“Sing and shout for joy, people of Israel! Rejoice with all your heart, Jerusalem!” Zephaniah 3: 14-18
The crowd asked John: “Then what are we supposed to do?” “If you have two coats, give one away,” he said. “Do the same with your food.” Tax men also came to be baptised and said: “Teacher, what should we do?” He told them: “No more extortion! Collect only what is required by law.” Luke 3: 10-18
This Third Sunday of Advent used be called Gaudete Sunday because the entrance antiphon for the liturgy and the second reading from Philippians begin with: “Rejoice (in Latin, Gaudete) in the Lord always! Again, I say: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4: 4). Paul’s words echo the opening line of today’s First Reading from Zephaniah: “Sing and shout for joy, people of Israel” (Zephaniah 3: 14). Moreover, there’s a touch of irony in Zephaniah’s exhortation to the people of Israel to sing and shout for joy for he had just finished lambasting them for their infidelities. They surely would hardly have felt like rejoicing. Perhaps Zephaniah was trying to make amends for being overly harsh. Maybe his is a message to us all to moderate our criticism of others.
Today’s second reading from Paul to the Philippians begins with the one-word, spontaneous outburst from Paul to his community: “Rejoice!” I suggest that Paul had come to appreciate that people who have grown close to God really feel like celebrating and wanting to express their joy by reaching out to others with practical expressions of care and affection. I believe that St Benedict had the same understanding when he taught his followers the lesson that “to work is to pray”. Prayer for both Paul and Benedict was an expression of hand and heart. St James said much the same when he asserted that faith in God without good works is totally meaningless.
Today’s gospel-reading also presents us with a challenge in that Luke seems to have jumbled some of his own teachings about the end-times and the final judgement (apocalyptic writing) that he believed was imminent with some of the teachings of John the Baptist, teachings that were more measured. It is hard to imagine John the Baptist labelling as “a group of vipers” the people flocking to him for Baptism. This does not fit the John whom Luke presents in the first half of today’s gospel-reading.
Here we see a Baptist who is his own man, confident in his commission from God to herald the coming of both Jesus as the Messiah and the arrival of the reign/kingdom of God. John the Baptist had no delusions or ambitions of grandeur, so was quick to disabuse those who had begun to think that he might be the Messiah himself. Luke has presented him as one whose agendum was for social justice rather than for conversion into Judaism. Moreover, he rejected nobody and responded openly and simply to their questions of how to prepare for the coming of the One whose advent he was heralding: “When the people asked John ‘What are we supposed to do?’ he answered: ‘If you have two coats, give one away. Do the same with your food.” Let’s not forget that many of these people knew what it was to have little in the way of food and clothing. And they knew, from experience, what it was like to share with their sisters and brothers in need. Luke proceeded by stating that people from all walks of life had been drawn to John. Tax collectors and soldiers (probably those in the service of Herod, rather than Roman soldiers) came with their queries. And the Baptist urged them to treat everybody justly and to avoid bullying and extortionary practices. His responses to the three groups named by Luke add up to: Make sure to look after the people around you who are doing it tough!
It was not coincidental that the Jesus whom the Baptist identified as the Messiah, the Christ of God, named care for others, especially the needy, as the central characteristic of the kingdom of God which he had come to usher in. Central to our role as disciples of Jesus are servant leadership and care for others, especially for those most in need.
The readings of his Third Sunday of Advent invite us to approach the Baptist with the very same question that came from the mouths of all those who approached him: “What must we do by way of preparing our hearts for the Christ of God to be born in them?” What might his answer be for me, for you? The essence of obedience is to be open to listening. What we hear might well surprise us, but it will surely have something to do with how we encounter everyone who comes into our lives. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Putting it into practice is quite a challenge!
