December 16, 2012
Advent 3 JOY
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Philippians 4:4-8
(prayer)
Sometimes, I am amazed at how the cycle of the Christian Liturgical Year often seems, coincidentally, to line up with today's life and world events. This Sunday (the third Sunday of Advent) just nine days before Christmas, focuses on "joy": Zephaniah said rejoice and exult with all your heart, Paul wrote rejoice in the Lord always, again, I say rejoice.
Some days, it just seems to fit perfectly.
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Today is not one of those days.
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It is hard to feel a true sense of joy after what happened in Newtown, Connecticut two days ago. I have been feeling sad ... and angry ... and my joy is buried deep in these days.
I am outraged that the gun culture is so ingrained that a philosophical right to have a gun (or guns of every size and capacity) supersedes the possibility of students and teachers to enjoy a day at school safety; and that this constitutionally guaranteed right superseded the opportunity for a disturbed, ill young man to live in a gun-free home. Even living north of the 49th where that right is not a right but a carefully controlled, earned-privilege (and where there were 52 gun murders in 2011 compared to 10,728 in the States), I am outraged for the soul-wrenching plight of my friends and neighbours to the south.
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Anger is part of my response, but it pales compared to the sadness.
You know, there is never a 'good' time to be thrust into sadness and grief, but for those for whom the festival of Christmas is a big celebration, this may be the worst time of year to have to grieve.
I have found myself imagining Connecticut families having presents under their trees for their children who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
What do you do with those presents in these days before Christmas?
Do you remove them? Put that sad reminder out of eyesight.
Do you leave them there? Unable to do it yet, or as a memorial or as symbol of the innocent joy they knew.
And what will you do with the gifts on December 26th and the days that follow? Keep them, give them away, donate them, throw them away.
Do you remove them? Put that sad reminder out of eyesight.
Do you leave them there? Unable to do it yet, or as a memorial or as symbol of the innocent joy they knew.
And what will you do with the gifts on December 26th and the days that follow? Keep them, give them away, donate them, throw them away.
I know that feeling. Thirty years ago this coming Wednesday, my father passed away suddenly (I was 19). His funeral was on Dec 22nd and we had people over to the house after the memorial service.
Someone quite innocently was just making chit-chat to us kids and commented on the large gift under the tree “oh, somebody’s getting a big one” – of course – not knowing it was for my dad. It was a neatly wrapped small brown suitcase.
My dad was only 51, but he had been forced into semi-retirement because of severe heart disease. But he maintained a few clients and still made the odd trip out of town for work or pleasure (aka golf or horseracing). This suitcase would be the perfect size for him.
I don’t remember talking with anyone in the day’s after my dad’s death about what to do with his presents under the tree. It wasn’t even on my radar. But after everyone left that day, because of that innocent comment, my mom needed to take away all of my dad’s presents. I look back on that and now realize that (for her) it had to have been an act of bitter, joy-voided finality that shouted that he was gone.
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I used that suitcase for almost three decades until the zipper went on it this past spring. Now it is gone too.
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Is there room for joy in these times?
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When I heard about the shooting on Friday, I happened to be out doing some Christmas shopping. The stores were full, the lines were long. And I was numbly going through the motions.
At one store, I overheard a woman loudly talking to a store employee in an electronics department because they were sold out of the item that she was looking for. Someone had gotten to it before her. To listen to her, the world was falling apart.
It made me think of something we all are deeply away of: the craziness of holiday shopping. And how, for some people, it can be so all-consuming, and yet... how small and petty it seems when the ‘really important things in life’ are thrust into our front of our consciousness.
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It is a sadly repeated activity that seems to get worse every year – people waiting in lines for pre-Christmas deals. The US’s Black Friday (the scarily-named shopping day after Thanksgiving) started a day early this year and 2012’s Cyber Monday broke all records.
In Canada, we have long since stopped expecting to have to wait until after Christmas for Boxing Day sales.
By in large, people despise the lines, but they desire where the lines lead.
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It is a common lament in church circles at this time of year that the meaning of Christmas is lost and the reason for the season are shoved to the back of the line.
