The Rev. Austin K. Rios
17th December 2023: The Third Sunday of Advent
There is a power in our traditions.
The rituals that undergird our lives help give us meaning and give us a container from which we can measure our own growth as human beings.
For many, the rituals around this time of year involve listening to certain songs, preparing and sharing certain kinds of foods, and attending certain religious services.
There is much about these rituals that can be life giving, and they help reinforce cultural markers of identity as well as support the matrix of community life.
But if we reflect honestly on some of our traditions, we often see how the customs and conventions we observe can convey shadow as easily as they can illuminate.
It is difficult and sticky work trying to disentangle the shadow parts of tradition from the light and life that tradition can bring.
But I believe that, time and time again, that is the work to which we are called as recipients of a tradition that reaches back from our current age into the fertile soil of the first garden, and even deeper into the darkness of the universal face of the deep from which light and life first arose.
Some might want to label this as our religious calling, others might feel more comfortable naming it as our spiritual journey, and still others may term it as the arc of human evolution.
No matter the name, this work of being rooted enough in the depths of perennial wisdom to know and honor tradition, while also being enlightened enough to question it and redeem it when it goes astray is the communal work to which we dedicate our lives.
We have ample examples of predecessors in the faith who have sought to do the same, and many of them arise in our readings for this Gaudete Sunday.
Our patron saint Paul was deeply rooted in this tradition, and was an ardent defender of the shadow side of it before seeing the light.
Saul’s conversion to Paul wasn’t about throwing away his Jewish heritage, but rather it was about opening his scaled eyes to the wisdom strain that had always been within it, and which he had been so blindly zealous to purge.
John’s Gospel goes to great lengths to communicate that the Baptist came to “testify to the light,” and we see how his baptism of repentance attracts both public attention and the consternation and questions of the fearful guardians of shallow tradition in his own day.
John the Baptist, like the prophet Isaiah, like Elijah, and like countless other major and minor prophets before him is begging the adherents of his cultural and religious group to return to the heart of wisdom from which they’ve strayed.
That is what the baptism of repentance is all about—turning from the false self and false path and setting out upon the well-lit highway of God.
As wide and as accommodating as God’s path is for as many adherents as will walk it, in practice, the way seems narrow and illusive because of how challenging it is—like threading a needle in the dark.
But prophets of the deep wisdom of all traditions know this challenge and choose to testify to the truth of it all the same, because once you see the light, feel the light, and know the light the only way to respond to it is to immerse yourself in its ways and follow where it leads.
Isaiah’s powerful testimony speaks of receiving anointing for bringing good news to the oppressed, binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.
They are the words and the mission that the adult Jesus takes up in his home synagogue in Nazareth, and when he explains the specifics of what that means—that it means foreign Gentiles have access to the light and blessing of God just like religious members of his cultural group—well that’s when they try to snuff out his life.
Sadly, it was a struggle that Jesus knew his entire life, because even when he was a baby, Herod tried to extinguish his light through Gentile magi who were so transformed by him that they set out for home by a different road.
But as Jesus lived into the promise of Isaiah’s prophecy in more and more concrete ways, he began to transform the world and redeem the broken aspects of the tradition that stretched from creation’s beginnings to his day.
His movement grew, his mission expanded, but the opposition likewise re-organized and struck back in order to defend the surface of the tradition from the uncontrollable wellspring of life at its heart.
In our current day, there are all sorts of ways that people who claim to defend tradition obscure it, pollute it, and grieve it.
From putting energy into “defending Christmas” from secular assaults instead of heeding the prophetic call to repent, to advocating for religious theocracies instead of doing the hard work of bringing good news to the oppressed and release of the captives, we all have way too many examples of the kind of tradition that actively resists the transformation to which we are called.
And if we are willing to wade into the waters of John’s baptism of repentance, we will also have to come to terms with the ways we have promoted lesser things instead of the fuller light of God that remakes the world.
In my own spiritual journey, I find myself moving further away from outrage over the way others fail our shared wisdom tradition, and moving toward the font of grace that God offers to redeem and purify my own actions and intentions in testifying to the light.
This move doesn’t excuse the bad behavior of others, nor release me from working to heal the damage it causes, but it has made me more compassionate and connected to them, rather than reinforcing a kind of outrage whose end point is isolation.
And I believe that there is more of this journey ahead of me, and ahead of anyone who chooses to testify to the light in the details of their own life, with God’s help and accompaniment along the way.
Advent is a time to remember how powerful and important this call is.
To remember that prophets big and small throughout the ages have done the same—drawing the wayward sheep of each generation back to wisdom’s well, announcing that the way things are isn’t the way they are destined to be, and testifying to the light that allows us to see and search together.
Rejoice my siblings in Christ!
We are engaged in the redemption of our tradition and the world, and the life that comes from walking this pilgrim path.
May God ever light our way, and may we never be afraid of letting that light flow forth from us to illumine our lives and transform the world.