Guadete Sunday! Rejoice the Lord is near!

III Sunday Advent Gaudete Sunday Luke 3,10-18

Today, the third Sunday of Advent is Gaudate Sunday. Praise! Rejoice! Don’t worry be happy! That is why we are wearing pink vestments, the pink candle in the middle of our Advent wreath. We pause in the midst of the solemness of Advent and kick back just a little to rejoice. All the readings today speak of the need to Rejoice! To be filled with Joy! The first reading from the prophet Zephaniah tells us to be glad and rejoice with all our heart because God has removed judgement from us and turned away our enemies. The reading is so filled with joy that it says that God Godself is rejoicing. It says that God will sing joyfully because of you! Imagine that! God is singing your name with joy! Imagine God in the shower singing out your name! Like Miriam singing on Sunday Domine Deus! God is singing Miriam, Elena, Diana, Marcela and Joseph! We all know that singing expresses our deepest emotions and Zephaniah says that God is filled with so much love for us that he is singing about us! Today’s feast, Gaudate Sunday gets its name from our second reading. Rejoice in the Lord Always. I shall say it again: REJOICE! Today is rejoicing Sunday, why because the Lord is near! Not just near because Christmas is just a week away, but near because he is in our midst. Our God is here among us and we can make God more present in the way that we live our lives. And then we get to the Gospel for the day. The Gospel obviously is the most important reading. It is the reading that ties it all together and explains why it is that God is singing our names for joy, why we should be rejoicing, so let’s look at the reading once again…. “Whoever has two cloaks should share one, the same with food.” Doesn’t sound too joyful! Yes we should share but maybe feel guilty that we have so much. But let’s read on. “Tax-collectors, stop collecting more than what is prescribed” That sounds good to me, no one likes to pay taxes, but these is advice for those who collect the taxes, not the taxpayers. Soldiers, “don’t extort, don’t falsely accuse, be satisfied with your wages!” Again, sounds good to me but once again it isn’t for us who might have been taken advantage of by the police, but it is for the police to stop taking advantage of us! So, let’s read on. John talks about being baptized and he says that he is baptizing with water, but the Christ will come who will baptize with the Spirit and fire. John says it will be like the thresher with a winnowing fan. He will separate the wheat from the chaff and the chaff will be burnt in unquenchable fire. Again, does that sound like something to rejoice about? And the reading ends with the words “he preached the good news to the people.” All of this doesn’t sound like much good news to me. So maybe we need to go back and consider the reading once again. John singles out the tax collectors and soldiers, why? Because they were the ones who extorted the most from the people. Because of them the people in Jesus’ time suffered a great deal. The tax-collector made his money by charging the people more than they were supposed to. If the tax was 10%, they would charge 15% and keep the extra for themselves. The soldiers were like many police. “If you give me a little something to buy my breakfast I won’t give you a ticket.” “I’ll look the other way if you just help me out with a little extra.” So, the good news, the time of rejoicing wasn’t for the soldiers and tax-collectors rather it was for the poor and suffering. The ones who had been taken advantage of for so long. Since most of the hearers of Luke’s gospel were the poor, it was good news for them. The same with sharing two cloaks or something to eat. But what about the wheat from the chaff? Usually when we think of the wheat from the chaff we think of the good from the bad. God is going to burn the wicked in an unquenchable fire. We might even be afraid that we are the chaff that we are the useless and that we will be done away with. But maybe there is another way to think of the chaff and the wheat. Wheat is a kind of grass, it is a single blade, there is the kernel, the wheat which we use to make bread but then there is everything else that is not good for anything. I think the same is true for each one of us. We have those good parts of ourselves and we have those bad parts of wicked or sinful parts of ourselves. Those things that need to be burned away so that we can be better. Take the example of the two coats. There are those parts of us that keep us from being generous. Those stingy or selfish parts of ourselves. Those things need to be burned away so that we can be more generous kind of loving. John offers this cleansing by celebrating baptism. We have all been baptized but maybe we need a further cleansing. This comes through the sacrament of reconciliation. I would suggest that if you haven’t done so yet, or if it has been a while that you celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation in this week before Christmas. We all have some chaff in us that needs to be burned away. But this is meant to be a downer! No, this is meant to be a part of Guadate! A part of the joy of the third week of Advent. Let us be cleansed so that we can show forth to the world the joy that Jesus is near indeed!