Third Sunday In Advent
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series III, Cycle C
The Church Year Theological Clue
It should be remembered by the preacher that the church year is not simply a framework which surrounds the liturgy of the church, but it is also a skeleton which needs to be fleshed out with readings from the Old and New Testaments. This becomes manifestly clear by the Third Sunday in Advent, because the world is pulling in one direction while the Christian year orients and points us to the past, the present, and the future. When filled out by the various sets of propers, including the psalms and prayers for the days, the faithful are reminded of how their salvation in Christ came to be, not only in the birth of Jesus but also in the birth and ministry of John the Baptist. By devoting two Sundays in Advent to the work of John and by making the "early connection" between the birth of John and the birth of Jesus in the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, the fullness of the gospel is laid out for the world to see and for believers to hear and heed, expecting that the Lord will come again at the end of time, as he promised. This much becomes perfectly clear to the faithful: Jesus needs the ministry, witness, and preaching of John the Baptist to prepare the way for his life, ministry, death, and resurrection as Lord and savior. John's Advent was essential to the advent ofJesus the Christ. For his part in Jesus' coming, believers rejoice and give thanks for him and their salvation in Jesus. That seems to be the theological clue in the Second and, especially, on this Third Sunday in Advent.
The Prayer Of The Day
Oddly enough, The Book Of Common Prayer, which popularized the "stir up" nature of the classic collects for Advent, has retained only one such prayer; it is assigned to this Third Sunday in Advent: "Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen."
The Lutheran Book Of Worship has modernized the older collect for The Nativity of John the Baptist (June 24) and shares it with the Third Sunday in Advent. If nothing else, this prayer functions as an antiphon to the Baptist's festival, but it also emphasizes the importance of John the Baptist's role in Jesus' ministry and our faith. It reads: "Almighty God, you once called John the Baptist to give witness to the coming of your Son and to prepare his way. Grant us, your people, the wisdom to see your purpose today and the openness to hear your will, that we may witness to Christ's coming and so prepare his way; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever."
The Psalm For The Day
Isaiah 12:2-6 (RC, L) - The Roman and Lutheran lectionaries substitute this reading from Isaiah for a psalm to function as a responsory for the first lection. It provides a powerful response to the Zephaniah reading ("The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst....") with its specific reference to God's activity on behalf of his people (a return to Jerusalem for the Hebrews, the cross for all of us?): "Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation." There is such a lilting and lyric quality to this excerpt from Isaiah 12 that it is easy to comprehend why at least one of the churches has chosen it as a canticle for the Daily Office (Canticle 9 in Morning Prayer II). Beyond its specific response to the first reading on this Sunday, it sums up the reaction that the faithful ought to have to the message of Advent and Christmas - "he (Jesus Christ) has become my salvation."
Psalm 85, or 85: 7-13 (E) - This psalm finds multiple uses in the lectionaries of the several churches; it was last used on the Fifteenth Sunday of the Year (Cycle B), the Proper 10 (E, C), and the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (L). The Book Of Common Prayer offers Isaiah 12:2-6 as an alternate to Psalm 85:7-13.
Psalm prayer (85 - LBW) - "God of love and faithfulness, you so loved the world that you gave your only Son to be our Savior. Help us to receive him as both Lord and brother and freely celebrate him as our gracious Redeemer now and forever."
The Readings
Zephaniah 3:14-18a (RC, L); 14-20 (E, C) - This is the only reading from Zephaniah that appears in most of the three-year lectionaries. It signals the response of people to the salvation that is in God and, for our part, in Jesus Christ, inserting the note of joy and thanksgiving on this Third Sunday of the Advent season. Indeed, as Zephaniah declares, "The Lord, your God (and savior, Jesus the Christ), is in your midst."
Philippians 4:4-7 (RC); 4:4-7 (8, 9) (E, L); 4:4-13 (C) - This is the classic reading for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, which has been transferred to this Third Sunday in Advent, probably because it replaces the opening word in the ancient introit for the Third Sunday in Advent, "Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say 'rejoice.' " It will be remembered that this Sunday used to be known as Gaudete Sunday, "rejoicing Sunday," when the purple color of Lent and Advent gave way to rose (rose-colored candles are used in the Advent wreath for that reason). Some people will also recognize verse 7 ("And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus") as the blessing spoken after the sermon in parts of the church. Indeed, "The Lord is at hand" in his living word and through the Holy Spirit, making glad the hearts of all who have looked for and have believed in the coming of Christ for the salvation of all people. Faithful Christians rejoice and give thanks because the Christ, whose first advent occurred nearly 2,000 years ago, will come again in God's good time. In the meantime, the living and eternal God keeps their hearts and minds in faith and hope.
