3rd Sunday of Advent/ “How Christians Feel Joy”
3rd Sunday of Advent/ “How Christians Feel Joy”
“Shout for joy!” says the Prophet Zephaniah. “Rejoice!” says St. Paul in the epistle. If we have faith it should lead to happiness they seem to say. But then along comes John the Baptist in the Gospel. The whole tenor of the readings change. John, in the paragraph before what we read today, says, “Every tree that is not fruitful will be cut down and thrown in the fire.” He is so fiery that those who have come out to hear him preach plead with him, “What shall we do?” What does he say?
He seems to say to those to whom he preaches to that, “You have to do a 180-degree turn.” The poor ask him what they need to do to please God. He tells them that they must share what little they have. Don’t be so concerned about your poverty. Give things away to your neighbor in need. You will then be saved.
The tax collectors ask him what they should do. He says to them stop gouging people. If we know anything about tax collectors who lived in the time of Jesus, we know that this was how they made their money. Tax collectors would add a percentage to what they were supposed to gather from the citizens of the empire. The money they added, was what they used to support themselves. John was saying, “Give that back.”
The soldiers came to ask how they could be a part of the kingdom John preached about. Soldiers were not very well paid so the way they supplemented their living was to protect citizens for a fee. The business owner, the farmer, would pay the soldiers for protection. John says to the soldiers, “Never extort anyone.”
All of that, does not sound like it would bring joy to a poor person’s life, to a tax collectors’ life, to a soldier’s life. But the message of Christianity, the message John was preaching as forerunner of Jesus is that sometimes we find joy in strange places. Christians might not find joy the way the rest of the world does.
My maternal grandmother was a very complex person. She suffered from mental illness, mostly depression. At times she would have attacks of paranoia. She battled with these problems all her live. At the end of life, she found some medications that helped. Her loving side then dominated her personality.
When she was younger, I saw her joyful and at peace two times in her life when she was younger. The first time was when she entered a drawing at a grocery store for a thousand dollars. She won the contest. I remember my mother getting a phone call from her. Grandma was ecstatic. I wondered if she would go out and buy some bright colored material to make some dresses, which she loved to do. Perhaps she would buy a different car I thought. But she did not do any of that. She began to think about how she would divide up the money to give it away. She calculated what each of her children would get. She then figured out what she wanted to give her 18 grandchildren. She also had a couple of charities that she gave money to as well. My grandmother lived through the depression. She never had a lot of money so this was a special moment. None of her family members was wealthy nor was she so she wanted to help them. Every time she gave some cash to someone, she wanted to do it in person. And she was joyful when she gave the gifts.
The other time I saw my grandmother full of peace was when my grandfather had a stroke at the end of his life. He needed her to care for him the first time. Always before, he was the care giver. She fed him. She gave him his medicine. My grandmother took him to the doctor. She worried about him. The love they had for each was concretized once again. She found a purpose taking care of my grandfather. And she found a sense of joy.
Perhaps what John the Baptist was saying in his preaching was that living a life of charity can lead to a sense of joy. During this time of year, we try to be generous with others. We give from our surplus to people who really might not need our presents. What if we made a sacrificial gift to a cause or person when it would really make a difference in their quality of life.? Maybe the question we need to ask is whether we are giving to those in most need? Or, are we giving to those who have little need?
Joy seems to come when we give to someone because they’re is struggling. We sense this, and we respond. And when we do, we forget about ourselves for a while. We feel compassion. We are not self-centered. We enter the realm of self-sacrifice. We can then feel the joy that Jesus felt when he came to save us. We feel a joy that can transform our lives.