Year B, 3rd Sunday of Advent (December 11, 2011)

·         Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

·         Psalm 126

·         1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

·         John 1:6-8, 19-28

Isaiah, like many of the prophets, tells us repeatedly that if we're good, God is going to make us happy, and if we're bad, God is going to make us miserable. We tell kids the same thing about Santa, and many Christians tell prospective converts the same thing. If you're good, you'll be happy. And for some reason, we always have to reduce "happiness" to material loot. Just the other day at my Bible study class, the preacher was going on and on about how he was [scare quotes gesture] "blessed" with a weekend at a five-star beachfront resort in Bali with his wife and three kids.

Really?

Seriously: God does not [scare quotes gesture] "bless" people with five-star beachfront resorts in Bali. Yes, serving God brings us blessings and joy, but not in the nature of material loot. Let me give you two examples from my personal life.

One time, I was invited to a holiday dinner at my Catholic friends' house. Walking down the street a few days before the dinner, I saw someone who is very unpopular in our town. He was walking alone as always, looking demoralized. I invited him to join us at my friends' house. Then I called the hostess to let her know I had taken that liberty, and she said "Awesome! It will be a great exercise in Christian charity!"

Another time, on a Facebook group, I suggested church attendance as a way to build up a support network. Many people began attacking me. At first I wondered why, but then I remembered the beatitudes: "blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." So I was glad that the people were attacking me, because really they were blessing me.

My point here is that God does not bless you with better loot, he blesses you with a better attitude towards what comes to you. To a Christian, an opportunity to serve is not a chore, it's a blessing. Living humbly is not a hardship, it's a blessing. Being attacked for the sake of righteousness is not a curse, it's a blessing. Christians don't have it materially better than unbelievers. In fact, we should have it worse. We should deny ourselves, serve others, and give glory to God, not to ourselves. A Christian should be someone anyone can count on for help, not someone everyone envies for their material well-being. And a Christian should find joy in service, not in possessions.

That being said, we can also go too far with this theory. There is a hymn I absolutely can't stand called <em>Trust and Obey</em>. Why? Because it says "not a sigh nor a tear can endure if we trust and obey" and so on in that vein.

That's nonsense. If your leg is amputated, you will mourn. If you are hit by a drunk driver and you will never walk again or have children, you will mourn. If your seven-year-old dies after a five-year battle with cancer, you will mourn. It doesn't matter how much you trust in the Lord. Grief is grief, and no amount of faith will make it go away. Remember Jeremiah 31:15:

"Thus says the Lord:

A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping.

Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more."

Or Job. All his ten children died when a house collapsed on them. Did he grieve? Duh!!!!! He sat in the town dump scraping his sores with a pottery shard and crying, and no one could comfort him. A woman I knew lost her son. After she had been grieving for months, a friend asked her "how long are you going to keep grieving?" She said "how long is he going to keep being dead?"

Grief is grief, and it endures. In fact, grief is the last thing you have left after loss. God does not take it away from you. God does not keep it away from you, either. That's not part of the covenant. Any of the covenants the Lord has made with us.

The Lord blessed Noah by not drowning him in the flood. He blessed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with descendants and a land that flows with milk and honey. And he blessed us, Christians, with the new covenant in Christ's blood. He blessed us with a good attitude, not with material goods. He blessed us with the gift of denying ourselves joyfully in service of others, for the glory of his name. And he blessed us with the gift of the human experience, with its ups and downs; grief, loss, setbacks, five-star beachfront resorts in Bali.

Praise be to God,  the Provider, the Withholder, the Expander, the Abaser, the Exalter, the Bestower of honour , the Humiliator.