Joy dominates the readings for this, the third Sunday in Advent.

Joy and John the Baptist.

The joy isn’t the kind of empty shallow joy that is separate and disconnected and oblivious to the brokenness and struggles of our world.

No, it is a joy that is born even in the midst of that struggle, a joy that rises up in hope, anchored to a knowledge of God’s love and God’s presence in human life even during trying and difficult times.

Precisely because it takes seriously the gap between how the world really is and how God wants it to be; it makes this joy even that much more wonderful.

This joy is more intense because it is kindled amid circumstances in which joy is least expected. Not unlike the times in which we live.

Some of the gloomiest texts in all of the Hebrew scriptures appear in Zephaniah. That’s understandable given Zephaniah lived through some very gloomy times. He seems to have been driven to near despair over the conditions of the people’s life in the years following the rule of the exceptionally evil King Manasseh. An evil leader can do damage during their reign that can last for generations. There were wars and revolts and the people had forgotten who they were, and they had abandoned their traditions in favor of the practices of their neighbors. Their embrace of the worship practices of those around them had led them away from God. They had lost their way and their very identity as a people.

Some wise person once said that in times of social upheaval, the problem is not that the people won’t believe in anything; it is that they will believe in everything.

Faithfulness not only implies commitment, it means complete trust. The people had failed to completely trust in God. They had ‘hedged their bets’ by bowing to other gods. Just in case.

For Zephaniah, as in the rest of the prophets: the first commandment  is pretty much what the whole faith thing is about: “I am the Holy One your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

Faith is about trusting fully, completely in the One God revealed to us in scripture and (for us as Christians) in the life of Christ.

The whole of scriptures, at some level, boils down to that.

Even as we approach the Christmas season, I get the occasional question about ‘virgin birth’ and Christ’s divinity. We expect that during a season in which we celebrate the Incarnation of Christ. It has been very helpful to me to realize that the questions about the divinity and humanity of Jesus were not ultimately about whether or not Jesus was God or how much God he was or how he could be both human and divine.

No, the real question in the beginning was simply: is Caesar your God or is Jesus God? Is Caesar’s way the ‘divine’ way, or is the Way of Jesus the ‘divine’ way.

In other words: to whom will we give our ultimate loyalty? To whom will we bow? Who will call the shots in our lives? In whom do we trust?

Will it be the God revealed in Jesus, or will it be the culture?

That’s the question.

The amazing thing is, of course, even though the actions of the people over and over seem to make it clear that the answer to that question is a resounding ‘no,’ God has not, does not, will not give up on trying to get us to see things God’s way.

In the Isaiah text, it too sings of great joy. That prophet, as well, has seen the waywardness of the people, and has agonized knowing they were going the wrong way. And yet, this prophet, too, finds that God does not abandon the people. His source of joy is in God’s presence in the life of the nation. Even when they fail to recognize that presence and blessing in their midst.

It is a joy that compels faith and trust, a joy that insists that the people wait for the gracious outpouring of God’s mercy.

In our Philippians text, which will be read today as the charge to the congregation, we find an imperative to rejoice. Made even clearer in that passage we find the reason once again: God is near.

We rejoice because the presence of God changes and reorients the life of the believer.

Rejoice because God is near.

Even perceived absence makes the heart grow fonder.

I am the second child in a family of six children, the oldest of two daughters, with four brothers. My father’s job took him out of the country on business quite a bit. It couldn’t have been easy for my mother, who struggled with depression . . .and mood swings. Later, she would be diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. But that would be after the story I am going to tell you.

My father was in the Middle East during the first part of December the year  I was about twelve years old. My brother, Sammy, was 14, Walter was 11, David was 9 ½, Clyde was 8, and my sister, Jane, was 7.

