“Gaudete”
16 December 2012
Advent 3C
Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church
by the Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson
by the Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson
Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Such horrible news
this week. Shootings in a Portland mall
filled with holiday shoppers. Then the
horrible murder of dozens of elementary school children and their teachers in
Connecticut. We can only feel anguish
and sorrow for the victims and their bereft families and communities, for the
souls and poor families of the murderers, and, ultimately, for ourselves. Lord, have Mercy.
A week ago on
Thursday, we here at Trinity recited a “Blue Christmas” litany during the noon
healing Mass and then had a remembrance luncheon for those in the parish family
who are still grieving for the loss of their loved ones by death in the last
year.
As we approach the
holidays, I have had numerous parishioners come to me and express their fear
and sorrow at having to go through a time of “comfort and joy” when they
themselves feel no comfort or joy, whether because of bereavement, or pain they
suffer from bad relationships in their lives, whether with controlling and
never satisfied parents, abusive or emotionally distant spouses, negligent and
distant children, or former co-religionists in churches they have left because
they were just too beaten up by them.
Friday, as the news
from Connecticut unfolded, Elena and I drove up to Portland to attend the
annual performance of the Christmas Revels that evening. The theme was an early American and
Appalachian Christmas, with plenty of African-American spirituals, Sacred Harp
shaped-note hymns, and the fuguing tunes of William Billings. It was joyful, happy, and hopeful, with lots
of music for and about children. But the
events in Connecticut were on everyone’s mind.
Thinking about the dead
first graders, I found myself weeping several times while
children sang such things as “follow the stars, how they run; see the moon, how
it grows,” “What a goodly thing if the children of the world could dwell
together in peace,” and “God bless the Master of this House, and his good
mistress too, and all the little children that round the table go.” Even the call “rejoice, rejoice, rejoice”
seemed hollow.
Today, the third Sunday
in Advent, is called Gaudete Sunday. We
lit the pink candle on the Advent Wreath, and I am in rose rather than blue or
violet vestments. This is the Sunday in Advent when our fearful
expectation of the coming of Christ is supposed to turn into anticipated joy,
when the coming of Christ is seen as the setting right of all things that are
wrong, rather than as the ultimate comeuppance of the wicked, including
us. The Latin word Gaudete means “Rejoice.”
It is what Paul commands us to do in today’s epistle
reading. “Rejoice always, again I say,
rejoice.”
But how can we rejoice in the face of such dreadful
things?
Rejoicing amid bad things is incongruous with how our
emotions work. The problem is hinted at
in the contradiction we find when we read today’s Gospel, about John the
Baptist’s severe moral teachings, along with Paul’s “Rejoice! Rejoice!” It is shown, I think, by the difficulty that
many of us have this time of year if we are bereaved and mourning, or suffering
from isolation, loneliness, or despair.
I do not think that Paul is giving us a dopey repetition of
the nostrum, “Don’t worry, be happy!” He
wrote this letter to the Philippians while in prison, after having been beaten savagely
several times for declining to denounce his faith. And in his letters he certainly seems to have
the full range of human emotion, from cold rage and blazing anger at times to
gentle warmth and affection and even fall down laughing humor at others.
There is something much deeper at work here. Our emotional life has a certain shape and
dynamic, and normally this horror and sorrow rule out rejoicing. But perhaps our emotional lives are not
complete. We may seem constitutionally
unable to feel joy at times of sorrow as Paul enjoins us, but perhaps our
feelers are broken.
Paul is not arguing for us to become clinically emotionally
impaired, whether as rapid-cycling bipolars or sufferers from profound and
dissociative mixed states of affect.
Importantly, Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” His
point is that the source, object, and driver of our joy should be Jesus, not
the circumstances we find ourselves in. He as much as admits that our circumstances
can be pretty bad when he says, “do not worry about anything that may happen,” but
rather pray and ask God for our deepest desires in all aspects of our lives
with a thankful heart.
What’s petitionary prayer and thanks got to do with it? Our
rejoicing should be in the Lord, that is, in Jesus, and Jesus taught us how to
pray.
