Gaudete
Zephaniah 3.14-20; Philippians
4.4-7; Luke 3.7-18
+ In
the name of God, Creator+ Redeemer and Sanctifier. Amen.
Or, in Latin (since we’re on kind of
a Latin kick this Gaudete Sunday) Dominus propus est.
Now that scripture that we just hear
from Paul in his letter to the Philippians is just chock full of Gaudete
goodness.
Doesn’t that sound like a great
vegan candy bar – Gaudete Goodness?
Every line of that reading is filled
with joy and hope.
“Do not worry about anything, but in
everything by prayer and supplication let your request be made known to God.”
When I was teenager, my mother gave
me as a present a leather scroll with this scripture from Philippians chapter 4
written on it.
Now, not a lot of people know this
about me, but I was a worry wart as a kid—a fact that, in turn, worried by
mother tremendously.
I have shared with some of you how
even as an 8 year old, I had terrible stomach ulcers.
Well, that’s what worrying does to
people, even 8 year olds.
Actually, I think, it wasn’t so much
the worrying that was the issue.
It was the anxiety, which is all
bound up in that whole sense of worrying.
And anxiety, as I have shared with
many of you, is still an issue in my life.
Any of you who served with me as a
Warden know firsthand the strange world of Fr. Jamie’s Anxiety.
So, back then, my mother chose this
scroll specifically for me.
Do not worry, that
scroll reminded me over and over again.
I still have that scroll on my wall.
And every time I read the scroll,
and as I pondered it again for today, I realize how powerful this scripture
really is:
Do not worry about anything.
But pray.
And if we do, if we release all our anxieties
to God, God will reward us with a peace beyond all understanding.
Now that sounds very easy.
That sounds wonderful.
But let me tell you; it’s a harder
than you think.
A LOT harder than it seems.
To live into that sense of trust of
God takes hard, hard work.
And it takes a lot of hard personal work
to get beyond one’s own anxiety and worry.
But we can do it.
The problem with most of us however
is that we hear this scripture so much that we forget it’s real meaning.
But it IS powerful.
And important.
And if we truly take it to heart, if
we truly live it out, we realize it captures incredibly the spirit of this
Sunday.
Don’t worry.
God is in control.
God is here, with us.
All will be well.
Or as Blessed Julian of Norwich
tells us again and again,
“All will be well and all will be
well and all manner of things will be well.”
Now, of course, we love Advent.
Everybody seems to love Advent.
But, today, we get something just a
bit different.
Advent is a time for us to slow
down, to ponder, to think.
And… to wait.
It is a time to be introspective, as
well—to think about who are and where we are in our lives.
So, in the midst of pondering and
waiting and introspection, we also find ourselves looking forward.
Now, for some of us, that doesn’t
seem all that exciting.
The future can be a scary place.
And what it holds may not be some
wonderfully hopeful thing.
Many people have a real fear of the
future.
Yesterday, my dear friend Leslie
Rorabeck was ordained to the Priesthood at St. Andrew’s-on-the-Sound Episcopal
Church in Wilmington, NC.
And this morning she is celebrating her
first Mass.
I was supposed to be there as a
presenter, but of course I’m grounded due to my perforated lung (thanks, Covid).
But 20 or so years ago, when I was
enduring a very difficult time in my life, when I had just been laid off from a
job and was about diagnosed with cancer, Leslie was there for me.
And one thing we often did as we ate
lunch together at the Plains Art Museum (remember the great cafeteria they had
back in the day?) or at the Radisson, was look forward.
I was not yet ordained, and when I
was sick there were many moments when I was not sure I would be a priest.
But Leslie and I would talk
hopefully about the future even despite the present ugliness of life, and look
forward to the days when those current issues would be behind us.
I looked forward in those days to
being a priest.
And Leslie too often talked about
one day becoming a priest.
At the time she had two small girls
(she would later have a son too) and the priesthood for her seemed like some
very distant mirage.
