Gaudete Sunday
December 17,
2017
Isaiah 61.1-4,
8-11;1 Thes. 5.16-24; John 1.6-8, 19-28
+ Today is, of course, Gaudete Sunday.
Or Rose Sunday. It is always a special
Sunday here at St. Stephen’s and for the Church as a whole. Today is just a bit more special for us here
at St. Stephen’s.
Of course, we are dedicating our brand
new Sts. Benedict and Scholastica window. I am especially happy about that. Traditionally,
on Gaudete Sunday, we light the pink candle on the Advent wreath.
And Gaudete for us at St. Stephen’s
always seems to be a special Sunday. It was on Gaudete Sunday two years ago
that we as a congregation voted to seek Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight
(DEPO), which was a great decision on our part, and very much a part of who we
are and what we do here of welcoming all people and accepting all people.
And today, we commemorate our ministry
of radical acceptance and welcoming with this
Welcome
all who arrive as Christ
And that is certainly what our
ministry of acceptance does. I think that all ties in so well to what this
Sunday represents.
Lighting the pink candle is a sign to
us that the shift has happened. Now
there are more candles lit than are unlit on the wreath. The light has won out and the darkness, we are
realizing, is not an eternal darkness.
But most importantly, Gaudete means
“rejoice.” And that is exactly what we
should be doing on this Sunday. We
should rejoice in the light that is winning out. We should rejoice in the fact that darkness
has no lasting power over us. We should rejoice in all that God has done for us
and continues to do for us in our lives, in our ministries and her particularly
at St. Stephen’s.
This Sunday sets a tone different than
the one we’ve had so-far in Advent. We
find this word—rejoice—ringing out throughout our scriptural readings today. It is the theme of the day. It is the emotion that permeates everything we
hear in the Liturgy of the Word on this Sunday.
In our reading from the Hebrew Bible,
in Isaiah, we hear
I will greatly rejoice in the
Lord,
my whole being shall exult in my
God;
In our Epistle, we find even Paul—who
seems a bit, shall we say, dour at times— rejoicing.
“Rejoice
always,”
he writes to the church at Thessalonika.
And, although the word “rejoice”
cannot be found in our Gospel reading for today, the sentiment is there. John
the Baptist, we are told, was not the light, but came to testify to the light—that
light being, of course, Jesus. Again, something about which to rejoice.
This emotion of joy is something we
oftentimes take for granted. Let’s face
it, joy doesn’t happen often enough in our lives. It certainly doesn’t happen enough in my life.
I wish it did. It is a rare occurrence
for the most part. And maybe, just
maybe, it should be. It is certainly not something we want to take
for granted.
When joy comes to us, we want to let
it flow through us. We want it to overwhelm
us.
But we often don’t think about how
essential joy is to us. Joy is essential
to all of us as Christians. It is one of those marks that make us who we are as
Christians. Or it should anyway.
We should be joyful. We have a God who
loves us, who knows us, who wants the very best for us. We have a God who
reaches out to us in the Light of Jesus that we celebrate at this time of the
year. That alone is a reason to be joyful.
But, sadly, as we all know, there aren’t
always that many joyful Christians. We
have all known those dour-faced Christians, those Christians who are angry or
bitter or false. There are those Christians
for whom a smile is a chore.
That is not what God intends for us. We all should be joyful Christians. Should
is the word.
Still, as we all know, there are
moments. There are moments when we simply
cannot muster joy. No matter how many
parties we might plan or host or go to, no matter how much we try to break the
hold the hard, difficult things of life have placed on us, it is hard sometimes
to feel joy. Cultivating joy in the
midst of overwhelming sorrow or pain or loneliness or depression can seems
overwhelming and impossible.
That’s why joy really is a discipline.
When things like sorrow or pain or loneliness or depression descend upon—and
they descend upon us all—we need, in those moments, to realize that joy might
not be with us in that moment, but—and here’s the important thing—joy always
returns.
