Readings: Zephaniah 3: 14-20; Luke 3: 7-18 In Christian circles we hear of joy all the time, but what is joy? Well, it is defined in the Macquarie dictionary as, `a great gladness and delight arising from present or expected good`. In our society joy is sometimes tied up in the accumulation of wealth and possessions. Many believe that a bigger car or house or computer will give them this great gladness. Yet we know, even those who chase these things, that this joy is transient, and disappears just as soon as the item is purchased, putting them on a merry go round that never ends. Our greatest joy in fact comes from our relationships with one another, family, friends, neighbours and those we come into contact with in our daily lives. It also comes when we look beyond ourselves and help those we do not know or may never meet. This joy, which comes and settles on us when we feel connected to each other is strong and enduring, and stems from the divine connection we all have with God, the creator and sustainer of life.

But what about the poor of the world? What about those in fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones through war and persecution? What about those who fear disease and death because of a lack of basic food and hygiene and immunisation? Who live in a constant state of anxiety and grief? What joy do they have?

Jesus did not suggest that hope, peace and joy was only for some or for the rich, rather it was for everyone, and everyone had a role to play it bringing it about. People in the Old and New Testament knew this. We hear it in the reading from Zephaniah, where the prophet voices the hope that in the time to come God will be allied with the lame, and the outcasts will be gathered in. A time that contrasts with the present where the disabled are rejected, the outcasts displaced and oppression is the norm of the day. And we hear it in the words of John the Baptist. The reading from Luke names the entire power structure as a source of exploitation and suggests that what counts to God is deliberate concrete countercultural action. We are not to sustain the system, but change it. John the Baptist pointed the people to Christ, but he first gave them explicit economic instructions. His message, share what we have because the way we use our resources is critical to our faith.

All this is amply demonstrated in the Christmas story itself.

We live in a world of contrasts, where the rich are very rich and the poor, well, are very poor. Who appears in our story of the birth of Jesus? The Magi, wealthy and wise, with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and the shepherds.

The shepherds, by contrast, were the neglected and poor of the ancient world. They were everything the magi were not. We should not think of shepherds as having a glorious, unhindered life, with beautiful little sheep and wide open meadows in which to graze them. Shepherding was crummy work. Sheep stank, the work was boring and often they would have to stay up all night, when it was cold and wet, away from family and loved ones. And for very little pay. In addition they were excluded from society because they could not practise their religion. Shepherds were unable to attend temple services and to keep the rituals and ceremonial laws required because they were tending to their flock. Because of this shepherds were not allowed in the courts to be witnesses. In fact the Talmud instructs that no help be given to heathens or to shepherds. So shepherds were seen as losers and outcasts in their society, and were despised by Jews at the time of Christ`s birth.

Yet the birth of Jesus Christ was not revealed to kings and rulers. It was not revealed to the religious elite. The God revealed in Jesus is revealed to these lowly shepherds. We know that throughout Jesus` ministry the poor were of the utmost importance to him. In the bible, poverty is mentioned over 2,000 times and the only time Christ is judgemental is on the subject of the poor. Is it any wonder his birth is in a lowly cave surrounded by animals and those that society deemed unworthy. God is welcoming and announcing something quite radical. The God found in Jesus is a God of the poor. The shepherds in the story represent the poor and outcast of our society, who are also waiting to have their basic needs meet, waiting to be included, to be loved. Waiting for God`s kingdom to come.

However here we are 2,000 years later and things haven`t changed all that much. The time that the prophet Zephaniah was announcing is still to come. According to some sources there are 40,000 hunger related deaths every day, 500 million children do not get enough food to fully develop mentally and physically, while the amount of money spent on pet food by Americans and Australians is obscene in comparison, over 3 billion dollars annually. How did Advent become a time of waiting for Father Christmas and presents instead of looking for peace and justice and compassion for the poor? How did Jesus become kidnapped by our culture and his message watered down to fit the needs of the rich and middle class? We are colluding with the powers around us, rather than taking concrete, counter cultural action. We are not heeding the words of John the Baptist or being true to the gospel when we allow this to happen.

Advent is a time of waiting, but also a time when we can take a cold hard look at the state of things as they really are. At the same time we are called to embrace the hope that things can be radically different if and when we live as God longs for us to live. And the joy it will bring to all people.

So let us act for God, as his hands and feet, for when we do, the waiting will be over for the poor and outcast in our world.