3 Advent
GaudeteSunday
December17, 2023
Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-11;1 Thes. 5.16-24; John 1.6-8, 19-28
+ As you know, I just got back from aseveral days in Las Vegas on Friday night
I had a great time.
But yesterday, I posted on Facebook aphoto of a priest in a rose-colored chasuble, and wrote, Tomorrow is GaudeteSunday. You know what that means…”
Fr. John Floberg, the priest who serveson Standing Rock, responded by saying,
“Bythe looks of your facebook posts last week I would imagine that you might notneed to relax your Advent Disciplines very much this week. LOL.”
I responded:
“you should've seen how disciplined I wasin Vegas...”
Fr. John then said,
“Ibet you abstained from meat the whole time!”
Which I did!
See how ascetic I am!
The fact is: I was very disciplined inVegas. Trust me.
I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’tgamble. And yes, I do not eat meat.
And this time, my cousins Renaye, Mandyand I only spent a little time on the Strip.
We instead explored some strange andkitschy places like the Golden Tiki, a retro Tiki bar which has amazinglyrealistic shrunken heads of celebrities on the walls, Omega Mart and Area 15which was some kind of psychedelic grocery store that was amazing, saw amind-blowing movie at the brand-new Sphere and visited Zak Bagan’s HauntedMuseum.
But Fr. John Floberg is right.
Gaudete Sunday is a day in which we getto take a little break from our Advent disciplines.
That is, if we have been discipliningourselves during Advent.
Gaudete Sunday, or Rose Sunday, isalways a special Sunday here at St. Stephen’s and for the Church as a whole.
Traditionally, on Gaudete Sunday, welight the lone pink candle on the Advent wreath.
Lighting the pink candle is a sign tous that the shift has happened.
Now there are more candles lit than areunlit 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 bedoing on this Sunday.
We should rejoice in the light that iswinning out over the darkness.
We should rejoice in the fact thatdarkness has no lasting power over us.
We should rejoice in all that God hasdone for us and continues to do for us in our lives, in our ministries and hereparticularly at St. Stephen’s.
This Sunday sets a tone different thanthe one we’ve had so-far in Advent.
We find this word—rejoice—ringing outthroughout our scriptural readings today.
It is the “theme” of the day.
Rejoice!
It is the emotion that permeateseverything we hear in the Liturgy of the Word on this Sunday.
In our reading from the Hebrew scriptures,in Isaiah, we hear
I will greatlyrejoice in the Lord,
my whole being shallexult in my God;
In our Epistle, we find even Paul—whoseems a bit, shall we say, dour at times— rejoicing.
“Rejoice always,” he writesto the church at Thessalonika.
And, although the word “rejoice” cannotbe found in our Gospel reading for today, the sentiment is there.
John the Baptist, we are told, was notthe light, but came to testify to the light—that light being, of course, Jesus,God’s Messiah.
Again, that is something about which torejoice.
Even when it seems like the Light isstill far off, even then we rejoice.
This emotion of joy is something weoftentimes take for granted.
Let’s face it, joy doesn’t happen oftenenough in our lives.
It certainly doesn’t happen enough inmy life.
I wish it did.
It is a rare occurrence for the mostpart.
And maybe it should be.
It is certainly not something we wantto take for granted.
When joy comes to us, we want to let itflow through us.
We want it to overwhelm us.
But we often don’t think about howessential joy is to us.
Joy is essential to all of us asChristians.
It is one of those marks that make uswho we are as Christians.
Or it should anyway.
We should be joyful.
We have a God who loves us, who knowsus, who wants the very best for us.
We have a God who reaches out to us inthe Light of Jesus, God’s Son and our Messiah, that we celebrate at this timeof the year.
That alone is a reason to be joyful.
But, sadly, as we all know, therearen’t always that many joyful Christians.
We have all known those dour-facedChristians, those Christians who are angry or bitter or false.
And right now we’re seeing a lot ofcrazy, insane Christians acting terribly in the name of Christ.
To me, any act of hate or lawlessnessin the Name of God is nothing less than sacrilege!
There are those Christians for whom asmile 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 aremoments.
There are moments when we simply cannotmuster joy.
No matter how much we try to break thehold the hard, difficult things of life have placed on us, it is hard sometimesto feel real joy.
Cultivating joy in the midst ofoverwhelming sorrow or pain or loneliness or depression or estrangement canseems overwhelming and impossible.
That’s why joy really is a discipline.
When things like sorrow or pain orloneliness or depression or anger or resentment descend upon—and they descendupon us all—we need, in those moments, to realize that joy might not be with usin that moment, but—and here’s the important thing—joy always returns.
Joy always returns.
We need to search deep within us forthat joy that we have as Christians.
And when we search for it, we will find it, even when life seems somiserable and so overwhelming.
That joy often comes when we put ourpains into perspective.
That joy comes when we recognize thatthese 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 sometimesfail.
When we are in the midst of thosenegative emotions in our lives, we often feel as though they will never end.
We often feel as though we will alwaysbe lonely, we always be sad, we will always mourn.
As Christians, we can’t allow ourselvesto be boxed in by despair.
As Christians, we are forced, again andagain, to look at the larger picture—at God’s larger picture.
We are forced to see that joy is alwaysthere, just beyond our grasp, awaiting us.
Joy is there when we realize that inthe 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 toidentify in a person.
Joy doesn’t mean walking around smilingall the time.
It doesn’t mean that we have forceourselves to be happy at all times in the face of every bad thing.
If we do that, joy becomes false andforced.
True joy comes bubbling up from withinus.
It is a true grace.
Remember last week when I talked aboutgrace.
Last week, I defined grace in verysimple terms:
Grace is a gift we receive from God weneither ask for nor anticipate.
In that way, joy is a gift we are giventhat we simply don’t ask for.
Rather, it comes from a deep place andit permeates our whole being, no matter what else is going on in our lives orin the world around us.
It is a joy that comes from deep withinour very essence—from that place of our true selves.
And, let me tell you from my ownexperience, joy can still be present in times of mourning, in times ofdarkness, in times of despair.
It might not be joy at its greatesteffect, but there are glimmers of joy even in those dark times.
Advent is, as I said on the firstSunday of Advent, essentially, a penitential season.
It is a time, as Fr. Floberg referenced,a time of discipline.
It is a time for us to recognize thatwe 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 beable to rejoice even in the midst of that muck.
It is a time for us realize that wewill not be in that muck forever.
The muck doesn’t win out.
God wins out.
Christ’s light in this world is morepowerful than any darkness.
And Christ’s light always wins out.
Our light—the Light of Christ within us—willoutlast whatever darkness we are experiencing right now in our own lives or inthe world.
See, even in the face of darkness, wefind hope and we can find joy.
The joy we carry deep within is toopowerful to die.
This powerful joy will win out andoutlast any darkness.
So, this morning, let us remember thejoy we feel at seeing this pink candle lit.
Let us carry the spirit of thisrose-colored Sunday with us.
Yes, I will say it: let us look at lifewith 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 ourlong dark night.
As we ponder this, as we meditate onthis, as we take this with us in our hearts, let us pay special attention tothe emotion this causes within us.
Let us embrace that welling up of joyfrom deep within.
And let it proclaim with our lips thewords we, along the prophet Isaiah, long to say:
I will greatlyrejoice in the Lord,
my whole being shallexult in my God!
Let us pray.
We rejoice greatly in you, Loving God; even in our darknessyou send us Light—the Light of our Savior Christ. Even when we feel alone andabandoned, you come close to us and hold us close. We rejoice in you today, andall our days, who comes to us again and again in the person of Jesus our Lord,in whose name we pray. Amen.
