Third Sunday of Advent
The third Sunday of Advent has traditionally been called Gaudete Sunday, or the Sunday for rejoicing. The idea of course comes from the prayers and readings of today's Mass. The entrance antiphon urges us to "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice. The Lord is near." "Some people have just enough religion to make themselves miserable" wrote George Bernard Shaw. Obviously, I couldn't fully agree with him. But I do fully understand what he was getting at. As we see from today's gospel, Christianity does have a very demanding moral and ethical content. The blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf and the dead all have a particular claim on the Christian community. The gospel does challenge people, and it challenges radically. And it often challenges us beyond our resources, and not just our material resources. More often it challenges us beyond our emotional resources. We often find ourselves useless in face of that challenge. Yet a religion that doesn't challenge us is useless to us; it leaves us untouched and unchanged.
Nevertheless, this moral side of Christianity should not be harped upon to the exclusion of everything else. There is more to Christianity than moral structures. There is the element of joy and thanksgiving, a fundamental disposition for anyone who believes that God became man at Christmas time. Too often, we find people who would place themselves on the highest rung of the Christian ladder spitting fire and brimstone at those whom they consider to be morally less improved than themselves. But Paul, who could be a bad-tempered old grouch on a bad day, was the greatest exponent of the need for Christian joy. In a letter to the Christian community at Thessalonica, he urges them to rejoice in their humanity and to celebrate the human condition: "I want you to be happy at all times...giving thanks to God for all things." This is a side of the Christian message that we rarely hear. We are actually urged to celebrate our humanity. And how often do we find ourselves apologising for our humanity? After all, God deemed humanity capable of containing and expressing his own great love for the world. That is what the feast of Christmas is all about: God's great love for us in expressed in human form and frailty.
In fact the joy and celebration of our humanity which is urged upon us at advent time will be familiar to those of you who were blessed with the experience of awaiting the birth of your own children. Expectancy and joy are the two most prominent elements of the Advent season. It is a positive, hope-filled expectancy rather than a frustrating wait. James uses the image of the farmer waiting for the fruit and crops to ripen. It is a relaxed, fulfilled waiting rather than a frustrated condition. We try to express this hope-filled expectation with the progressively brightening Advent wreath and the expectant scriptures building to a crescendo. Today we light the pink candle, the candle of joy. Throughout the season of Advent, the Christian community is cast in the role of expectant parents: there are great preparations, great expectations, a growing sense of joyful wonder and not a little fatigue thrown in too!!
We await once more the revealed generosity of God. This generosity of God is traditionally expressed at Christmas time when his followers exchange gifts with each other. This congregation has gone to great lengths over the last three weeks to give expression to this dimension of the Christian message. Through the Giving Tree, many of you have sought to 'give you cloak to those who have none.' The giving of gifts at Christmas time has an established place in the Christian message. It is part of our personal efforts to make the world a better, happier place, a more fitting place for a vulnerable Christ child. This is the spirit of advent, the generous spirit of Christianity. This is the spirit we try to capture on this Gaudete, joyful and expectant Sunday.