We Become the Promise

Advent 3C - Dec 15, 2024

Rev Sarah Colvin

You can find this week's readings here.

Last week, I had a good heart-felt conversation about “consumerism” and the ills of “capitalism” with some of the younger people in the congregation. And not wanting to name names, but I would like to point out, that although they could have been, those were not the words of the more seasoned adults in the conversation. The younger folk were leading this conversation; it was their concern.

Why I bring this up, is that I want to convey that these people with whom I was conversing, are much younger than I am, but that they absolutely get it. They get it like the Israelites got it when they had heard the First Song of Isaiah (which we read as Canticle 9) and when they heard the minor prophet Zephaniah. These words have survived because they rung true and continue to ring true.

Looking at the words from Zephaniah and the First Song of Isaiah (two Old Testament prophets), we see the promise of ages, a promise that Israel understood.

From Zephaniah:

O daughter Zion:

The Lord, your God, is in your midst,

a warrior who gives victory;

he will rejoice over you with gladness,

he will renew you in his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing

as on a day of festival.

[God] will remove disaster from you,

so that you will not bear reproach for it.

This promise of salvation rings with the same trueness as the words from the First Song of Isaiah, “Surely it is God who saves me.”

Make his deeds known among the peoples; *

see that they remember that his Name is exalted.

Sing the praises of the Lord, for he has done great things, *

and this is known in all the world.

Cry aloud, inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy, *

for the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel.

These are praises for salvation and for the promise of continued salvation. This is the promise of caretaking. This is not a promise of presents, but a promise of care, a promise of having enjoyed great things under a promise and with a promise of continued to enjoyment. This is a promise not of commercial prosperity, but a promise of lived joy. It is not whether or not you got what you wanted on past Christmases, but the promise of community and lived joy is real.

And this is what my young friends understand---that material things are just things. I’m not saying they will return whatever presents they get at Christmas, but things are, in fact, just things.

And because we have received these promises and salvation from God, much is expected of us. Although John the Baptist is still a little scary with his verbiage- -“You brood of Vipers”, one of the best insults in the Bible – John is not just an odd locust eating man wearing camel hair in the wilderness but has set about, preaching the gospel or good news of the coming kingdom. He is not the messiah but instead heralds the messiah. John’s good news is mixed with warning. He warns all the people (not just the Pharisees and Sadducees), but everyone to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

For the longest time, I admit to not understanding what this means. My understanding of God is that God is less transactional than most people make God out to be. It is NOT that if you do something, God rewards you with blessing but that because God freely gives forgiveness, then you should want to do good actions, in other words, you should bear fruit which is worthy of that forgiveness. God’s own first gift to US is the motivation for our repentance.

Don’t make God’s gift out to be worthless, John is saying. So, saying that we are descendants of Abraham doesn’t get us very far. Giving away our extra coats and other clothing, making sure no one is hungry, people are not left to face the elements, people have health care--- these are things that matter.

As we await the coming of the Christ child, we get told very, very clearly what we need to do to get ready for Christmas and to get ready for the second coming. It has nothing to do with presents; its relationship with capitalism is oppositional and, at best, twisted. It does have to do with recognizing that salvation given to us with its original lineage through Abraham, but really through God, through Jesus, is intended to move our hearts to alleviate someone else’s suffering.

And this is where we have hope. Hope for a better earth, hope for a better planet, hope for a better us--- despite our own brokenness, because everyone and every system and every human relationship is broken in some way—it is, in fact, a characteristic of our humanity. But despite our brokenness, we receive a promise of God’s continued care, and with that understanding, we become the promise to someone else to provide when they do not have. God’s blessing, first given to us, becomes our motivation to be a blessing to others. We respond to the gift with a gift. And in those gifts, we are all blessed beyond measure.

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Image credit: ohn Baptizing Jesus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56384 [retrieved December 22, 2024]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Painted_Religious_Motifs_on_Facade_of_I_Yesus_Church_-_Axum_(Aksum)_-_Ethiopia_-_02_(8701117241).jpg.