Luke 3:7-18 (E, L, C); 3:10-18 (RC) - The story of John the Baptist takes up this week where it ended last week, fleshing out what John preached to the people who came to hear him and be baptized. His was a powerful law/gospel sermon, given here in the form of a summary. First, he condemned the people as sinners in need of repentance. Second, he exhorted them ethically to "bear fruits befit of repentance," spelling out details of new life in answer to their question, "What then shall we do?" He told them to care for the unfortunate and the poor, to be honest, and urged the soldiers to be compassionate and "content with their wages." People saw him as a prophet who condemned them, but then offered baptism for the forgiveness of their sins. His good news to them, the latter part of his message, was that the Mightier One, the Messiah, was coming, and he really would judge them, separating the wheat from the chaff, and gathering the wheat into his granary but destroying the chaff. Verses 15 and 16 are repeated as the second reading for the Baptism Of Our Lord. At the end of his pericope, Luke says, "So, with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people."
Sermon Suggestions, Scenarios, And Synopses
Luke 3:7-18 (E, L, C); 3:10-18 (RC) - "The Sermon That John Preached." - Now the story of John the Baptist's advent is fleshed out as Luke gives a snyposis of John's sermon(s) to the people who went to hear him and be baptized. The evangelist claims that John "with many other exhortations, ... preached good news to the people." Does his message sound like good news? There is no offer of forgiveness in it: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ... Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." That's calling a spade a spade, isn't it? Sin is sin and sinners are sinners, and sinners need to be confronted with what they are. That's what John the Baptist believed and did. Phyllis McGinley could never accuse him of weaseling out of his pastoral responsibility of preaching the law, as she did of the imaginary (?) Dr. Harcourt in one of her Stones From A Glass House poems: And in the pulpit eloquently speaks, On divers matters with both wit and clarity ... All things but sin. He seldom mentions sin. John not only mentions sin; he called sinners "vipers," not fit for the kingdom of heaven.
Worse yet, John gives the impression here that good works are the way out of the dilemma that sinners find themselves in when they are found out and confronted with their transgressions against God and other people. He tells them, in answer to their "What then shall we do?" question: "He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise." He said similar things to the tax collectors and the soldiers, who obviously were in the crowd of people gathered at the Jordan. That sounds like an ethical exhortation, "Correct your lifestyle and do good to others, and all will be well with you."
When I was quite young, my grandparents heard the lay professional baseball player-turned-evangelist, Billy Sunday, preach in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I suspect that they had heard almost every evangelist who visited that city; they were very much involved in the worship and work of their Methodist church. They were moved, as well as impressed, when they heard Billy Sunday preach. Years later, I remembered and read some of Sunday's sermons. One of the most interesting is included in Andrew Blackwood's collection of sermons by noted preachers, The Protestant Pulpit. "Heaven" is the title of the sermon. Its brevity surprised me, and the theology of this lay preacher was thoroughly evangelical and biblical. His text, which came in the second paragraph of the sermon was: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:14-16)."
Sunday said, after politely calling people "fools," if they "pin (their) hope to a lot of fool things that will damn (their) souls to hell," that there is only one way "to escape" -through faith in Jesus Christ - and that was the message of the sermon. But he set his audience straight on good works: "You can't hire a substitute in religion. You can't do some deed of kindness or an act of philanthropy and substitute that for the necessity of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Lots of people will acknowledge their sin in the world, struggle on without Jesus Christ, and do their best to lead honorable, upright lives. Your morality will make you a better man or woman, but it will never save your soul. Morality doesn't save anybody. Your culture doesn't save you. I don't care who you are or how good you are, if you reject Jesus Christ you are doomed." The evangelist went on to spell out God's plan of salvation for all people in the cross of Jesus, emphasizing that repentance is not sufficient to save people from condemnation: "Simply ridding your life of the weeds of sin and not planting Jesus Christ is of no more value to you than a piece of ground is to a farmer without seeding it." I suspect that my grandparents heard a similar message when they heard Billy Sunday preach!