She too would endure some very
difficult situations in the years to come.
But here we are, 20 years later,
being the priests we imagined ourselves being way back in those seemingly
endlessly dark days.
That is how God works in our lives
sometimes.
It is important to remember that, as
followers of Jesus, that in doing such introspection, in looking forward, we do
not despair.
We do not lose heart.
To go back to what Paul says to us
today in our Epistle reading:
“Do not worry about anything…”
And in that incredible reading we
hear this morning from the Hebrew scriptures, we hear so many truly wonderful
and hopeful things from the prophet Zephaniah.
“Do not fear, O Zion [we are Zion];
Do not let your hands grow weak.”
Why should we not fear?
Because, according the prophet, God
is in our midst.
God is with us.
And God “will rejoice over you with
gladness,
[God] will renew you with [God’s]
love.”
But God is even clearer in this
reading about how well cared for we are by God.
God exults over us “with loud
singing.”
God will “remove every disaster”
from us, so that we will not bear reproach.
God will deal with all our oppressors,
and the lame will saved and the outcast gathered in.
God will change whatever shame we
have to praise
These words of God are being spoken
to each of us today:
God says, “I will bring you home at the time when I gather you:
for
I will make you renowned and praised
among
all the peoples of the earth
when
I restore your fortunes
before
your eyes, says the Lord. “
Those words are being spoken to us
this morning, by the God who loves us and cares for us.
We are well taken care of by our
God.
And if that doesn’t give you a true
reason to rejoice today, I hate to say it: nothing will.
So, rejoice today.
God loves you.
God cares for you.
God exults in you with loud singing
and rejoices over you with gladness.
This is why we
rejoice today.
See, the future is nothing to fear.
Our future
in God is a future of joy.
Joy in the
simple fact that God really does love us and delights in us and rejoices as
well in us.
That real and beautiful joy is why
we are decorated in rose this morning.
That is why, in our pondering, we
are pondering joy—even joy in the midst of sadness or loneliness or depression,
or pandemics.
That is why, even despite all that
happened in our lives, all that is happening at the moment and that will
happen, we can still rejoice.
Gaudete.
So, do not fear but do good in this
world, even if you’re depressed or lonely or sad or not feeling well.
Do good in this world even if you
have a perforated lung.
Do good even if the world does not,
at times, do good to us.
Do good always.
Because in doing good, we are doing
what God wants us to do in this world.
In doing good, we embody true joy.
This is what Gaudete Sunday is all
about—rejoicing.
Living in joy.
Letting joy reign supreme in us.
Letting joy win out over fear and uncertainty.
Being joyful in our love for God and
for others.
We—followers
and disciples of Jesus—bear good fruit when we are joyful in our God.
How
can’t we?
That
joy that we carry within us fertilizes the good things we do.
It
motivates us.
It
compels us.
It
gives us purpose and meaning in our lives.
We, as Christians, must embody that joy.
We must live that joy in all we do
and say and are.
Today, we must, in all honesty,
proclaim:
“Gaudete!”
Rejoice.
And live that Gaudete out in our
very existence, in the ministries we do, in how we deal with others.
So, let Gaudete be more than just
what we say or do one Sunday a year.
Let it be our way of life as we
await the Messiah’s presence coming to us.
St. John and St. Paul are both
right:
The Lord is near!
The Lord is near.
God has sent the Messiah to us to
redeem us.
So…let us do good.
And when we do we will truly know
that “peace of God which surpasses all understanding….”
We too, as embodied joy, will be
bearing good fruits.
Let us pray.
Holy God of promise, God of expectation
and longing, we look forward with expectation to your coming among us. We look
forward to your presence in our midst. Help us in our loving. Help us as we
anxiously await you so that we do not fall victim to anxiety and worry. Remind us again and again in our lives that we
ultimately have nothing to fear or to worry about for you are in control and
your goodness, in the end, is always triumphant. Help us as we joyously wait, and reward us well for our loving; in
Jesus’ Name we pray.
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