Year B
John 1:6-8, 19-28
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
Bearing Witness to the Light of the World
Today is traditionally known as Gaudete Sunday or Rose Sunday. The term is derived from the Latin opening words of the antiphon, “Gaudete, Rejoice in the Lord always. As we approach the Christmas celebration, the theme and texts for today all express this joy of anticipation. It is a day of respite after many weeks of heavy judgment texts; a day to shout for joy, as we remember that in the darkest and heaviest of times God breaks through with a word of hope. The advent of Christ is God’s response of love to the darkness in all of creation. The coming of the Lord is accompanied by great joy because a new day has begun to dawn as the light of Christ shines in the world. This is the kind of light Isaiah, Paul & John the Baptist all testify to today as the in-breaking of God’s presence is at hand.
If the church, as we anticipate both the first and second advent of Christ is to see the world in this new light, we are to be about God’ mission of seeking justice and bearing witness. We have a job description and a mission statement about God’s intentions. Each text today adds to the understanding of the role of the church as we wait. Isaiah announces the agenda today and sets the tone. The psalmist keeps up the spirits of the church by reminding the community of faith that God has acted and will act in our favor. Paul encourages the church toward spiritual purity and John teaches us that our primary work involves bearing witness. We need all of these parts in our struggle to carry out God’s mission. And we are able to do this as we are reminded today because God has anointed us to serve God and God’s people.
Isaiah, the prophet that God anointed to proclaim good news of release, favor, and justice to those who mourn or experience captivity and oppression, is beside himself with joy as he brings good news of joy to Jerusalem in this beautiful poem today. The people are now out of exile but still living under economic oppression and a corrupted society. They are living in less than ideal circumstances and Isaiah speaks words of justice, hope, anticipation and deliverance as a reminder that God has not forgotten them. The Spirit of the Lord declares God’s promise and provision to God’s people and “will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations”.
God will bring about transformation as an “everlasting covenant.” Soon the shame and sorrow of Jerusalem will be replaced with eternal joy with the coming of the promised one. Isaiah’s words today foreshadow Jesus’ proclamation of good news which Luke records in his gospel, when Jesus reveals in the synagogue that his birth, life, and death are the fulfillment of this passage which is a promise of redemption and of exaltation of the afflicted. God will exchange the ashes of our tears, despair, and loneliness for beauty. God exchanged divinity for humanity to bring the light of divine love into our lives. Isaiah’s words call us to think about what we need to change in order to allow God’s transformation in our lives and in the world.
Last week we heard John the Baptist call for repentance and change. Today we hear him calling us to prepare for Christmas by building a straight road in the desert for God to travel on. Isaiah says the purpose of this road is “So that the glory of the Lord may be revealed for all the world to see!” John’s message is that God wants every person in the world to know the transforming power and glory of God. George Frederic Handel in his oratorio captures these words of Isaiah in music. “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” Getting ready for the first Advent is about a mission that God has placed upon every one of us: to open up a path to God for others who are in need of God’s love and grace.
John is telling us that God expects us to do something as a result of what God did at Christmas. The church can never surrender in the struggle for justice, even when we don’t see the victory in the short term. Christmas road building requires the active involvement of everyone, anywhere and everywhere we go. Christmas is about a future that God has provided everyone for eternity and we are to witness to God’s work. God shouted to the world at Christmas that God cares enough to enter the place we live and bring the light of Christ into the dark spots in our lives. And John today in these opening verses, is careful to separate his role as the witness sent by God to testify to the Messiah Jesus as the light of the world.
The salvation of the world is the work of the Messiah. The only one who can overcome all the forces against injustice, resulting in the elimination of poverty, or violence or racism. Even if we do not see our efforts resulting in the elimination of injustice, we do not quit because our work is to witness to what God has done, is doing, and will do within history and beyond history. We can assist God in this work because as Paul reminds us today, “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.” Therefore, Paul says, we are to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit.”
God’s Spirit illumines our path and leads us through life. This is the joy of living in the light of God’s Spirit every moment. Paul today is giving thanks that the church has remained faithful amid persecutions and temptations. He acknowledges their anxiety about the delayed return of Christ as he maneuvers in his letter between what God has already accomplished in the resurrection of Christ, and the not yet, in Christ’s return. He encourages the Thessalonians to engage the tension between living in the present and looking toward the future. Because, God works in the community and within the individual though God’s Spirit, to continue the work of redemption, therefore the church can rejoice, give thanks, pray, resist evil, and carry out proclaiming the Word of the gospel.
Those who see the whole picture of how God works will understand that hope and joy for tomorrow cannot be separated from the responsibility for today. The church needs to powerfully proclaim hope and joy in a world that is full of darkness. Our texts today point us toward the gospel proclamation that our hope is in what God wills for creation, in the triumph over death, oppression, and mourning, and places our joy in God’s presence and activity. The church can find the light of Christ in all circumstances, not because everything will turn out for the best in an obvious way, but because God acts and will one day redeem creation. In the meantime we “Prepare the way of the Lord!” We tell everyone who will listen that the light has already come. So may we live reflecting the light of Christ in such a way that our lives proclaim God’s love, joy and hope.