The good news in John's sermon was that the "mightier" One is coming, who will baptize people "with the Holy Spirit and fire," adding that he will "gather the wheat into his granary," and only then saying, "but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." "So," says Luke, "with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people." And people responded, accepting his baptism for the forgiveness of their sins and believing, no doubt, that they were prepared for the coming of Christ. Hopefully, if they lived good and honest lives, it was in response to the good news that they heard, and not to earn salvation from Jesus Christ. (And isn't this one of the continuing problems we Christians have with the gospel? We want to believe that we have earned salvation, deserve it, rather than receive it through repentance and faith as the gracious gift of God in Christ Jesus, don't we? The bad news is that we can't get into God's good favor by anything we say or do; the good news is that he has sent his Son to save us from our sins and death and to give us eternal life.)
(Another suggestion for a sermon that would be interesting to prepare and preach comes in the verses 19-21, in which Luke tells about John's tragic error in confronting King Herod with his sins ["all the evil things that Herod had done"]. Herod topped off the list by throwing John the Baptist into prison and, in the story Matthew tells in detail [14:1-12], has John beheaded. Confronting people from the pulpit, as well as in private [as Herod might have been] with their sins and calling them "snakes" won't cost preachers their heads today, but it just might cost them their pastorates and pulpits! [This is why what I call "sermon strategy" is so important; one must know one's parishioners and craft a sermon in such a way that they will hear the good news as well as the bad news. See Herman G. Stuempfle's Preaching Law And Gospel for insights on the two ways of preaching the law: Namely, as "the hammer of judgment" and "a mirror of existence," as well as preaching the ethical and moral life as a consequence of the good news, of believing the gospel and having faith in Christ.])
A sermon on this part of chapter 3 would make people cognizant of the whole story of John the Baptist, and what it costs all of us to be true and faithful disciples of Jesus Christ (See Dietrich Bonhoeffer on The Cost Of Discipleship),
Zephaniah 3:14-18a (RC, L); 3:14-20 (E, C), and Philippians 4:4-7 (RC); 4:4-7 (8, 9) (E, L); 4:4-13 (C) - "The Presence."
(Note: These two lessons combine quite well into a single sermon when one focuses on the common theme - rejoicing - from the perspective of the presence of the Lord.)
1. Jews and Christians alike are joyful people; they believe God is the same God, a God who delivers and saves them.
2. God is always in the midst of his people, saving them from their enemies, destruction, and death by his presence in word through his Spirit.
3. Christians rejoice because they know that Jesus has overcome death and through his Holy Spirit is with them in his word and sacraments.
4. Christ is "always at hand" and he gives his blessed ones the assurance and hope that he will come again.
It should be remembered by the preacher that the church year is not simply a framework which surrounds the liturgy of the church, but it is also a skeleton which needs to be fleshed out with readings from the Old and New Testaments. This becomes manifestly clear by the Third Sunday in Advent, because the world is pulling in one direction while the Christian year orients and points us to the past, the present, and the future. When filled out by the various sets of propers, including the psalms and prayers for the days, the faithful are reminded of how their salvation in Christ came to be, not only in the birth of Jesus but also in the birth and ministry of John the Baptist. By devoting two Sundays in Advent to the work of John and by making the "early connection" between the birth of John and the birth of Jesus in the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, the fullness of the gospel is laid out for the world to see and for believers to hear and heed, expecting that the Lord will come again at the end of time, as he promised. This much becomes perfectly clear to the faithful: Jesus needs the ministry, witness, and preaching of John the Baptist to prepare the way for his life, ministry, death, and resurrection as Lord and savior. John's Advent was essential to the advent ofJesus the Christ. For his part in Jesus' coming, believers rejoice and give thanks for him and their salvation in Jesus. That seems to be the theological clue in the Second and, especially, on this Third Sunday in Advent.
The Prayer Of The Day
Oddly enough, The Book Of Common Prayer, which popularized the "stir up" nature of the classic collects for Advent, has retained only one such prayer; it is assigned to this Third Sunday in Advent: "Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen."
The Lutheran Book Of Worship has modernized the older collect for The Nativity of John the Baptist (June 24) and shares it with the Third Sunday in Advent. If nothing else, this prayer functions as an antiphon to the Baptist's festival, but it also emphasizes the importance of John the Baptist's role in Jesus' ministry and our faith. It reads: "Almighty God, you once called John the Baptist to give witness to the coming of your Son and to prepare his way. Grant us, your people, the wisdom to see your purpose today and the openness to hear your will, that we may witness to Christ's coming and so prepare his way; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever."
