yesterday in Holland. For those who are visiting this morning or listening online, well, welcome, and also, I was ordained to the priesthood just yesterday, six months into my time here as the rector at Epiphany. And it was joyful and emotional and exhausting and beautiful and a day I’ll never forget. Thank you for calling me and my family here to South Haven, to the Diocese of the Great Lakes.
Now, let this morning be the last Sunday we ever talk about my arrival at Epiphany! Or even about your long wait for a rector, or all of those things. We are all here together now, we’re a part of this community together, and I’m your priest, the future is here, an exciting future is ahead of us, and we have much to be thankful for and to look forward to. Let’s settle into being a wonderful church in this community in this time together.
I cannot help but think that the gospel text for this special morning could not be more fitting for this moment and this place. Some of you would definitely prefer me to stay in the Philippians reading on this Gaudate Sunday, all about rejoicing and gentleness, which is beautiful on its own, but we’re going to the good news of the gospel.
If you glance back to Luke now and only see the first sentence of the gospel reading, well, you might now be a bit worried about calling me to be your rector, you lousy brood of vipers. (Ha.) Kidding. We’ll get back to that assertion, to the gospel, in a minute... that’s just a teaser. This is, after all, the third Sunday of the season of Advent, four weeks when we as Christians are encouraged to rest, to reflect, to look toward the coming of Jesus, in the nativity, in our present lives, and in the second coming, at the end of all things.
Last Wednesday night as the snow and ice fell, which feels like a month ago to me, a group of about 30 of us met in the Parish Hall to discuss a book by Mother Tish Warren, a book specifically about Advent. No longer practiced in all Christian traditions, most of America has replaced the season of Advent with shopping season, with Black Friday “deals” that now begin on Halloween and actually somehow continue through the New Year... so what really is a sale anyway? We are flooded this month with the story of the consumer economy, the story we find ourselves in as Westerners. It’s neatly packaged with joy and sugar and carols and parties and Mariah Carey, yes, but it is a story that says what you buy will bring you joy, what you buy others will show them your love, what you buy can satisfy that longing we all feel, if we ever slow down enough to have the time to notice it at all. Buy for joy, buy for love, buy for peace. What a convenient message for those looking to sell something.
Of course, as soon as we buy something, we realize that that purchase doesn’t fill any longing for long... and there are other longings that are not satisfiable with a purchase either: a longing for justice, a longing for reconciliation, a longing for right relationship, a longing for equality, or, as if it were the simplest, just a longing for world peace. No big deal. Something out there (in here, inside us maybe?) feels kind of broken, or at least, not what it should be.
Christian theologians say that’s because we are living in the “already but not yet,” a time when Christ has come but all is not yet as it should be, God’s kingdom is still on the way, it’s what we’re looking forward to... and we can feel that “not yet” part if we slow down enough, rest enough, to feel it. Or sometimes, difficult situations force us to feel it, to feel the brokenness, the “not yet,” and feel it in full.
One of my favorite pastors, preachers, theologians, whatever, my childhood pastor Mark Quanstrom, made this point on a podcast recently, and it gave me great relief to hear him admit it: Many days, Mark just struggles to get out of bed in the morning and he just lays there, sometimes for hours. The weight of the brokenness, of the pain, that you encounter on a regular basis in a clergy position, but really the brokeness we all feel in this life when we’re fully experiencing it, well, that brokenness can be too much to bear. We know, obviously, that we can’t soothe the pain of a loved ones’ death, for example, with a new toy, or a new coat, or a chocolate bar. Buying something doesn’t help us there. We long for all things to be made right, and we cannot get there on our own. We know this, and it can be devastating.
There’s a lighter connection here that I want to make, delicately, if you’ll allow me, to the deep longing expressed here at Epiphany for a full-time rector. As Janet said beautifully last week, this Church of the Epiphany experienced an Advent of sorts over the past few years, and some of you have experienced more than one, as you have actively searched for years for someone to come and lead this parish full-time, waiting for their arrival with anticipation. However, similar to with that fancy television picked up on Black Friday, you know that my arrival here, that any priest, really, can only satisfy for so long, no matter how long we’re here. The shine will wear off, y’all, if it hasn’t already. As Janet and Fr. Michael both said in the last two weeks, we will undoubtedly irritate and frustrate the hell out of each other in the years to come (all in love, of course). That’s what you do in good, committed relationships, and you grow through the friction.
