“What must we do?”

If the people of the covenant, the people of the commandment, were really faithful to the covenant, they would have been a people of integrity, righteousness and justice. John the Baptist preached repentance. The reason was that the Lord is at hand.  So, ‘preparing the way’ meant to turn their hearts to God. In the repentance Jesus preached he pointed to a truth of us that we are the children of God, and put God in a relationship with us that God is our Father. Without the truth of this relationship, we cannot have joy or true worship of God, and we cannot have the experience of God’s presence among us - the Emmanuel experience.

John would ask the religious leaders today to take the initial inspirations to guide our communities here and now, and not to make gods divide humanity. God has been active in the world through the newness of the spirit. Priests and scribes coming out of the curtain of division between the holy of holies and the world, may not be able to recognise the world at all. It should alarm us that the people who were generally religious, strictly following the law, could not recognise the Messiah when ‘God among us’ really happened. Perhaps they were too religious which boxed them within unholy sanctuaries they made for themselves in the name of God. When they saw through their religious boxes, John the Baptist was a mad man, and Jesus was a drunkard and a friend of sinners. Though strictly following the commandments, why were they deprived of the happiness it promised? They followed the formality of the scripture and the commandments, but forgot the covenant within the commandment. After the reading of the written form of it, they failed to enquire, “what does the Lord ask of you?”

“What must we do?” Jesus’ answer would be "to do the will of God." The will of God is that we may have life. We can have life only by doing the will of God. Jesus made life visible among us, that life consoled and strengthened many to enter into the joy of salvation. Only when life flourishes, we can rejoice. We who are rejoicing in the ‘Word made flesh,’ can live the happiness only if the Word is alive in us. The Word has been there, and is present within us and among us. The Word is not in the words and letters. Every encounter with Christ has a sacramental power; the meeting of our daily realities and the Word to be enfleshed. Then we have a new song of joy. That is the moment we can experience that God rejoices over our life: “he will rejoice over you with gladness, and renew you in his love, he will sing joyfully because of you, as one sings at festivals.”

In naming, framing, and claiming of Jesus we may not have an encounter of the Word made flesh. Though there is nothing wrong in imagining that baby Jesus coming inside our heart, we fail in welcoming Christ if we cannot imagine and desire that we be transformed Christ-like, in our attitudes, approaches, words and deeds. It really begins with the recognition of the Word in the beauty and goodness of humanity and the larger community of all species. Often, we term them as mere natural, human, social or even condemn as worldly.  For Jesus it was neither materiality nor the law that described worldliness, but it was the intentions and attitudes. Worldliness is not in the material or the natural world, it is in our choices, it is in our heart. It is here we need the denial of the self. 

This ‘denying of self’ would be another answer from Jesus to the question “what should we do?” Self-emptying sacrifice is what provides life, and that is what God asks of us. We read from the Psalms, “You wanted no sacrifice or offering, but you gave me an open ear, you did not ask for burnt offering or sacrifice for sin; then I said, 'Here I am, I am coming.'…my delight is to do your will; your law, my God, is deep in my heart. "This self-emptying brings about freedom and so, joy. It means to be free of the self-oriented mechanisms that support our false securities, and of the false identities that keep us in false glory. 

Peace of God begins to guard our hearts and minds when our life and our desires are known to God by prayer and petition with thanksgiving. It is not a festal happiness at the arrival of a deity. It is the joy of being created anew. In brief, rejoicing is not about being merry, it is peace, and joy and gladness at the experience of life through sacrifice and generosity. “Love the Lord and your neighbours,” was what God asked. Instead, we may dare to teach God what sacrifices must please him. Did God ask for atonement and heaviness of reparations? It is sacrifice and generosity in life that generate joy and peacefulness without which we cannot rejoice. 

John was straight forward. He told them to share food and clothing, live a life of justice, and be sincere. If we piously recognise some evils and be blind to those that are ‘profitable’ to us, we are making a mockery of God. We are often blind to the isolated individualism, narrow nationalism, deliberate lies, creation of conflicts and trade of arms, distortion in science researches, vexed political games in the name of religion, dispossession of the indigenous, sad and frightened faces of children who are victims of war. Self emptying challenges us with a purpose to stand for truth and justice where the freedom and joy are shared and ensured.

Finally, “What should we do?” Jesus said, "Follow me." Following him means both living and dying like him. To find joy and gladness, to live in peace, to do the will of God we must see the baby lying in the manger from Christ’s own eyes. May Christ be formed in us to have those eyes.

Zephaniah 3:14–18a Philippians 4:4-7 Luke 3:10–18 Ref Ps 40: 6-8