Advent 3B, 17 December 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

• Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11. To give them a garland instead of ashes.
• 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing.
• John 1:6-8, 19-28. This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

O God of hope, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

So, are you ready for Christmas? It’s hard for me to think of a more annoying question at this time of year. It jangles my nerves as it conjures up conversations to have, plans to make, places to go, bulletins to prepare, and sermons to write. It also conjures up the yawning gap between how I want the world to be and how it is at this moment – wracked by war and alienation, torn apart by greed and fear, peoples estranged from one another in hopes of finding safety and security. The question conjures up in me the recognition of the emotional freight of this tricky season. It conjures up those who are broken-hearted, captive, imprisoned, those who are being crushed by debt or other kinds of devastation, those who are huddled in doorways and alleyways without adequate and dignified shelter or even access to toilets. “No!” I want to shout. “No, we are not ready.” “How could we be ready?” And our scriptures smile and say, “Well, ready or not….”

Our first reading this morning comes from Isaiah, toward the end of the book, spelling out the ethical mandate for those who desire right relationship with the Divine. Walter Brueggemann writes, “here speaks a human agent who is authorized and energized to do [God’s] deeply transformative work in the community of [God’s] people.”[1] It’s about a substantive and very public reorganization of the life of the people, about a restoration of well-being to a people who have been impoverished, powerless, and despondent. Isaiah is calling the people to Torah, particularly to the description of jubilee in Leviticus 25, which, by my reckoning, is the centerpiece or the very heart of Torah, and which in its essence is a call to treat one another with deep kindness and decency, redistributing resources so that everyone has enough instead of some having less-than-enough and others having more-than-enough.

Each of our four Gospels includes stories of John the Baptist pointing forward to Jesus, who pointed back to Isaiah, who pointed back and, as importantly, forward to Torah. (Torah, like Gospel, is past and future.) John the Evangelist (that is, John, the Gospel writer) begins his version of the story of Jesus with tension between “the Jews” and Jesus in a way that the other three Gospel writers do not. For John the Evangelist, the tension started before Jesus even appeared on the scene. Indeed, Isaiah and the other prophets, and Torah contain evidence of plenty of tension within and among God’s people. Gospels and other Christian writings contain evidence of plenty of tension within and among Jesus followers. Life has never been without tension within communities of faith.

When John the Evangelist writes, “when Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He uses the word “Judaios” which also means people from the territory of Judea. It’s not exactly clear to scholars who John means when he writes, “Judaios.” He’s certainly not talking about all Jews even at the time, since Jesus and his followers were all Jewish. He may be contrasting Judeans and Galileans – but most likely he’s writing about some of Jerusalem’s religious authorities. [2] He clearly has an ax to grind that the other Gospel writers do not have. The Gospel of John uses the term “Judaios” some sixty-four times compared with six in the Gospel of Mark, five in Matthew, and three in Luke. [3] It seems that John, who was writing in the late first century, was caught up in a late first century conflict that he was applying retroactively to the early part of the first century. I wonder if John is using the word the way some of us refer to “the police,” or “the military,” or “the government,” when we are angry or despairing in the midst of struggle. Do you wince when people from other countries speak about how “Americans” are?

One of the benefits of sharing sanctuary and programs and families and friendships with Central Reform Temple is that we are regularly called out of theological complacency when it comes to our Christian scripture and Church tradition’s references to Jews – or Levites, or priests from Jerusalem, or high priests, or Sadducees, or scribes, or Pharisees. I changed the word translated as Jews in our Gospel lesson to Judeans today, to put a speed bump in our path. Judeans isn’t necessarily the best translation of “Judaios” here, but I want us all to slow down when we listen to this reading. I don’t pretend to know John’s intent, but I do know that I cannot keep silent when it comes to Christian scriptural slurs.

For me, a most interesting detail in our Gospel portion for today is in verse 28 at the end of our reading: “this took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.” This little bit causes consternation among Biblical scholars who want to prove things. The problem is, archeologists cannot locate a place that might have been called Bethany along the Jordan River; and the Bethany they can find, just outside of Jerusalem, is not near the Jordan River. The Gospel of John has never been particularly helpful for folks who want to pin it all down. But generally, names of places in John are factual, even if they also assume a measure of symbolic significance. [4] Bethany (beth ani) is usually translated, “House of the Afflicted” or “House of the Poor” – a way station for people who are suffering – a kind of hospice location where desperate people could be received and cared for. Jewish New Testament scholar, Adele Reinhartz translates Bethany as “House of Response.” I love that.