Joy
always returns.
We need to search deep within us for
that joy that we have as Christians. And
when we search for it, we will find
it, even when life seems so miserable and so overwhelming. That joy often comes when we put our pains
into perspective. That joy comes when we
recognize that these dark moments that happen in our lives are not eternal.
They will not last forever. Darkness
never lasts forever. That, I think, is
where we sometimes fail.
When we are in the midst of those
negative emotions in our lives, we often feel as though they will never end. We often feel as though we will always be
lonely, we always be sad, we will always mourn. As Christians, we can’t allow
ourselves to be boxed in by despair. As
followers of Jesus, we are forced, again and again, to look at the larger
picture—at God’s larger picture. We are forced to see that joy is always there,
just beyond our grasp, awaiting us.
Joy is there when we realize that in
the midst of our darkness, there is always light just beyond our reach. And when it comes back into our lives, it
truly is wonderful… Because that is what
God wants for us.
Joy not always something one is able
to identify in a person. Joy doesn’t
mean walking around smiling all the time. It doesn’t mean that we have force ourselves
to be happy at all times in the face of every bad thing. If we do that, joy becomes false and forced.
True joy comes bubbling up from within
us. It is a true grace. Remember last
week when I talked about grace? Last
week, I defined grace in very simple terms:
Grace is a gift we receive from God we
neither ask for nor anticipate.
In that way, joy is a gift we are
given that we simply don’t ask for. Rather,
it comes from a deep place and it permeates our whole being, no matter what
else is going on in our lives or in the world around us. It is a joy that comes from deep within our very
essence—from that place of our true selves.
And, let me tell you from my own
experience, joy can still be present in times of mourning, in times of
darkness, in times of despair. It might
not be joy at its greatest effect, but there are glimmers of joy even in those dark
times.
Advent is, as I said on the first Sunday
of Advent, essentially, a penitential season. It is a time for us to recognize that we are
slugging through the muck of our lives—a muck we are at least, in part,
responsible for. But Advent is also a time for us to be able to rejoice even in
the midst of that muck. It is a time for
us realize that we will not be in that muck forever. The muck doesn’t win out.
God wins out. God’s light in this
world is more powerful than any darkness. And God’s light always wins out.
As you may know, we are also now past
the half-way point of the Jewish season of Chanukah. During this season, I always like to revisit a
very famous photo from the 8th night of Chanukah, 1932 in Kiel, Germany showing a menorah in a window. Across the street we can see the Nazi Party headquarters, from which hangs a Nazi flag
with a swastika. It is a powerful photo. But, what some people
don’t know is that the photo was taken by Rachel Posner, the wife of Rabbi Akiva Baruch Posner. On the back of the photo, she wrote:
“Our
light will outlast their flag.”
That is true resistance. That is defiance in the face of what seems to
be overwhelming darkness. And that is our message as well right now, in the Advent
(and Chanukah) season of hope and joy. Our
light—God’s light—will outlast whatever darkness we are experiencing right now
in our own lives, in our nation or in
the world.
See, even in the face of darkness, we
find hope and we can find joy. The joy
we carry deep within is too powerful to die. This powerful joy will win out and
outlast any darkness.
So, as we gather together this
morning, and as we leave here this morning, let us remember the joy we feel at
seeing this pink candle lit. Let us
carry the spirit of this rose-colored Sunday with us. Yes, I will say it: let us look at life with
rose-colored glasses (we can legitimately do that today!) We have made it this
far. The tide has shifted. The light is
winning out. The dawn is about to break
upon our long dark night.
As we ponder this, as we meditate on
this, as we take this with us in our hearts, let us pay special attention to
the emotion this causes within us. Let
us embrace that welling up of joy from deep within. And let it proclaim with our lips the words we,
along the prophet Isaiah, long to say:
I will greatly rejoice in the
Lord,
my whole being shall exult in my
God!
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