Let us pray. God,
you call us to put on a mantle of praise, to rejoice always and to give thanks
in all circumstances. Guide our hearts, especially the hearts of those who
mourn, to know your love more deeply, and to find joy. Amen.
We sat
together at Bible Study this week, Mary Boggs, Joan and I, reading today’s
lessons, thinking hard about what they mean to us, searching for some clarity
that would help me talk about these Words with all of you today.
What
made it hard was knowing that we had Mark’s version of this Gospel last
week. What more could be said about John
the baptizer coming out of the wilderness?
As it
happens, there are some significant differences between Mark’s version and
today’s version from John. For example, John
the Gospeler reports that John the baptizer was questioned by the priests and
Levites who had been sent by the Pharisees.
They wanted to know who he was, and who he was not. And John was able to tell them he was not the
Messiah, nor was he Elijah, or a prophet.
Instead, he was the messenger sent to tell the people that Jesus was
coming. To tell them, as it was written
in Isaiah and in Mark’s version, too, to “make straight the way of the Lord.”
But
there is a bit more to this version of the story. John goes on to say, “Among you stands one
whom you do not know…” He implies that
Jesus is among them. He does not clarify
who Jesus is among. Is he with the
priests? Is he in the crowd?
So,
what seems most interesting to me, is that Jesus is present, but no one is
aware of his presence.
I wonder how often God is present and folks
are not aware of that presence.
I like
to believe that God is always present. I
like to live with Paul’s guidance to the Thessalonians to be aware of the Holy
Spirit among you—“don’t brush off Spirit-inspired messages” is the way it is translated
in the Common English Bible.
Even
when, and maybe especially when, things are hard.
Which
brings me back to our conversation at Bible Study.
We got
a bit caught up with the recurring theme of mourning found in the lesson from
Isaiah and then again in the Psalm. Perhaps
we focused on the mentions of mourning, because for many of us, this has been a
year that has held the final breaths, the final heartbeats, of people we love.
And we
ask the questions: Where is God in this?
Where is God in our weeping, in our sadness, in our losses? Because so, so many of us here are in
mourning.
And sometimes, in moments of acute loss, of the deep ache
that comes when a loved one dies, in the hurt and pain and disbelief, we forget
that God is present.
These lessons, today, remind us that even when our world
seems to fall apart beneath our feet, when our hearts are broken, we can
find joy because we know God is merciful.
In our conversation, Joan said that it can be merciful of
God to take those we love. She could talk
of God’s mercy because her Robert had struggled so long with diabetes and
kidney failure, and his quality of life had been so diminished. I could talk of mercy because Jeff’s mom had
deteriorated with Alzheimer’s Disease, leaving her a shell of herself. Others of you have your own stories of
knowing God’s mercy in the death of someone we love.
But when there are those who have died without significant
health issues, or from overdoses, or people whose lives have been violently taken
from them, or people who have taken their own lives, finding God’s mercy there,
even finding God there, can seem impossible.
No matter how someone dies, our responses are very
similar: we mourn, we cry out, we miss, and
we hold space for those who we wait to see again.
Grief.
The depth of grief seems bottomless for those who experience
it. Those first holidays without our
moms, dads, spouses, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, brothers, and
even our beloved pets, need to be filled with extraordinary care. Knowing where it is safe to cry, or laugh, or
excuse yourself, is key to the important self-care that is required in times of
grief.
But society doesn’t always understand. There is a sense of unholy urgency to take
care of the business that comes with death, this sense of urgency set up by
external systems that race you through the process so that your loved one no
longer exists in the eyes of the rest of the world.
But they exist in your, in my, in our, world. And there need not be a sense of urgency to
erase them.
Instead, we are witnesses to their lives. We are to tell their stories in ways that
keep them alive in our hearts and in our memories. It is in the stories and in the memories, we
can hope to experience joy.
This third Sunday of Advent is marked as Rose Sunday. It is the Sunday where we talk about
‘joy.’
So why is there so much talk, also, about mourning and
sadness? It takes a little reading
between those words to see that the message isn’t so much about the sadness,
the tears, the weeping. NO. It is about knowing that with all those
things comes JOY.
Our reading from Isaiah is titled “The Good News of
Deliverance.” Psalm 126 is entitled “A
Harvest of Joy.” The first word in this part of Paul’s first letter to
Thessalonica is “Rejoice.” Each of these
lessons remind us that God is present.
Present in joy. Present in
sorrow. And we are called to help one
another recognize the joy.
Joy is a deeper emotion than happiness. Henri Nouwen defines it this way: joy
is "the experience of knowing that
you are unconditionally loved and that nothing -- sickness, failure, emotional
distress, oppression, war, or even death -- can take that love away."[1] Nothing can take that love away!
And John, the baptizer, knows that that love comes from the Light.
The Light of Jesus.
God loves us. God
sent Jesus to walk among us to help us know that God loves us. And it is because of this love, this
unconditional love, that nothing—no hardship, no loss, no death can separate us
from the love—the JOY—of God.
We enter this third Sunday of Advent, this day of joy, acknowledging
that many of us come, bearing our own pain.
Hopefully we can leave this space, rejoicing because we know God is
present, and with that presence, we can feel God’s deep love for us.
Let us pray.
Thank
you, Jesus, for being present, for being the bearer of joy, and the One who
shares unconditional love.
Amen.