A sermon for the third Sunday of Advent, December 17, 2023
Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York
Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.
That’s the beginning of our Collect for this Third Sunday of Advent. God coming among us and stirring things up. That’s what this season is about. The birth of that baby, which we celebrate in less than two weeks—that’s about God coming into this world as a human being. And when Jesus came into the synagogue in his home town to preach for the first time, the Gospel of Luke tells us that he read from today’s lesson from Isaiah:
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
Isaiah 61:1-2
By fulfilling these words Jesus stirs things up. Why did he need to do that? Because people—people in Jesus’ time, and in ours—will resort to all sorts of things to keep their wealth and power. Often, they will not only hold on for dear life to their earthly possessions, even though others are in great need, they will also take from those who are weaker. And they will even lie about it. And those lies become just the way things are. I’m entitled and they aren’t. And that attitude doesn’t stop with individuals, it can permeate whole societies so that oppression of the poor, the weak, or minority groups becomes part of the fabric of those communities.
Stir up your power, O Lord. Jesus brings good news to the oppressed and that stirs things up. It is not that God does not love the wealthy or even the powerful. God loves each of God’s creatures as much as God loves you or me. But God’s love, God’s compassion does not take the form of letting destructive behaviors continue until all of humanity—the beings who were formed in God’s own image—is destroyed. God’s compassion won’t let us sit with this complacency, this attitude of “that’s just how the world is.” God’s compassion makes it possible for those who mourn, or suffer, or are confined, or imprisoned to have hope and justice. Jesus brings good news to the oppressed and that is good news for us all.
The prophet continues:
For I the Lord love justice,
I hate robbery and wrongdoing;
I will faithfully give them their recompense,
Isaiah 61:8
How much robbery and wrongdoing; trickery and lying do we see around us, especially at the highest levels? God is not blind to this. People rationalize and make excuses and explain how the way to fix things is to leave them in charge and comfortable for just. a little. while. longer. God sees through this. God sent the prophets. God sent one of them during Jesus’ time.
Our Gospel lesson today is really sort of a comedy. All the people in charge started asking John to make an account of himself, to put himself in a category so they could, in their wisdom and authority, classify him, put him and his activity in a box, tame it and ignore it. He was making quite a splash, so he must be something … Are you the Messiah? Elijah? The Prophet? If they could just get him to pick one and say it, then … then they could argue whether he really is that or not, and ignore what he has to say.
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord” ’
John 1:23
Repent! Listen and stop exploiting one another! Extorting, lying, gathering to yourself surplus money from those who don’t have enough. John the Baptist is perceived as radical, but really the things he told people to do were simply to follow the laws and be decent to one another. Maybe that is radical nowadays.
John is about the same sort of stirring up that Jesus is. Building a compassionate and generous world, a world relying on the love and mercy of God, not on power and privilege. John points to Jesus, whose sandals he is not worthy to untie. Yet when we encounter Jesus, is he a powerful political leader? A warrior or a wealthy person organizing great projects? No. Jesus was a healer. He was a truth teller. He taught God’s compassion and mercy to everyone. And that was good news to those who were constantly excluded, who were poor, who mourned as they lost loved ones and children to the ravages of disease and poverty. Jesus’ message was good news to everyone—but for some the challenge of the truth, the challenge to give and share, to step outside of the complacency of power, was so uncomfortable that they rejected him.
Jesus has come to help us, to deliver God’s grace and mercy. We celebrate the joy and possibility of this wondrous world. We rejoice in the good things of this world: family, friends, community. The wonders of science, the beauty of art and the glories of nature. God stirs us up, and makes it possible for us to be who we are: God’s generous, loving, giving, caring children. Sure, we can find people who are going to try to protect their power and those people can cause many problems. But Christ frees us to be ourselves, to receive God’s gifts, to rejoice and live in God’s Kingdom.
When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
then were we like those who dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy.
Then they said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
The LORD has done great things for us,
and we are glad indeed.
Psalm 126:1-4
Observations 