The Third Sunday of Advent
This, the third Sunday of Advent, is know as gaudete Sunday, the Sunday of rejoicing. "Be happy at all times" Paul urges the Thessalonians. Paul doesn't intend us to go around with gormless grins on our faces all day. Rather, he has in mind the confident calm in the face of life, love and loss. Life is given to us as a gift; the challenge is to live life as a giver. The open hands, not the closed fist, characterises the Christian. This is our annual Christmas Mass of Giving. You took away labels from our Giving Tree in the course of Advent. Today, our tree has borne fruit in the gifts your have purchased and brought here to be presented at the Offertory of the Mass. By Wednesday next, these gifts will have been distributed to the needy in the city. This little exercise aims to highlight the bounty of our God and the Christian as 'Giver'. The exercise will do more for the Giver than the Receiver. The truth of the Franciscan prayer will be borne out: 'It is in giving that we receive.'
Gaudete Sunday is the oasis of joy in an otherwise penitential preparation. Today we lit the rose candle on the Advent Wreath. George Bernard Shaw once said, famously, "Some people have just enough religion to make themselves miserable." I fear that there is more than an element of truth in Shaw's observation. In our tradition, religion and laughter are not happy bed-fellows. Try to get a laugh out of a average congregation on a Sunday morning (present company excepted, of course) and you will soon come around to agreeing with Shaw. Many of us still labour under the image of God as a tough task-master, a touchy, neurotic policeman whose finger points in eternal accusation, whose full-time task is to bring his creatures to book. This image is so far removed from the fun-filled, full-blooded, joyous human being who presided over the wedding feast at Cana, the person who saved the party when the wine had run out.
The late Cardinal Basil Hume was not so pessimistic in this regard. He gives a lovely example of this parental use of God in his autobiography. As a child, he was alone in the dining room one day. He saw this jar of sweets with a narrow neck. He squeezed his little hand into the jar and pulled out one sweet. As he was taking the paper off the sweet, his mother shouted from the next room: "Basil, God is watching you. What do you think he would he say now that he has seen you take that sweet." Years later, Basil is reflecting on this incident. He writes in the book, "Now I think I know what God would have said had he been in a position to do so. He would have said, 'Go on Basil, take two!'"
I suppose as children we were all given this image of God as a strict disciplinarian, a pompous Victorian figure who spelt trouble for the high-spirited and the fun-filled. If the truth were told, our parents used this figure to control us, to keep us in line in our childhood days, because they themselves had, in their turn, been kept in line through similar methods. The English poet Philip Larkin, wrote a notorious poem on the doubtful nature of this type of parental inheritance. I have sanitised the opening lines:
"They mess you up, your mum and dad,
They may not mean to, but they do,
They fill you with the faults they had,
And add some extra, just for you!"
Larkin ends his poem with a pessimistic, if funny, piece of advice to his young readers:
"Man hands misery to man,
It deepens like a coastal shelf,
Get out as early as you can
And don't have any kids yourself."
Larkin wasn't a very 'Christmas person'. He hated children. It goes without saying that you can't possibly imagine Christmas without children. In fact the joy which is urged upon us in today's readings will be familiar to those of you who had 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. We try to express this hope-filled expectation with the progressively brightening Advent and the expanding Jesse Tree. 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!!
But, again, this waiting is not to be a lazing around; we are expected to make the world a more fitting dwelling place for a saviour. And it is John the Baptist, as always, who prepares the way. John is very clear that the Messiah is imminent. This is active waiting. In other words, those who are disadvantaged or deprived in any way have a special claim upon the followers of Jesus. 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 your cloak to those who have none.' The Giving Tree 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.