“Gaudete”
15 December 2024
Advent 3C
Homily preached at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
Grants Pass, Oregon
by the Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson
9:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Zephaniah 3:14-20; Canticle 9; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18
God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen
A few years ago at this time, my wife Elena and I drove up to Portland to attend the annual performance of the Christmas Revels, that celebration of hope, joy, and peace for Winter Solstice, the shortest day and darkest time of the year. As we drove, over the radio came news from Sandy Hook Connecticut about a horrific mass shooting at an elementary school. So when we got to the Revels, we were not feeling the joy and hope. Thinking about the dead first graders, we found ourselves 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.” The call “rejoice, rejoice, rejoice” seemed hollow.
A few years later, three years ago on the Feast of Saint Nicholas (December 6, on Monday that year), my beloved Elena died of a Parkinson’s related stroke. As much as I liked to think that the Saint had come that day to give her the gift of no more suffering, I was in deep grief and mourning the next Sunday, third Advent, when we are told to put on joy for the upcoming holiday.
Today, once again, is Gaudete (Rejoice!) Sunday. We light the pink candle on the Advent Wreath, and I am wearing rose vestments. This is the Sunday when our fearful dread at the coming Day of Doom is supposed to turn into the joyful anticipation of Christ’s birth.
Be happy. Rejoice. Smile. It is what Paul commands us to do in today’s epistle reading. “Rejoice always, again I say, rejoice.” Despite all that is in the air, sing a happy song.
But how can we rejoice in the face of such dreadful things and such grief?
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 not denouncing his faith. In his letters he certainly seems to have the full range of human emotion, from grief and sorrow at times to gentle warmth and affection, from blazing anger at times to falling down laughter at other times. But here he is saying “rejoice always.”
Paul is not arguing here for us to become clinically emotionally impaired, whether as rapid-cycling bipolars or sufferers from profound dissociative mixed states of affect. He is not calling for being untrue to our feelings at the moment. Rather, he is calling for hope despite our all-too justified fears and grief.
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 admits that our circumstances can be pretty bad when he says, “do not worry about anything that may happen.” But he says that if we pray and ask God for our deepest desires in all aspects of our lives with a thankful heart, God’s peace, which is beyond understanding, will keep us in the embrace and love of God and Jesus, will keep us in hope.
When the French want to tell you to be strong, find hope in the face of trouble, and deal gracefully with what life dishes out, they say “du courage!” It’s like saying “buck up!” or “hang in there.”
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,
The Lord is my stronghold and my sure defense,
and he will be my Savior.
Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing
from the springs of salvation.”
Paul says the joy that we can have at all times, the peace which passes understanding, is in “joy in the Lord.” “In the Lord.” That means Jesus is the prize that we need to keep our eyes on. His teachings are the plough we must keep our hands on. Focusing on him is what keeps joy and hope alive in us, no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in.
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: “Good Christians all rejoice, with heart and minds and voices, give ye heed to what we say, Jesus Christ is born this day.” And this, despite hardship: “Ox and ass before him bow and he is in the manger now.” And the Latin carol we often hear choirs sing this time of year, “Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus ex Maria Virgine, gaudete!”
The Revels performance is so moving to me each year 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!
Hope in the darkness, joy despite suffering and brokenness. Even if inchoate, even if expressed in revelling alone, it is the joy of God. Not a hollow, “don’t worry be happy!” but deep joy and relief at the dawning of the Light which the darkness cannot overcome, deep thanks for the coming of the Good and Love that Evil cannot destroy.
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. But in this all, may joy in Christ inspire us to work for a better world, both in our own lives and in the common life we share together.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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