Gaudete sermon
Gospel: Matthew 11:2-11
“Whose way John the Baptist prepared.” These words are in our Advent liturgy every year. They’re about Jesus, “Whose way John the Baptist prepared.” They’re about Jesus. Everything John the Baptist did was about Jesus. It was that way from the beginning, when he was yet in his mother Elizabeth’s womb. He leaped for joy when, while still an unborn child, he heard the greeting of the Blessed Virgin Mary, come to visit her cousin Elizabeth. John knew his Lord, God in the flesh, was near, and so he danced in her womb, and Elizabeth knew this was no ordinary kicking a baby does. John knew.
And later, when he made the desert his habitation and made locusts his diet, John knew that – despite the crowds that had thronged to hear him preach and receive his baptism – John knew that suffering was in his future. “He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease.”
But when that decrease came, John’s already-jealous disciples became increasingly bitter. Their master was in prison, and had been languishing there for about a year. “If Jesus were really the Messiah, wouldn’t He free John from prison?” Such was the darkness of their thoughts.
Our own thoughts are prone to similar darknesses. Afflicted with decaying bodies, strained relationships, or an uncertain economic future, there is the darkness of our hearts prone, from their core, towards sin. It is the darkness of lust that drives you like an animal; the darkness of greed and envy that has you measuring life by what you possess; the darkness of loneliness, resentment, bitterness, and despair.
The cookies, the vodka, and one more purchase pushes back the darkness, but it is only for a moment. The darkness always returns. And the only ending, it seems, is the everlasting darkness of closing eyes that will never reopen. All flesh is grass. Our flesh, like the grass, withers and fades. We cannot keep ourselves alive.
There is only one remedy to this darkness – the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom we pray every year on this Third Sunday of Advent, “Lighten the darkness of our hearts by Your gracious visitation.”
The coming, the visitation, of our Lord Jesus, is the true and ultimate cause for all rejoicing. This Sunday is called Gaudete, “rejoicing Sunday,” for the words of St. Paul ring out as we enter, “Rejoice in the Lord always!” Rejoice in every circumstance, every time, both good and bad, and especially when the darkness of our hearts begins to strangle and suffocate us.
The Christian Faith is not built on the power of positive thinking, on having a “Don’t worry, be happy” attitude. We “rejoice in the Lord always” precisely because “the Lord is at hand.”
I’m sure that life wasn’t pleasant for John the Baptist, languishing in Herod’s prison. Tribulation comes to the Christian, God’s Word says, that the genuineness of your faith may be tested. The Lord is teaching us to trust in and rely upon nothing else but Him alone.
In the signs that Jesus gives to John’s disciples, the most important for us to remember is not the in the blind seeing or the deaf hearing, in the lame walking or the lepers cleansed, not even in the raising of the dead. Jesus ends His list – a series of quotations from Isaiah about what the Messiah would do – Jesus ends that list with this: “The poor have the Gospel [good news] preached to them.”
If we would have the good news, the Gospel, we must be poor, humble, emptied of pride, placing no more trust in our wealth, our intellect, our good deeds. The poor abandon all hope in themselves, abandon every claim upon God as though He owes us anything, and abandon every claim on others as though we were their masters or betters.
To us poor beggars, the Lord Jesus comes to lighten our darkness. He comes with forgiveness for our sins, and begins to heal us of our wounded hearts and souls so prone to the darkness. That healing goes on through this life, as we learn from our Lord’s constant forgiveness and love to love Him and our neighbors.
Shortly before his death, John gave his skeptical disciples the best gift they could have received: he sent them to Jesus, whose way John had prepared. And what they saw in Jesus is what is coming for all of Christ’s Church on the last day. On that day, the deaf will hear and the blind will see, the lame will run and dance and the diseased will be healed, because the dead in Christ will rise to everlasting life. No man was greater than John the Baptist – but the most insignificant participant in that glorious resurrection is even greater.
The Lord is at hand. His Advent, His coming is the cause of our rejoicing, in every circumstance and every situation. So keep in the way John the Baptist prepared, the way of repentance. Struggle against your sins, bear fruits of repentance, and cling only to Christ. He will lighten the darkness of your heart. +INJ+
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