Abbey and I are as committed to this community as you are to us, but there will still be a deeper longing that remains... Though I will do my best, my arrival won’t be bringing justice, reconciliation, peace, and shalom to South Haven, let alone to the whole world. My ego is not that big, even after yesterday’s ordination.
This brokenness, this longing to see all things made right that is in all of us, here at Epiphany and everywhere, it was as evident and real in the first century as it is today. So, here we make the turn to the good news of the gospel. In the first century, the people of Israel were suffering under Roman rule, and as we read last week, the word of God came to John in the wilderness, not to those in positions of power. John the Baptist, or the Baptizer, not to be confused with John the Apostle or John the Revelator (yes, there are a lot of Johns here, I realize), John the Baptist is the featured character in our gospel story today. Last week, he was in his mother Elizabeth’s womb, and now, we fast-forward a bit to when he has become a leader of the Jewish people, though a bit of an eccentric one. John is described in the Gospel of Mark as wearing clothes of camel’s hair, living on locusts and wild honey. He has his own disciples who feature throughout the gospel stories, and the central sacrament of his ministry is baptism with water, in rivers, primarily. We’ll have baptism next Sunday here at Epiphany; the symbol he was using then is still central to our faith today, two thousand years later.
To put it simply though, this John “has a personality,” as Karen Small put it this week. He minces no words when addressing those who were following him, people coming to him and seeking baptism and forgiveness. “You brood of vipers!” he yells, which... goodness, I can’t imagine any preacher really getting away with that today. “You brood of vipers!” He yells it to those seeking baptism, how harsh... but why? Well, John is yelling here at those who assume they can come and be made clean and new and well without ever being changed, just because they are descendants of Abraham, without ever doing anything that might heal the brokenness of the world around them. They’re looking for what Dietrich Bonhoeffer critiqued as “cheap grace,” forgiveness without repentance, forgiveness without discipleship, forgiveness without, though the Jews didn’t know it yet, without the cross, without Jesus Christ.
Our encounter with Jesus must change us for the better of ourselves and our community. I have preached this before as your deacon, and I will preach it again as your priest.
To their credit, the people in this story, seeking baptism and forgiveness, do respond to John’s admonishment and ask well, what then should we do? What does it look like to be changed, John? Jesus would obviously expand greatly on this himself, but John gives them a few simple examples: “Do you have two coats? Share with those who have none.” “Are you in a position that values profit while exploiting others? Stop exploiting others.” “Are you in a position that gives you power to enforce your will? Well, use that power appropriately.” At the root of all of these directions is the simple love of your neighbor, and it was such a radical message for those gathered that they start wondering if John himself was the Messiah. But John knows better. Since his time in the womb, John the Baptist has known that “one is coming soon who is more powerful” than he is, John is merely the Forerunner, the witness to testify to the light of Jesus. “Look forward to this Jesus,” John is saying, as fitting a message for Advent, for today, as there could be.
This Jesus will change you. He will baptize you with the Spirit and with fire, and many Christians today read this last bit wrongly, as a bit of a threat: "get yourself right or else you’re going to burn." But that’s not exactly what John’s saying. You see, fire doesn’t only destroy things. Fire refines too. We refine crude oil into gasoline, we refine metals and sugars and salts... refining simply means reducing the impurities in a substance, removing the brokenness, making something wonderfully new.
My friends, this morning, John is telling the people gathered that they should not simply settle for John as their savior, as the Messiah, as the one with good insights and teachings and a strange sort of charisma. They should instead be looking toward the one who is to come, the one whose sandals he is unfit to untie, the one who is capable of truly refining them and making them wonderfully new for their own good and for the good of all those around them, the one who will embody all the love of neighbor that John is teaching even to his death on the cross, the one who will help them to bear good fruit and to bring about the kingdom of God on earth, and so much more.
He, Jesus the Christ, is the one we are longing for still today, ten days before Christmas in the year 2024. He is the one who will make things right both now and at the end of all things, he is the one who will satisfy beyond any expectation, more than any potential Christmas gift we might be told will satisfy us. He is the answer to our deepest longing, our reason to rejoice and be glad. Because Jesus, Jesus comes for us still today as the truly good news: God loves us, God is for us, and God is with us, no exceptions. Amen.
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