Advent 3C
12 Dec 2021
The themes of Advent: hope, love, joy, and peace.
There are other traditional ways of naming the Sundays or themes in Advent; regardless, the whole liturgical season is about what was, what is, and what will come to pass. Like the Eucharistic acclamation: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Past, present, future all mysteriously present in this season of heightened expectations. The Heinz ketchup season: the season where you wait and wait in anticipation of something good flowing outward.
This is the week of joy, the week of the pink candle. In Latin the word would be Gaudete, better translated as “rejoice.” For that reason I am leaving John in peace this Sunday, avoiding his pessimism for the moment. Yet, in truth, even John WANTS to rejoice.
We hear the prophet Zephaniah speak to us; we do not hear his first speeches, which are directed at corruption and a departure from worship and respect for God. Had we been living in Jerusalem we would have heard about the coming judgement of God. Perhaps he was the John of his day!! What we hear today is a song for the women of Israel to sing. It is, if you will, and ode to joy because God has taken away judgement for wrongdoing and turned back the enemies of Israel. And what does he say? Those glorious words that God is in our midst, God is among us. Think of this; the holy one of Israel is in our midst.
Isaiah, whom we hear speak to us in Canticle 9, says as much. Rejoice, for God has saved us. The image I see, that of drawing water, is an image of life, for without water we do not live. God is the living water, God will gather us.
Verna Dozier, among other theologians, speaks of the three “falls” of humanity. She says in the “time before time God offered human creatures away to live in harmony with themselves with each other and with all living things.” Friendly folk in a friendly world under a friendly sky, as Langston Hughes would have said. But we had to trust God fully and completely; instead humanity chose to be like God, despite the sheer impossibility of it. “The first fall.”
God again tried to show humanity another way of life: absolute dependence on God, but instead people chose to live like all the other nations. “We want a king to rule over us like other nations.” “The second fall.”
“Then the action of God -the way of God- became Incarnate in a Nazarene Carpenter: Jesus of Nazareth. He put his whole trust in God above every structure, every system, and every loyalty.” The three temptations. “A freeman, he loved, he taught, he showed another way. He's so infused his followers with his spirit that even after he died they knew he lived, and the movement that he began swept on in power until it could no longer live in the uncertainties of trust in God. It became an institution, one among many, even if one over many. The third fall.”
Humanity could not bear the Good News; could not live in the joy and trust Jesus taught; could not love their neighbor as themselves. Love incarnate became clothed in the regalia of power. When Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, the dream of God faded once more. The vestments we use in our worship come from the clothing worn by officials of state in the Byzantine empire.
But all is not lost. Throughout the history of Christianity, voices have cried out in the wilderness. We are called back to our roots; back to God. “Let your gentleness be known to everyone” says Paul. Saint Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, and so many other mystics of the past and the present point us to another way. Abraham Heschel taught about the joy and beauty of the Sabbath. Howard Thurman, writing in his book Jesus and the Disinherited reminds us of the very essence of Jesus of Nazareth and that God is the God of those with their backs against the wall. Gustavo Gutierrez, one of the authors of liberation theology, teachers but Jesus is at the margins and that he has a preferential option for the poor. Theology, womanist theology, queer theology, and the theology of other marginalized peoples add their voices to the chorus. Jesus came to return to us the joy that we had surrendered in our efforts to become God. But no matter what the first humans thought or the Israelites in the time of Samuel or the Christians in the time of Constantine, God came to bring us joy.
Both Advent and Lent are times in which we can and should ponder why we turned from the joy of living in a realm where God reigns. When God reigns in our hearts and our minds, we live in a world of complete sufficiency. There is enough for everyone: enough of the material necessities and an abundance of love beyond all imagining. The life and work of Jesus show us that this is so. But as long as we fail to internalize that reality, we will continue to live and work in a world filled with partisanship and tribalism.
When will you be able to say rejoice in the Lord always? Paul was in prison and was soon to be executed when he uttered these very words. Do not worry. Be joyful.
I've got the Joy
I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart,
Down in my heart, down in my heart.
I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart,
Down in my heart to stay.
I've got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus
Down in my heart, etc.
I've got the peace that passes understanding
Down in my heart,
I've got the wonderful peace of my blessed
Redeemer way down in the depths of my heart,
There is therefore now no condemnation
Down in my heart,
Surely it is God who saves me who brings me to the waters of salvation; the waters that are clear and pure and cold and always refreshing. True joy will be found when we can say God is God and I am not; thanks be to God.
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