December 12, 2021
Third Sunday in Advent
Year C
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Themes for the Week: joy, reconciliation, victory, anxiety, thanksgiving, peace, John the Baptist, vocation, repentance
This Sunday’s Readings: Zeph. 3:14-20 • Cant. 9 • Phil. 4:4-7 • Luke 3:7-18
Preaching is permission to rejoice and exult, to sing and feel gladness, to feel safe and gathered in love, to rejoice and give thanks for new life in Christ. Preaching is praise. Good preaching is, God being our helper, beautiful, and it makes the world a better place. Read it all.
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Exploring the Texts
Judgment and Mercy
“Zephaniah poured out the venom of divine judgment against King Josiah’s multinational idolatries. Everyone was implicated. He thus roared until he, or his devout redactor, grew exhausted with the foul smell of wrath. Joy broke through.”
Judgment and Life
“When John the Baptist comes with carping words and accusations, the people know the pattern and respond to it as a call to new life. Bear fruit that befits repentance! Indeed, judgment and hope were so closely connected that they became signs of God’s final reign. A final judgment would usher in the final victory, God’s king would come.”
Entering Into Joy
“John's words show that anyone may enter into what the other lessons promise by simple acts in ordinary life. He provides the electrifying message that the long-awaited, eagerly sought Messiah is indeed at hand. Thus the prophesied age of deliverance is poised to tum from vision to concrete fulfillment.”
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Preaching Today
Jordan Hillebert: Rejoice!
“Paul’s letter to the Philippians was written by someone who was suffering, delivered by someone who was suffering, to be read by a church that was suffering. So how can Paul speak so freely and eloquently about joy? How could anyone in those circumstances be joyful?”
Julia Gatta: What Should We Do?
“John the Baptist takes the excuses we hide behind and flattens them. The real changes we need to make have to come from within. God can only sanctify us in the life we’re actually living — not in some dreamland we imagine would be easier.”
Anna Matthews: Being Real
“And this is where repentance really starts to happen, as we see our lives in the light of the love and goodness and truth and holiness of Jesus Christ, as he draws us ever more deeply into relationship with him. Repentance is about being real.” |
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Classic Texts
John Chrysostom: Surpasses All Understanding
“The peace of God which he has wrought toward men, surpasses all understanding. For who could have expected, who could have hoped, that such good things would have come?”
Jean Pierre de Caussade: Grasps the Hand of God
“Faith cuts through all these appearances and grasps the hand of God that keeps us alive. A faithful soul should walk on in confidence, where there is no prospect of sin, taking all these things as the various disguises of God, whose intimate presence at once alarms and reassures its faculties.”
John Keble: His Greatest Work of All
“The apostles looked back to the sayings of St. John and said to themselves, ‘Now we know their meaning, now we see how God has been gradually preparing us for his greatest work of all, the setting up of his kingdom by the coming of the Holy Spirit to dwell in the souls and bodies of his people.’”
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Articles on Joy
Sarah Puryear: Why ‘Joy to the World’ Isn’t a Christmas Carol
“The word of hope during Advent is that we know the end of the story; our King will bring a final and lasting justice and joy to our world. So consider this your priestly dispensation: to sing ‘Joy to the World’ during Advent; and may its words remind you that one day Jesus will rule the world with truth and grace and make known the wonders of his great love for us.”
Charles Browning: The Joy of Salvation — On Bob Ross as Evangelist
“The man loved painting and wanted other people to know the joy that comes with it. He made you believe that you, too, could paint just like him. And he did this by the sheer power of his own enthusiasm. Painting, for him, was good news that he wanted to share.”
Michael Fitzpatrick: Confession Leads to Joy
“Freedom comes when we acknowledge our sins and do not try to hide as Adam and Eve did in the garden. When we confess to the Lord, the psalmist simply says, ‘You forgave the guilt of my sin.’ It is for freedom that Christ came!”
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Articles on Anxiety
Podcast: A Practical Playbook for Anxiety
“In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Monique Reynolds offers practical approaches for dealing with anxiety while continuing to care well for others and yourself.”
G. Jeffrey MacDonald: Stress Compounded for Clergy in Pandemic
“‘I reminded myself,’ Drymon said, ‘what those great ascetical theologians of old, like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, talked about. Just keeping at it, even if you are in a period of spiritual aridity or coming into a dark night. I found that over a period of six weeks, I was able not only to stop the tide of a negative outcome for my own mental and spiritual health, but really come out the other side a bit stronger and more energized.”
Clint Wilson: Anxiety and the Cross
“Our identity is forged in love by the hammer of the Holy Spirit on the anvil of the cross, a cross where ultimately even anxiety itself has been put to death. And within this framework the body is not determined by the individual, but the individual is instead formed by the body of Christ.”
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Articles on John the Baptist
Jeremy Bergstrom: Ember Days for All
“It’s no mistake the Church yokes one of these Embertides with John. Though he doesn’t make for polite company, there is no better role model for our clergy to follow than he as they ‘prepare the way of the Lord’ in the midst of the barren deserts of modern society and the human hearts that dwell therein.”
Garwood Anderson: John’s Advent Epiphany
“John was rather telling the story as it should go, though by interposing his offer of amnesty, he tells a more gracious version. But while he prepared the way of the Lord, he was not prepared for the ways of the Lord Jesus.”
David Widdicombe: Whose Authority, Whose Politics? John the Baptist’s Advent Warning
“Perhaps we could say that what the Baptist said does not matter as much as the fact that he said it, how he said it, to whom he said it, in whose name and by what authority he said it, and at what cost he said it.”
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Tuesday Conversation
Join The Living Word staff for a group study of the lectionary texts:
Tuesday (12/7) at 2:00 ET / 1:00 CT
Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82235868176?pwd=cU5vL2kveXgwNjZ3S1NaTXc5eklrQT09
Meeting ID: 822 3586 8176
Passcode: 920690
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