The Psalm For The Day
Isaiah 12:2-6 (RC, L) - The Roman and Lutheran lectionaries substitute this reading from Isaiah for a psalm to function as a responsory for the first lection. It provides a powerful response to the Zephaniah reading ("The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst....") with its specific reference to God's activity on behalf of his people (a return to Jerusalem for the Hebrews, the cross for all of us?): "Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation." There is such a lilting and lyric quality to this excerpt from Isaiah 12 that it is easy to comprehend why at least one of the churches has chosen it as a canticle for the Daily Office (Canticle 9 in Morning Prayer II). Beyond its specific response to the first reading on this Sunday, it sums up the reaction that the faithful ought to have to the message of Advent and Christmas - "he (Jesus Christ) has become my salvation."
Psalm 85, or 85: 7-13 (E) - This psalm finds multiple uses in the lectionaries of the several churches; it was last used on the Fifteenth Sunday of the Year (Cycle B), the Proper 10 (E, C), and the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (L). The Book Of Common Prayer offers Isaiah 12:2-6 as an alternate to Psalm 85:7-13.
Psalm prayer (85 - LBW) - "God of love and faithfulness, you so loved the world that you gave your only Son to be our Savior. Help us to receive him as both Lord and brother and freely celebrate him as our gracious Redeemer now and forever."
The Readings
Zephaniah 3:14-18a (RC, L); 14-20 (E, C) - This is the only reading from Zephaniah that appears in most of the three-year lectionaries. It signals the response of people to the salvation that is in God and, for our part, in Jesus Christ, inserting the note of joy and thanksgiving on this Third Sunday of the Advent season. Indeed, as Zephaniah declares, "The Lord, your God (and savior, Jesus the Christ), is in your midst."
Philippians 4:4-7 (RC); 4:4-7 (8, 9) (E, L); 4:4-13 (C) - This is the classic reading for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, which has been transferred to this Third Sunday in Advent, probably because it replaces the opening word in the ancient introit for the Third Sunday in Advent, "Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say 'rejoice.' " It will be remembered that this Sunday used to be known as Gaudete Sunday, "rejoicing Sunday," when the purple color of Lent and Advent gave way to rose (rose-colored candles are used in the Advent wreath for that reason). Some people will also recognize verse 7 ("And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus") as the blessing spoken after the sermon in parts of the church. Indeed, "The Lord is at hand" in his living word and through the Holy Spirit, making glad the hearts of all who have looked for and have believed in the coming of Christ for the salvation of all people. Faithful Christians rejoice and give thanks because the Christ, whose first advent occurred nearly 2,000 years ago, will come again in God's good time. In the meantime, the living and eternal God keeps their hearts and minds in faith and hope.
Luke 3:7-18 (E, L, C); 3:10-18 (RC) - The story of John the Baptist takes up this week where it ended last week, fleshing out what John preached to the people who came to hear him and be baptized. His was a powerful law/gospel sermon, given here in the form of a summary. First, he condemned the people as sinners in need of repentance. Second, he exhorted them ethically to "bear fruits befit of repentance," spelling out details of new life in answer to their question, "What then shall we do?" He told them to care for the unfortunate and the poor, to be honest, and urged the soldiers to be compassionate and "content with their wages." People saw him as a prophet who condemned them, but then offered baptism for the forgiveness of their sins. His good news to them, the latter part of his message, was that the Mightier One, the Messiah, was coming, and he really would judge them, separating the wheat from the chaff, and gathering the wheat into his granary but destroying the chaff. Verses 15 and 16 are repeated as the second reading for the Baptism Of Our Lord. At the end of his pericope, Luke says, "So, with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people."
Sermon Suggestions, Scenarios, And Synopses
Luke 3:7-18 (E, L, C); 3:10-18 (RC) - "The Sermon That John Preached." - Now the story of John the Baptist's advent is fleshed out as Luke gives a snyposis of John's sermon(s) to the people who went to hear him and be baptized. The evangelist claims that John "with many other exhortations, ... preached good news to the people." Does his message sound like good news? There is no offer of forgiveness in it: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ... Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." That's calling a spade a spade, isn't it? Sin is sin and sinners are sinners, and sinners need to be confronted with what they are. That's what John the Baptist believed and did. Phyllis McGinley could never accuse him of weaseling out of his pastoral responsibility of preaching the law, as she did of the imaginary (?) Dr. Harcourt in one of her Stones From A Glass House poems: And in the pulpit eloquently speaks, On divers matters with both wit and clarity ... All things but sin. He seldom mentions sin. John not only mentions sin; he called sinners "vipers," not fit for the kingdom of heaven.
Worse yet, John gives the impression here that good works are the way out of the dilemma that sinners find themselves in when they are found out and confronted with their transgressions against God and other people. He tells them, in answer to their "What then shall we do?" question: "He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise." He said similar things to the tax collectors and the soldiers, who obviously were in the crowd of people gathered at the Jordan. That sounds like an ethical exhortation, "Correct your lifestyle and do good to others, and all will be well with you."
