Sermon on Luke 3:7-18

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Our Advent theme this year is A Weary World Rejoices, a line from the beloved Christmas carol “O Holy Night,” because there’s a lot of weariness in the world, even after almost a full year of focusing on Sabbath in this congregation.

Each week, we’ll ponder one of God’s promises.This week is the promise of restoration.

And restoration was certainly what God’s people needed in the time of Zephaniah.

He was prophesying in the time between the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah. King Josiah was on the throne.

When you read through the Hebrew Bible, there’s a good stretch where there’s one king who behaves wickedly, dies, and is replaced by another wicked king.

When you get to King Josiah, it’s a relief. He sought to bring about reform and draw people back to God.

But destruction was still coming.

The first several chapters of Zephaniah predict the “Day of the Lord,” when God’s judgment will come upon both God’s people and their enemies.

He called out the idolatry of God’s people and the injustice and violence of their rulers.

There had been generation after generation of poor leadership, which had led the people to lose their trust in God.

But in chapter 3, Zephaniah’s words suddenly turn hopeful, as he exhorts God’s people to rejoice. The Day of the Lord isn’t about terrifying vengeance against God’s people for their wicked ways. Our reading even says, “The Lord has taken away the judgments against you;he has turned away your enemies.”

The Day of the Lord is about restoration. In our reading, God promised to free God’s people from their enemies, “save the lame and gather the outcast,” and bring God’s people home.

God will restore the wholeness God intended in Creation.

But the time wasn’t yet, and still isn’t.

Yes, God sent the promised Messiah, Jesus, so we could see God face-to-face. Jesus broke the power of sin and death through the cross and resurrection.

But the fullness of the Reign of God isn’t here yet.

Sure, we get glimpses in the beauty of nature, the kindness of an old friend, or the hospitality of a stranger.

But the world still isn’t as it should be, and it’s easy to overlook the glimpses of heaven in the weariness of the here and now.

There’s so much in the world that is cruel, unjust, tragic, and senseless.

How do we go on when it seems like the world is going to Hell in the proverbial handbasket?

John had some ideas in our Gospel reading.

The first part could be summed up by the now cliché saying, “be the change you want to see in the world.”

People came to see him in the wilderness and asked how they should live in anticipation of the Day of the Lord.

John told them to share what they have.

And when people with specific professions asked him, he told the tax collectors not to cheat people, and he told the soldiers not to threaten people or steal from them.

Just as Zephaniah called out idolatry and injustice in his time, John was calling people to release their idols of greed and work for justice and peace in their own small ways: give someone a coat, take only what is owed, care for your fellow humans.

These small acts were ways they were dedicating their lives to God as they waited for the Messiah to come.

And after telling them how to wait, John told them about that coming Messiah. He pointed them to Jesus and told them Good News.

John’s proclamation wasn’t just a laundry list of good works to make us right with God (because works don’t save us—God’s grace does). John’s proclamation pointed them to Jesus, where their true restoration lay.

The Messiah would save the world, and while they waited for that, they could live in the way Jesus would soon teach them: love God and love your neighbor. Make the world a little more as it is in heaven.

There’s a Christmas song from the musical Mame called “We Need a Little Christmas.”The eccentric Auntie Mamehas hit some financial trouble shortly before Thanksgiving while raising her nephew during the Depression. The coming holidays, not to mention their future together, suddenly seem bleak. But the irrepressible Auntie Mame declares that they should start celebrating Christmas now, launching into the song “We Need a Little Christmas.”

A few bittersweet lyrics hint that Auntie Mame is not as cheerful as she pretends:

“It's time we hung some tinsel on that evergreen bough.
For I've grown a little leaner,
Grown a little colder,
Grown a little sadder,
Grown a little older,
And I need a little angel
Sitting on my shoulder,
Need a little Christmas now.”

I think many of us love this season not just for its spiritual significance, but for the simple joys it promises:coziness, comfort, connection with family, playfulness, peace, and nostalgia for a time past that perhaps never existed to begin with.

I think we all have a picture in our heads of what a perfect Christmas should be like. It’s probably a little different for each of us, but one thing is the same: we’ve never experienced it.

Even the happiest of holidays probably had a crying toddler, a disappointed wish, a petty argument, a burnt turkey, or an absent family member.

And as much as we sing of peace on earth this time of year, none of us have ever experienced that in our lifetimes.

Maybe that’s exactly why we need a little Christmas—not because our experience of it is perfect, but because it, like Zephaniah and John the Baptist, points us to the fulfillment of God’s promises.

In other words, maybe we all do need a little Christmas right this very moment, because it and Advent anticipates God turning the world upside-down (or perhaps right-side up), restoring everything and everyone to God’s self.

Advent and Christmas point to God’s bigger story that we’re a part of. Every longing for a perfect Christmas is actually a longing for the world to be made right in the way God intended from the beginning.

As Auntie Mame sings,

“And we need a little snappy
‘Happy ever after,’
Need a little Christmas now.”

If this Advent season feels a little lacking, if the thought of another disappointing Christmas makes you want to crawl back in bed, or if on the other hand you love this season so much that you feel depressed when it’s over, your feelings are valid.

Those feelings, too, point to the fullness of the Reign of Godwhen we only get glimpses on this side of life. Let these feelings remind you that we are part of a bigger story that hasn’t ended yet.God promises restoration—that our “snappy happy ever after” will come one day.

Receive this “Blessing for Our Part in the Bigger Story” from Kate Bowler:

Blessed are we,

gathered already into the plot,

part of the epic story you have been writing

from long before we were ever born.

Thank you that we are not separated

into lives of loneliness

but joined together as those

who were loved into being.

We are made for meaning and a purpose

that only our days can breathe into action.

Pull us closer to the bigger story that

reminds us

that our ordinary lives

are the stuff of eternity.

You fitted each of our days

for small efforts and endless attempts

to pick ourselves up again.

In our triumphs and embarrassments.

we need to be told again (sigh)

that we are not just everyday problems.

We are a story of extraordinary love.