Just a few days after my father left town, my mother was admitted to a mental hospital. It was her first real breakdown. The hospital called and left word with my brother, Sammy. I am not sure what he was thinking, but he decided to take on the role of the ‘man of the house,’ in my father’s absence. In those days before cell phones and the internet and even very frequent long-distance calls, I think Sammy decided he was old enough to keep things together. He didn’t call my grandparents or my aunt or talk to any of my parents’ friends or neighbors. The hospital, of course, thought that he would tell my father. But he didn’t.

He was a take-charge kind of early teenager- an Eagle Scout, no less, and so he went into action setting up the new regime.

He gave us all jobs to do and he did his best to figure out how to handle the situation. He, of course, was the ‘boss.’

There were some obvious hurdles. Not one of us was old enough to drive. There was little ready cash. Six kids require a fairly enormous amount of food, and while the kitchen was pretty well-stocked, we had limited skills in the kitchen, making most of the groceries useless to us. We were not in handy walking distance from a store. Nor had Sammy counted on the rebellious natures of some of his charges. Walter, who was remarkably clever at figuring out ways to skip school seized what he saw as a golden opportunity. David, who often sided with Sammy, and was every bit as responsible, fought with Walter over the absences. All of us saw this as an opportunity to do away with rules and regulations we didn’t like.

And, of course, there was a great deal of anxiety raised by having every child’s fear of abandonment come to pass. Bit by bit, anarchy reared it’s ugly head. It didn’t take long for things to deteriorate. Too much sugar, not enough sleep, and no one to referee the kinds of struggles in which children engage. Not quite ‘Lord of the Flies,’ but shades of it.

There were some cooking disasters, and some things were broken and then we discovered Walter was taking this opportunity to explore smoking, and eventually Sammy lost his enthusiasm and his temper and took on a shrill judgmental and righteous tone: “Just wait till Dad gets home. Boy, are you going to get it then!” At the same time, knowing he was the one who was responsible for not notifying Dad through his office, a growing shadow of the consequences of his own actions darkened his mood. It was fear, then, that prompted the lies about Mom being at the store when my father did call. Deceit and denial snowballed along with the dread of being found out.

Pretty much the final blow was when we realized my little sister was missing. She was nowhere to be found. Panic ensued. We were hindered in our door-to-door searches by Sammy’s fear of the neighbors finding out we were on our own.

Sammy was defeated; no match for the forces at work in that setting. He was doing what he could to hold off the chaos, but it wasn’t enough. It was too big for him.

He retreated to his room, unwilling to let the rest of us see his tears.

After five days of growing chaos, my grandparents showed up at the house.

We were both terrified and relieved to see them. We were pretty sure we were going to be punished though we knew our punishment would not come at their hands. They had never disciplined us.  There was no judgment on their part. They just brought food, and a calmness, and order to our lives. I still understand redemption and salvation from that moment. It felt like the cavalry arrived.

I don’t think they even asked Sammy why he had not called them. I think they knew.

We figured that the real punishment would come from our father.  So, as we helped them put things back in shape, there was still a growing dread of what their report to him would contain.

They cleaned up and did laundry and went to the grocery store, and cooked real meals for us. They retrieved my sister from the neighbor’s house where she had sought refuge. It was the neighbor who had asked enough questions to figure out what was going on and had made the first phone call in a chain of calls that would notify my father of my mother’s illness, and of course, summon my grandparents from across town to come to our rescue.

Our father, who cut his business short and arrived home as soon as he could, arrived one afternoon, just after we had come home from school to cookies and milk and as much normalcy as my grandmother could bring to the situation.

I will admit, we were all pretty scared, especially Walter, who had taken to heart the words in some of Sammy’s threats. And Sammy, who had not shown enough trust in my father’s ability to care for us from the other side of the world, was quaking in his shoes.

There was the ‘deer in the headlights’ look on our faces and an outpouring of blame and finger-pointing.

We were so glad to see him we no longer cared about the punishment that might follow. We probably thought we deserved anything that was dished out, and nothing could be worse than what we had just been through. The important thing was that we were no longer alone. We were rejoicing in his presence. 

