“Gaudete! Du Courage!”
12 December 2021
Advent 3C
Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church
by the Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. Spoken Eucharist, 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Zephaniah 3:14-20; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18; Canticle 9
God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen
It’s been a hard couple of weeks. Ann Gagnon’s beloved Phil died last week; my own beloved Elena died on Monday after a Parkinson’s related stroke. We have several parishioners facing the end games of long-term degenerative illness. In the larger world, we see continuing fear and stress due to the pandemic and how the virus seems wily in adapting to beat our countermeasures. And we saw those horrible tornadoes in the Midwest. And the bitter political division in our country seems to only get worse. And now increasing tensions and possible conflict over Ukraine, or the Taiwan Strait. Many of us are facing fear, bereavement and grief.
But today, the third Sunday in Advent, is called Gaudete Sunday. We light the pink candle on the Advent Wreath, and we wear rose vestments. This is the Sunday in Advent when fearful expectation of the coming of Christ is supposed to turn into joy anticipating the setting right of all things that are wrong. Gaudete means “Rejoice.”
Be happy. Rejoice. Smile. Despite all that is in the air, sing a happy song.
How can we rejoice when things look so bad?
First of all, let me make this clear: grief and mourning are natural expressions of our love, and we must never try to chase them away. Susan Church sent me a poem by Denise Levertov expressing how important it is to accept, welcome, and name our pain, “Talking to Grief”:
Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.
I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.
You think I don't know you've been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider
my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.
We must also never let grief and pain overwhelm us so that we lose hope: the Chinese have a proverb for this, as they seem to have one for everything: 节哀顺变 [節哀順變] jié'āishùnbiàn, “bind up your grief so you can ease inevitable change.”
C.S. Lewis, in his magnificent but painful “A Grief Observed,” writes that no one ever explained to him how much grief as an emotion feels like fear. Part of our “binding up grief” in fact is an act of courage in the face of the unimaginable.
When the French want to tell you to be strong, find joy in the face of trouble, and deal with what life dishes out, they say “du courage!” It’s like saying “buck up!” or “hang in there.”
The Honorable James Lilley and Deng Xiaoping.
One of the pivotal moments in my life, and one of the greatest bits of counsel I ever received, took place in Beijing China on June 6, 1989. I had arrived to work at the U.S. Embassy there just days before. In the closing days of May, things in Beijing had gotten more and more chaotic as the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tian’anmen Square dragged on. The evening of Saturday June 3, the army moved in to recapture the Square, re-exert control over the city, and terrorize the people back into compliance with the Communist Party’s leadership. Many of you saw the picture of the single protester standing his ground before a column of tanks. That scene was unusual. Generally people who stood in the way were simply run over by the armored personnel carriers, crushed and chewed up by the treads. For days the army used random shooting toward crowds as a way of cowing people to get off the streets. More than a thousand were dead, and rumors of dissenting Army units firing on each other raised the specter of Civil War. In all this, the U.S. Embassy granted refuge to the leading dissidents in the country. They came in through my office. The next day, the army opened fire at U.S. diplomatic apartments—some with children in them—in an hour-long shooting spree in which, fortunately, none were killed. The Ambassador James R. Lilley called us all together to announce that our dependents were being evacuated from the country and that we would mount a full-scale evacuation effort to take stranded Americans in remote parts of the city to the airport. As we were meeting, automatic weapons fire opened up just outside the Embassy compound where we were meeting. People crouched beneath the window levels until silence returned.
Then Ambassador Lilley called us back into order. What he said then is deeply etched in my memory. Calmly, with emotion, he said, “We are not often called upon to show courage. Courage is grace under fire, keeping your head and your heart focused on what you need to do, and why, and then doing it regardless of all the things you cannot control going on around you. As you go out to help evacuate Americans, you must keep your cool and stay focused. As we send off our spouses and children, not knowing when we might see them again, we must give them confidence and hope by our own calm and love. Stay on task, remember our values and the oath we took when we entered into Federal service. Though all might not be well, you will have the calm of knowing you have done everything in your power. It’s a matter of faith, both having faith, and keeping faith. It’s called courage, and that is what we must step up to now, so we can make the best of this bad, bad situation.” The words had particular impact on me as we drove the next two days in convoys across the barricades all over the city, facing the muzzles of AK-47s held by PLA teenage recruits from the provinces shaky with amphetamines to keep them awake.
I have always thanked God that Jim Lilley knew exactly what to say to us and then modeled courage for us. He taught where courage comes from. As African American Spirituals say, “Keep your eyes on the prize! Keep your hand on the plough! Hold on, hold on!” This lesson has stayed with me from then until now.
What Jim Lilley knew was this: if we keep our minds on the goal and stay on task regardless of how bad things are, if we are true to the better angels in our hearts, grace under fire just happens. We are no longer overwhelmed by the things over which we have no control. And we find we can even find humor, satisfaction, and yes, even joy in pursuing our course, come hell or high water.
It’s there in today’s Canticle: “Surely it is God who saves me, trusting him, I shall not fear.” Paul says as much in today’s Epistle: “Rejoice always,” he says, but then adds, “in the Lord.” “In the Lord”: Jesus is the prize that we need to keep our eyes on. His teachings are the plough we must keep our hands on. He is the source, object, and driver of our joy and courage, not the circumstances we find ourselves in. Paul, like us, experienced bad stuff that he didn’t have any control over. 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.
If we have thankful, yearning hearts full of petitions to God, Paul says, the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will fill our hearts and minds with the knowledge and love of God. Joy, serenity, and courage are there to be found.
The usual Jewish expression of condolence upon the death of a loved one is “may their memory be a blessing.” Treasuring the good memories is a way of keeping joy alive in our hearts, despite grief and suffering. Noting and remembering such glimpses of goodness when they happen are ways to help us keep our eyes on the prize.
Siblings in Christ: Du courage! Let us go forth from this Eucharist today, this Great Thanksgiving, renewed and recommitted to joy, to love, to caring for each other, to supporting and healing the ill and reconciling hurt, and to forgiveness. Let us mourn with those who mourn, but always be ready to find joy and hope when it happens. For Joy and hope are there. We are in God’s hands.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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