In his great model of prayer the Our Father, Jesus gives us a whole list of yearnings we should feel
and supplications or petitions we should present to God in our prayers: the arrival of God’s reign, the fulfillment
of what God wants on earth as well as in heaven, our daily sustenance, forgiveness
of and reconciliation for our failings and the ability to forgive others and
reconcile with them, to not be subjected to severe testing if possible, and to
be delivered from all ill.
Where in any of this is the gratitude Paul talks about, the
thanksgiving?
It is found in the opening words of the prayer, “Our Father
in heaven, may your name be made holy.” This is the ultimate confession of
God’s love and beauty, and of thankfulness for all that God’s love and beauty
entails, all the blessings we enjoy.
That is really the heart of the matter. Paul says that if we have thankful, yearning
hearts full of petitions to God, the peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, will fill our hearts and minds with the knowledge and love of
God. Joy, rejoicing, is found in such
peace.
As I have said over this pulpit before, standing in awe
before the eternal weight of glory, beholding the beatific vision of a Holy and
perfectly loving God, looking upon the beauty of God and feeling the love of
God in the heart of Jesus—this is the core of trusting God, of being open to
God, and of being changed, and in changing the world. It is also the core of peace in our
hearts.
It is at the heart of finding solace in grief, hope in despair,
comfort amid horror, joy in all things even when they are pretty horrific, and
the strength to advance God’s reign.
The Revels performance is so moving to me each year for the
same reason that I love our Trinity Church Advent Labyrinth walk, precisely
because they celebrate the Light in the darkest
and drearest part of the year. A poem
written for the Revels and read at each performance sums the idea up well:
The Shortest Day
By Susan Cooper
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!
Carols of this season put it well. One says, “Good Christians all, this Christmas time, remember well, and keep in mind, what God Himself for us has done, in sending His Beloved Son.” Another says, “So let us be happy, put sorrows away, remember Christ Jesus was born on this day.” Another: “In the deep mid-winter, Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter Long ago. Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him Nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away When He comes to reign: In the bleak mid-winter A stable-place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.” And the Latin carol we often hear choirs sing this time of year, “Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus ex Maria Virgine, gaudete!”
Hope in the darkness,
joy amid wickedness. Not joy at
wickedness or darkness, but joy at the Light which the darkness cannot
overcome, and yearning and hope for the Good and Love that Evil cannot destroy.
Thankful and yearning
prayer in the midst of darkness, in the midst of mourning, in the depth of fear
and despair, allows us to feel joy in the Lord.
And this is so even if such yearning and prayer is manifested merely as
reveling and dearly loving our friends. When consciously part of yearnings that we in
our vulnerability intentionally reveal to God, such prayer empowers us, and moves
us to change, and amend our lives. It is
at the heart of what John the Baptist preached, as dour and forbidden as he
might at times seem to us.
Let me close by
reading what the Bishop of Washington D.C., the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar
Budde, wrote in reaction to these
horrors:
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. Jeremiah 31:15-17
We are united tonight in grief. Tomorrow shall we unite in resolve to ban weapons whose only purpose is to kill large numbers of people? And to make it as easy to get mental health care as it is to buy a gun?
I join Dean Gary Hall of Washington National Cathedral in calling on our national leaders to enact more effective gun control measures. We know from experience that such calls go unheeded. But what if this time, you and I took up this issue and wouldn’t put it down until something was done? You will be hearing more about this from the dean and me in the days ahead, but for the moment, let us join in lamentation, in mourning and in prayer. Today we grieve, but soon we act.
Arise, cry out in the night,
as the watches of the night begin;
pour out your heart like water?
in the presence of the Lord.
Lift up your hands to him
for the lives of your children Lamentations 2.19
Other bishops, including our own Michael Hanley here in
Oregon, have made similar calls.
Let us go forth from this Eucharist today, this Great
Thanksgiving, renewed and recommitted to joy, to love, to caring for children,
to supporting and healing the ill and reconciling hurt, and to
forgiveness. Of course, let us mourn the
people and things we need to mourn. And
let us be angry as appropriate at the wrong way the world is. But in this all, may joy in Christ inspire us
to work for a better world, both in our own lives and in our communal life
together.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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