If you were at the St. David’s Women’s Christmas Party two weeks ago, you would have seen the video for Becky Kelly’s holiday-themed song where she asks, “Where’s the Line to See Jesus?” I’ll post a link with this sermon on the church’s website.
Okay, the song is really cheesy, but in the midst all the line-worthy-deals, it does ask us: where is our sense of perspective for what is truly important.
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Even if we are unable to set aside the tragedy of the last few days, we can still ask: where is the awe that might just cause us to sing and rejoice at the wonder of the Divine within our midst?
In the midst of tragedy, in the midst of the season’s distractions, how do we bring Joy to the front of the line?
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That question was on my mind as I was trying to figure out what to say during this message time today. Even before Friday’s events, I had planned on asking that rhetorical question today: how do we bring joy to the front of the line. But as of yesterday, the question seemed a lot harder to answer.
The two scripture passages (which I had picked weeks ago) had those encouraging lines about rejoicing. But they seemed a bit hollow.
I had to look closely again at the readings provided by the Lectionary for this particular day in the three year, repeated cycle of bible lessons for Sunday Church. How could I authentically speak about Joy… today?
As I read and re-read, it struck me that the circumstances surrounding both writings were not filled with great calm and joy. There was a fair bit of worry and anxiety for both Paul and Zephaniah, who were each in the midst of dealing with some significant levels of loss.
The first chapter of Paul’s letter contains words of his own stubborn joy in spite of being under house arrest and facing a possible death sentence: 1:18Yes, and I will continue to rejoice ... 20...Christ will be exalted now as always in my body, whether by life or by death.
Zephaniah (like his contemporary Jeremiah) spoke to the people of Judah during the time immediately before the Babylonian conquest.
Hope was hard to come by; the writing was on the wall. Jerusalem may survive for a short time (while its supplies held out) but eventually all of Judah (including the capital) would fall. Everyone knew that. The people knew it. Jeremiah knew it. Zephaniah knew it.
How is it that Zephaniah could tell people of Jerusalem and Judah to sing... and rejoice... and exult with all their hearts?
How could Paul be in such a good mood given what he was facing?
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There are times when ‘joy’ is hard to find in the moment.
And yet... a message coming to us in today’s scriptures is that... ‘joy...shall...come’. We sang that earlier:
Joy shall come
even to the wilderness.
And the parched land shall then
know great gladness.
As the rose,
shall deserts blossom.
Deserts, like a garden, blossom!
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Zephaniah tells the Judeans, “Do not fear”; Paul tells the Philippians, “Do not worry”. The situations the people were in could easily justify fear and worry, but the prophet and the apostle say that, with God, they are not alone – and that this fact has an effect on fear and worry. Yahweh, your God, is in your midst (Zeph 3:17); The peace of God, which surpassed all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:7).
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The truth is:
Joy doesn’t always naturally make its way to the front of the line. And believe me (as a guy who gets down with sadness and grief every advent) we need more than the call to just ‘don’t worry, be happy”.
When you are feeling depressed, one of the least helpful responses is to be told, “c’mon cheer up, it’s Christmas”.
A superficial reading of today’s passages might sound like that: “rejoice always – c’mon cheer up”.
We need something deeper: and I do believe that, in their contexts, these passages do have that depth of meaning.
They tell us that we need to KNOW that God is with us – sad with us, angry with us and yet with a heart so open, so peaceful that we might find it impossible to understand the ability God has to comfort us.
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When joy is not coming naturally, we may not be able to force it to the front of the line, but we must not let its light be extinguished.
That candle needs to burn today. It needs to burn because of my dad; it need to burn because of Edna’s husband, it needs to burn because of the victims and the shooter in Connecticut.
You have a reason that it needs to burn!
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To have hope...
and to know peace...
we need to believe that
Joy shall come.
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And that belief can be strengthened by allowing ourselves to experience that God is with us now (front and centre), even if the joy is still a ways off.
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Let us pray:
As we sing songs of the season, O God – songs of hope, peace, and love – we hear you echoing the joy that is part of it all. Help us to know the joy of your presence especially when joy is hard for us to feel. Amen.
“O hush the noise and
cease your strife
to hear the angels sing.”
#44VU “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”
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