When I was quite young, my grandparents heard the lay professional baseball player-turned-evangelist, Billy Sunday, preach in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I suspect that they had heard almost every evangelist who visited that city; they were very much involved in the worship and work of their Methodist church. They were moved, as well as impressed, when they heard Billy Sunday preach. Years later, I remembered and read some of Sunday's sermons. One of the most interesting is included in Andrew Blackwood's collection of sermons by noted preachers, The Protestant Pulpit. "Heaven" is the title of the sermon. Its brevity surprised me, and the theology of this lay preacher was thoroughly evangelical and biblical. His text, which came in the second paragraph of the sermon was: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:14-16)."
Sunday said, after politely calling people "fools," if they "pin (their) hope to a lot of fool things that will damn (their) souls to hell," that there is only one way "to escape" -through faith in Jesus Christ - and that was the message of the sermon. But he set his audience straight on good works: "You can't hire a substitute in religion. You can't do some deed of kindness or an act of philanthropy and substitute that for the necessity of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Lots of people will acknowledge their sin in the world, struggle on without Jesus Christ, and do their best to lead honorable, upright lives. Your morality will make you a better man or woman, but it will never save your soul. Morality doesn't save anybody. Your culture doesn't save you. I don't care who you are or how good you are, if you reject Jesus Christ you are doomed." The evangelist went on to spell out God's plan of salvation for all people in the cross of Jesus, emphasizing that repentance is not sufficient to save people from condemnation: "Simply ridding your life of the weeds of sin and not planting Jesus Christ is of no more value to you than a piece of ground is to a farmer without seeding it." I suspect that my grandparents heard a similar message when they heard Billy Sunday preach!
The good news in John's sermon was that the "mightier" One is coming, who will baptize people "with the Holy Spirit and fire," adding that he will "gather the wheat into his granary," and only then saying, "but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." "So," says Luke, "with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people." And people responded, accepting his baptism for the forgiveness of their sins and believing, no doubt, that they were prepared for the coming of Christ. Hopefully, if they lived good and honest lives, it was in response to the good news that they heard, and not to earn salvation from Jesus Christ. (And isn't this one of the continuing problems we Christians have with the gospel? We want to believe that we have earned salvation, deserve it, rather than receive it through repentance and faith as the gracious gift of God in Christ Jesus, don't we? The bad news is that we can't get into God's good favor by anything we say or do; the good news is that he has sent his Son to save us from our sins and death and to give us eternal life.)
(Another suggestion for a sermon that would be interesting to prepare and preach comes in the verses 19-21, in which Luke tells about John's tragic error in confronting King Herod with his sins ["all the evil things that Herod had done"]. Herod topped off the list by throwing John the Baptist into prison and, in the story Matthew tells in detail [14:1-12], has John beheaded. Confronting people from the pulpit, as well as in private [as Herod might have been] with their sins and calling them "snakes" won't cost preachers their heads today, but it just might cost them their pastorates and pulpits! [This is why what I call "sermon strategy" is so important; one must know one's parishioners and craft a sermon in such a way that they will hear the good news as well as the bad news. See Herman G. Stuempfle's Preaching Law And Gospel for insights on the two ways of preaching the law: Namely, as "the hammer of judgment" and "a mirror of existence," as well as preaching the ethical and moral life as a consequence of the good news, of believing the gospel and having faith in Christ.])
A sermon on this part of chapter 3 would make people cognizant of the whole story of John the Baptist, and what it costs all of us to be true and faithful disciples of Jesus Christ (See Dietrich Bonhoeffer on The Cost Of Discipleship),
Zephaniah 3:14-18a (RC, L); 3:14-20 (E, C), and Philippians 4:4-7 (RC); 4:4-7 (8, 9) (E, L); 4:4-13 (C) - "The Presence."
(Note: These two lessons combine quite well into a single sermon when one focuses on the common theme - rejoicing - from the perspective of the presence of the Lord.)
1. Jews and Christians alike are joyful people; they believe God is the same God, a God who delivers and saves them.
2. God is always in the midst of his people, saving them from their enemies, destruction, and death by his presence in word through his Spirit.
3. Christians rejoice because they know that Jesus has overcome death and through his Holy Spirit is with them in his word and sacraments.
4. Christ is "always at hand" and he gives his blessed ones the assurance and hope that he will come again.
