I am often asked the meaning of the pink candle on the Advent wreath: “What does it stand for?” or “When are we to light it?” so you may know by now that the pink candle represents Joy. In some churches, all the linens including the priest’s stole are changed to pink for the occasion (If you want my opinion, it’s quite an investment for only one Sunday in the year!). The idea though is that Advent is a penitential season, and we have already talked quite a bit about repentance, but the third Sunday of Advent is supposed to be mid-way in the season (It’s not the case this year though) and so just for that day, we leave behind the purple of repentance to remember where we’re heading, that is towards the joy of Christmas. Deeper than that, I think the idea is also to remember that repentance is not for the sake of beating ourselves up, repentance is for joy, and we talked about it last week as well: Repentance is the only way to reconciliation, to receive salvation and fullness of life, it’s the only path to true joy.
And so we could say thatRighteousness is a cause for joyand to me,this is really what we can take away from this new passage from the book of Isaiah that we hear today. Let’s have a closer look at it so we can understand better what it means and how this happens.
– Again, the opening of the passage of Isaiah announces to the hearers “Good news” (It was about “Good tidings” last week), so we are reminded that if the prophet calls the people to repentance, it is to look towards positive outcomes, it’s not mainly about dodging God’s wrath. How does this look like? Comfort and healing are on their way, says Isaiah, freedom and justice. There is a reference to “The year of the Lord’s favor” which is the year of Jubilee, that occurred every fifty years when the slaves were released, the land returned to their owners and the debts were wiped away (See Leviticus 25). Isaiah talks also about “the vengeance of the Lord”, and we generally misunderstand what it means. We think it’s about revenge, that God is going to get even with God’s enemies. Rather it’s about restoration of justice, things are going to be put back in balance by the action of God. There is also this reference to the “ruins”, the walls of Jerusalem destroyed by the King of Babylon. It means that God is going to rebuild what that has been destroyed. When Isaiah wrote those lines it was meant literally: People were indeed going to be released from Babylon, return from exile to their land and build back their city. Yet in the meantime, it is also a metaphor from being freed from one’s sin and being able to rebuild a life together and be reconciled with God. After all, Isaiah made it clear that the people were in captivity because of their sins. When they are repentant and God grant forgiveness life can start anew. “The year of the Lord’s favor“ is like being given a clean slate. This is certainly great news and a cause for joy, at least for the people Isaiah talks about: the oppressed, the captives, those who mourn ( mourn their former life). Justice is going to bring back what those people had lost, so they should rejoice. God’s justice though may not be such good news for the oppressors, as Mary sings: “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly, He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty“.
So we see one immediate way in which righteousness brings joy: Because the victims of injustice stop suffering. It does not necessarily mean that the people who suffer are innocent. It is clear for Isaiah that the Hebrews have somehow brought those calamities on themselves, but yet if they turn again towards God, God will give them back what was theirs and even more than that, God will give them back their former lives. We can also read this passage as an anticipation of Eternal life. Jesus quotes for himself Isaiah in Luke 4, describing his own mission: “[God] has sent me to bring good news…to bind up…to proclaim liberty…to comfort…“.
In the end, in this passage from Isaiah we could look at a prophecy that talks about being saved from all the consequences of sins, death included. For now, we can stick with this idea that social justice is about alleviating the suffering of the people and enable them to enjoy their lives. I think that’s what we are still called to do today: We are not called so much to be righteous because it could make God unhappy if we misbehave, a rather childish understanding, but we are called to be righteous because our injustices hurt people (and it’s in this sense that it angers God). Note that these injustices can be committed by individual (we cheat on taxes, tips etc) or committed by society as a whole (We don’t question systemic racism, we exclude LGTB people…).
– Now, when we turn to the second part of the text, there is another idea a little more difficult for us to grasp I think, and it is that righteousness does not produce joy for the one who benefit from this righteousness but there is also a joy in being righteous and this is this joy Israel experiences too. This idea is very often quite misunderstood so I would like for us to spend a little time on that. What often comes to mind when we hear about the joy of being righteous is this sort of pride of being self righteous, when we look at ourselves and see ourselves as good people (compared to others) and as a consequence we become full of contempt for others (who are sinners). Jesus certainly fought a lot with this kind of self righteousness (especially with the Pharisees). Yet if we look closer at the Old Testament, we will realize that it is no what it is about and Isaiah makes it very clear: Righteousness is given by God to sinful and unworthy people. Isaiah says: “He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness“. So we see that in the prophet’s mind, righteousness is not something the people can boast about because it is not something that belongs to them, it is not their own doing. It is a gift from God who covers for our nakedness (our poverty, our indignity) and actually Jesus will often use these images of being “robed” in his parables (See The Lost Son, the wedding banquet etc.).
God, by the power of his spirit, enables his people to do what is right and when you’re able to do what is right, it makes you happy even if it is not to your own advantage (like when you do justice to someone you had wronged before). And I think we all have experienced this unique joy of serving, of doing something good, something really selfless. But we also know how hard it is to be a good person and how easily our own selfishness gets in the way. We are full of good intentions to start with but then the reality of our own selfishness strikes…How would it be for us if we could always act out of love, out of the desire to do what is right, instead of being constantly tempted to act out of anger, resentment, jealousy, envy, pride, greediness or even despair, self loathing, self destructive instincts? I hear someone say recently: “We’re all in the same night, but we all experience our own darkness“. I think this is very true as well: We all are sinners and we all have our own inner obstacles to becoming truly loving and righteous people, and it can be a great source of suffering to be unable to do anything really good. According to the Bible, there is a true joy in being good, and actually the only everlasting joy is to be able to act according to God’s will. There is joy in being a good person, but we failat it, again and again, unless we turn to God and let God fill us with God’s spirit so God can cover us with God’s righteousness, and we know it has nothing to do with us to start with.
This is this type of humility we can see in John the Baptist. Our lesson this week is quite similar from the passage we had last week taken from Mark’s. But in John’s Gospel, there this powerful saying that John the Baptist came to testify to the light but he himself “was not the light”. And John the Baptist confesses: I am not Elijah, I am not the prophet, I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal. John the Baptist acknowledges his own darkness and his own need of salvation, and it is in this that he is able to give testimony and to point to Christ and shine his light. So next time we think about the joy of Christmas, maybe we could have that in mind. Of course it’s not just the joy of gifts or the joy of sharing a good meal, or even the joy of family and church, it’s the joy Christ brings us in enabling us to become new people, to become the people we were meant to be, acting out of selflessness. The perfect joy of being good or rather the joy of being filled with the goodness of his love, and overflowing with it for all to witness how good he is.