Wherever Bethany was, our story is John the Baptist was there providing some assistance, preparing the way of the Lord. 

As I said, each of our four Gospels includes stories of John the Baptist pointing forward to Jesus, who pointed back to Isaiah, who pointed backwards and, as importantly, forwards to Torah. Listen to the late Lucille Clifton’s poem called “john”. [5]

somebody coming in blackness
like a star
and the world be a great bush
on his head
and his eyes be fire
in the city
and his mouth be true as time
he be calling the people brother
even in the prison
even in the jail

 i’m just only a baptist preacher
somebody bigger than me coming
in blackness like a star

If affliction makes one ritually impure, then healing and a ritual cleansing is what is needed to restore one to community, and in those days, there was no better place than the Jordan River. Restoring folks to community is a way of preparing the way of the Lord. Bethany – Beth Ani – always reminds me of Emmanuel Church as a place of response, respite and care that this place provides for hundreds of people week in and week out – restoring folks to community, preparing the way of the Lord.

Perhaps you know that today is the Sunday in Advent called Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is Latin for “rejoice.” Our liturgical color for the third Sunday is rose – it’s why we have a rose-colored candle in our Advent wreath and rose fabric in our vestments. It is a Sunday to fill our imaginations with joyful anticipation of what God might be up to in creating new heavens and a new earth, even (and especially) when our hearts are heavy, our hands are shaking, and our lips are trembling with grief.

 It is a Sunday to rejoice in the power of Love, in spite of everything that seems wrong, in spite of oppression and violence, in spite of hunger and illness and imprisonment, even in spite of destruction and death. The canticle appointed for today in the lectionary is Mary’s song — the Magnificat – the joyful song of an unmarried and poor woman who has learned that she is scandalously pregnant. It may seem idiotic for her to be so joyfully confident that her very being is like a glass – a glass — that makes God easier to see. When we sing Mary’s song in the first person – we assert that it is true for each one of us as well. My soul magnifies the Lord. Your soul magnifies the Lord. Each one of us carries in us – in our souls — the ability to make God easier to see. That is a reason to rejoice and be glad in spite of everything that seems wrong, in spite of hunger and illness and imprisonment, in spite of destruction and death. Rejoicing certainly doesn’t mean letting up on our insistence and our actions to end all forms of oppression and violence.

It’s a hard choice, I think – not to give in to despair. It’s hard and quite counter-cultural to choose to rejoice in the midst of so much that’s not right. And so I went looking for evidence – for reasons to rejoice, because I know that despair is a luxury we can ill-afford. I recalled beloved Emmanuelite, Walter Jonas, who died last month. Over the years, he offered me frequent reminders about how, in spite of what we feel and fear, in our lifetimes there’s been a dramatic rise in global health and well-being, the reduction of death by war and other forms of violence, the rapid growth of literacy and the improved distribution of resources like food and medicine. The world is much less dangerous than it was forty years ago. That doesn’t lessen the sorrow of people who are victims of oppression and violence, but we can rejoice, give thanks, and take encouragement from the significant improvements in life around the world. 

Little things can add up to big things, so I looked around for some small magnifications of the Lord from this past week. For example, my sister’s 7th grade class made greeting cards to go with hundreds of backpacks her school put together, filled with socks and underwear, hats and gloves for people living on the streets in Baltimore. She called me the other night because she was worried that the kids might not write “appropriate” things in the cards, but she needn’t have worried. She sent me pictures of some of the messages. They wrote: “sending you much love, calmness, and smiles to fill your soul,” “sending you so much love,” “you can create better days ahead,” “stay strong and positive, and “I hope these good wishes wash over you like a healing wave from your head to your toes.”

So having done my own homework of finding evidence of the magnification of the Lord, I’d like to assign you the same. In the week ahead, look for reasons to rejoice. Look for evidence of Love’s power to redeem. Look for ways to serve others in community. I promise you will find cause to rejoice if you do. As Dorothy Day once said, “We have all known the long loneliness. We have learned that the only solution is love, and that love comes with community.” Gaudete!

1.  Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66, in the Westminster Bible Companion series (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), p. 213ff.
2.  See Adele Reinhartz in The Jewish Annotated New Testament (New York: Oxford Press, 2011), 159.
3.  I get a slightly different count, but am grateful for the point made by Ronald Allen & Clark Williamson, Preaching the Gospels without Blaming the Jews (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), p. 91.
4.  Thanks again to Adele Reinhartz in The Jewish Annotated New Testament.
5.  Lucille Clifton, “john” from The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, (Rochester: BOA Editions, Ltd., 1987)