The Third Sunday of Advent-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

The Very Rev. Melanie Dickson Lemburg

The Third Sunday of Advent Year C

December 15, 2024

 

A letter to James Francis McLaurin upon the occasion of his baptism.

 

Dear James,

        Today is your baptism day.  It is the official beginning of your life in the faith, the day when your parents and godparents and all of us are recognizing that God has, even before your birth, claimed you as God’s beloved, and we are all saying “yes” on your behalf.  We are all promising that we will help raise you to live your life as God’s beloved, even as we try to live our lives as God’s beloved alongside you.  And our baptismal covenant gives us the framework of how to do that.  (It’s why we renew it, periodically, throughout the year, when others are baptized and on special Sundays.)

        On this third Sunday of Advent, our gospel reading gives us a baptism sermon from Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist.  John is out in the wilderness and the people are flocking to him to be baptized.  John tells them that in baptism and beyond, they will find themselves converted to living life differently.  They should no longer hold fast to the priorities of the world but rather they should seek to live out God’s priorities which are justice, mercy, compassion, and equity for all God’s people, and that when they live out these priorities, they will be revealed in the fruit of their actions.  John tells his listeners to repent, and even though it’s strange to think about as we baptize you today, sweet baby James, baptism is a call to both conversion and to repentance. 

        Conversion is setting our feet on the path that Christ has trod before us: a path of humility, a path of compassion and mercy, of healing and reconciliation.  Conversion is setting our feet on the path of love and following it through hills and valleys, over mountains and through deserts.  It means committing to living and walking the way of Christ in times of hardship and in times of plenty. 

        In your baptism, James, we acknowledge that this path is not always easy.  We need each other as fellow travelers on the way to give encouragement, support, and even correction.  Because we also acknowledge that each of us will stray from this path, over and over again, throughout our lives. And it’s not just about how we stray individually, either.  At times, we will all stray together, as a whole people, and we will step or fall off the path of justice and mercy, equity and compassion.   

And so, we have the call to repentance, that whenever we “fall into sin” or step off the right path, we will turn away from following our own selfish desires or the demands that the world whispers or shouts in our ears that we should seek, and that we will turn back toward God.  Repentance means turning away from all that divides us from each other and from God and turning back again to loving God with our whole heart and mind and strength and loving our neighbors as ourselves as we try to live the way that Christ has showed us. 

        Advent is a time when we recognize the many ways we both inadvertently and purposefully fall into sin, and we heed this call to turn back toward God, to make our hearts ready for God’s return in Jesus.

        Our whole lives are made up of this dance of falling away from God because we have sought the own devices and desires of our own hearts and repenting and returning to God. And the good news is that no matter how many times and in whatever fashion we fall away, nothing can keep us from being God’s beloved.  As we say in your baptism today, we are “marked as Christ’s own forever.”  No matter what.  And that truth inspires us to live our lives as God’s beloved, to bear fruits worthy of repentance, to show people know that we are God’s beloved by the way that we love.  Because that is what it means to live life as God’s beloved.

        Today, sweet James, is the third Sunday of Advent which is also Gaudete Sunday, and Gaudete means rejoicing!  We light the pink candle, which is the church’s color for rejoicing; we hear readings about rejoicing, even as we are called to repentance.  It may seem strange, but they are two sides of the same coin, repentance and rejoicing.  So today, I will close with a blessing that was written by the writer Kate Bowler and shared in her Advent Devotion titled A Weary World Rejoices.  It is both prayer to God and blessing that is especially appropriate for you and us on your this Gaudete Sunday which is also your baptism day.  It’s titled

A Blessing for Our Part in the Bigger Story.

Blessed are we,

gathered already into the plot,

part of the epic story you, [God,] have been writing

from long before we were ever born.

 

Thank you that we are not separated

into lives of loneliness

but joined together as those who were loved into being.

We are made for meaning and a purpose

that only our days can breathe into action.

 

Pull us closer to the bigger story that reminds us

that our ordinary lives are the stuff of eternity.

You fitted each of our days

for small efforts and endless attempts

to pick ourselves up again.

In our triumphs and embarrassments,

we need to be told again (sigh)

that we are not just everyday problems.

We are a story of extraordinary love.”[i]

May you always remember, sweet James, that you are a part of God’s story of extraordinary love.

Your sister in Christ, Melanie+

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