What happened, of course, was that my father scooped us up in his arms and ached for what we had been through. He held us and told us how sorry he was and how much he loved us. There was no punishment. Only love. And then, as he held us he began to sing to us. He sang “Hush, Little Baby” – the lullabye he had sung to us as infants. I think it was his way of finding some comfort for all of us.

When I hear these Advent texts, I have a picture of my six foot and then-some father on his knees with his arms embracing his children, with tears in his eyes.  He, of course, felt dreadful about what we had been through. And the children, feeling wayward and rebellious, rejoicing in his grace, his love, his embrace. I feel again the joy of my father’s presence,  pulling us close to him like a mother hen might do with her chicks.

When I hear ‘rejoice’ in these texts. I know again the joy of that day. The joy of restoration and the joy of grace and understanding. The joy of not being abandoned, even when we thought we were.

I sometimes feel as powerless as I did at twelve when I look at the mess the world is in, and the mistakes I’ve made in my own life.

I hear my angry brother’s threats in the cries of John the Baptist. But I also believe in the unconditional grace of the One John announces. I invite you to hold my childhood story in mind as we explore the Advent message, and rejoice.

For at first glance, the rantings of John do not seem very joyful.

John, thoroughly eschatological, believing the end to be near, was also shouting at his siblings, the Jewish people – and the issue was as it always is: Who is your God? Is it the Holy One of Israel, or is it the culture? Is it the Caesar?

That was what was eating John the Baptist. It wasn’t just  those rough garments scratching him or his weird diet was giving him indigestion.

It was the burning question: who is your God?

John and Jesus’ day, Jewish life took place under a repressive Roman regime that was so pervasive that even high priests, such as Annas and Caiaphas, were co-opted by it.

John was announcing that God was working toward a better world order, God’s own realm, than the one represented by Rome.

John was calling people back to the God who had always had a better way in mind. Repent – turn-  was his message. John, of course, believed that God’s way would follow an apocalypse. Through baptism (which was related to the Jewish water rites of initiation and cleansing,) John gathered the repentant into a community who were waiting for the end of the old order and the beginning of the new one. Sin was a power of the old age. To ‘forgive’ means to ‘release,’ and John’s baptism assured those who received it that they were released from the old order and freed for life in the new world. Their trust was in God, not Caesar.

Everyone, ‘all flesh,’ was to get ready for the day.

Because the one who was coming was the same God who has been with the people from the beginning, and therefore, this was an occasion for great joy.

For John, the one who is coming changes the nature of human life, so that justice, compassion, and honesty take the place of their opposites.

Only by finding life once again in the paths, the ways of the Holy One could God’s children reorder their lives and escape from “the wrath that is to come.”

By so reordering our lives according to the teachings of the one who comes we are effecting cosmic systemic change.

We are called to live in community as those who put their faith in God and live without being engulfed by the false values of the present and by witnessing to the divine will by keeping covenant with one another as we wait for the one to come.

To paraphrase the words of Henri Nouwen:

“What strikes me is that waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait the more we hear about the one for whom we are waiting. As the Advent weeks progress, we hear more and more about the beauty and splendor of the One who is to come. The Gospel passages we read all talk about the events before Jesus’ birth and the people ready to receive him. In the other readings Isaiah heaps prophecy on prophecy to strengthen and deepen our hope, and the liturgy competes in an attempt to set the stage for the One who is to come.

“There is a stark beauty about it all. But is this not a preparation that can only lead to an anticlimax? I don’t think so. Advent does not lead to nervous tension stemming from expectation of something spectacular about to happen. On the contrary, it leads to a growing inner stillness and joy allowing us to realize that the One for whom we wait has already arrived and speaks to us in the silence of our hearts. Just as a mother feels the child grow in her and is not surprised on the day of the birth but joyfully receives the one she learned to know during her waiting, so Jesus can be born in our lives slowly and steadily and be received as the one we learned to know while waiting. This last week is indeed a happy one.”

So rejoice!