Sunday 16 December

Third Sunday of Advent

Zephaniah 3:14-18; Isaiah 12:2-6; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:10-18

What should we do?

John the Baptist gives hand-on, down-to-earth advice to three groups – the crowds, the tax collectors and the soldiers - when they ask him, ‘What should we do?’ A central concern of Luke lies beneath this question: nothing so gets in the way of one’s relationship with God, or dehumanises people, or destroys life in community as being attached to possessions and wealth. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the gap between the greedy and the rest has widened faster than in any other developed country. Imagine what John would reply to us if we ask: ‘What should we do?’