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Her name was Enid. When I first met her she had recently retired, having served as a teacher and a high school principal. She lived in a beautiful old high rise building on Lake Michigan, and she had more than one “room with a view.” She also had a habit of asking guests, when they arrived for the first time in her home, to sign a book. But it was not a simple signature she asked of us. She wanted us to choose a word or phrase that was a personal favorite, something that was meaningful to us or significant in some way. That day, when she asked us to write in her book of words, I knew what it had to be. More than a quarter century ago, I wrote a word that, even today, is still one of my favorites. The word is: Rejoice! (Yes. With an exclamation mark!) The Third Sunday in Advent, when we light a lighter, rose-colored candle, is often called “Gaudete” Sunday. Gaudete is the Latin word for “rejoice.” Perhaps you’ve noticed all the references to that word in our readings. “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,” says the prophet Isaiah (61:10). “Rejoice always,” says the writer to the church in Thessalonika. And while our official gospel reading does not contain a reference to joy, the UNofficial gospel text for today, our second reading, which in the church have come to call the Magnificat, this song of Mary reminds us at our half-way mark in Advent that soon, soon, there will be cause for great rejoicing. It is Mary’s song, and it is all about joy: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior!” We will hear more from Mary next week. The text we have NOT heard today, an alternative second reading, is also a text filled with rejoicing. It’s Psalm 126. I want to spend some time thinking about that psalm with you this morning. Would you please take a prayer book, turn with me to page 782, and read it aloud with me? . . . You might think that this Psalm is a bit out of place for Gaudete Sunday, with those references to sowing and reaping. It might feel more like a Thanksgiving Day psalm to you. But when we look and listen more closely, we see Advent signs and hear Advent sounds – signs of memory, sounds of hope in what were dark, difficult times. Those were times not unlike our own. Some scholars think this Psalm may have been written in a season of joyous return from exile. The children of Israel had been captive in Babylon for years. Clearly it is a psalm of thanksgiving, celebrating God’s acts of salvation throughout history. “ Zion” is a term for all the people of God, as well as their political and religious institutions. All of them have been restored, and the people are not just happy, they are elated, ecstatic. They are rejoicing! Other nations notice this. “The Lord has done great things for them.” They see Zion’s joy, and it may be contagious. The children of Israel, the people of Zion, agree. “The Lord has (my emphasis) done great things for us.” God’s saving acts are indeed cause for rejoicing. Today, in our jaded world, this might seem strange behavior to us. Do we joyfully attribute our well-being to God? The first three verses of this Psalm focus on memory, and the final three hold up hope. Zion is a nation, a people of memory and hope. They remember what God has done for them, and they are never afraid to pray for restoration. “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses of the Negev” (126:4). It helps to know that the Negev or Negeb is a desert region in the south of Israel without any year-round water. In the Negev a “watercourse” is a streambed that remains dry most of the year, occasionally flowing or even flooding with infrequent rain. Just after the Babylonian invasion in the early part of the 6 th century before Christ, a civilization was expertly built up there, diverting runoff rain toward the crops, storing remaining water in cisterns. The “watercourses of the Negev” became “the lifeblood of the region” (Paul Brassey, ibid., p. 61) The Psalmist isn’t the only one who says, “those who sow shall reap.” One of our expressions, apropos at the end of 2008, is that people will reap what they sow. But the biblical image “sow in sorrow, reap in joy” incorporates “an ancient Near East belief that weeping…while you planted made the crops more productive” (William Taylor, ibid., p. 60). People of faith – like those in Zion, like those who followed Jesus, even the likes of us – we know deep down that those who weep in sadness, those who sow with tears that flow like the rain from our eyes and from the very heart of God, those who sow with heart-breaking tears can – no, will indeed reap with songs, even shouts of joy. For us, sorrow can and does lead to joy. True joy can grow out of true sorrow, sadness, loss, pain, grief. We, too, are a people of memory and hope. Or are we? In her kitchen my friend Enid had written a sentence of words and taped them to an overhead cabinet. The sentence said, “Happiness is having someone to call ‘Darling.’” Her saying took on particular poignancy that night, when, over dinner conversation, my friends and I learned that Enid had recently lost her husband – and that her son had been MIA in Vietnam for decades. Amidst her loss and sadness, I was one of the new friends Enid now dared to call ”darling.” Out of her sorrowful memory had grown hope – and she rejoiced. Now, in larger life, she dwells in eternal joy with her husband, with her son and with her God. The seeds of Enid’s joy, the seeds of the joy of Zion, the seeds of faithful people are planted amidst sorrow, watered with tears. My sisters and brothers, the seeds of our joy are also sown in sadness. Wherever you are this morning, wherever you are on this Advent journey, wherever you are on your journey with Jesus, our travel can be tough. Corruption and disruption. Recession and depression. Loss and grief. Once we get past the disappointment, the disillusionment, the anger we might be feeling about living in this 21 st century world, we get in touch with sorrow and sadness. Mid-December, mid-Advent can be a very tough and lonely time, and not just for the widows of this world. Tough, lonely times are when people of faith reach out to each other. And people of faith have long looked to God for help. Nowhere do we find that honest prayer “help me, help me, help me” more often than in the Psalms. Psalm 126 acknowledges that our sorrow is real, not to be ignored, denied or covered up. Psalm 126 also acknowledges God’s power to transform our sorrow into joy. Yesterday I celebrated my twenty-second anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. I started the day with my usual line-up: some coffee, filling a page in my journal, a time of silent prayer and a brisk walk. In the afternoon I enjoyed the Frederick Chorale Society’s Christmas concert here, a good thing for someone who loves music and is celebrating! I also wrote this sermon yesterday, having successfully avoided all week the task of actually sitting down and writing something to say to all of you on this, the Third Sunday of Advent. And in my writing of this sermon, I remembered that the two other friends who shared dinner that night with Enid and me also shared in the joy of my ordination. One presented me, the other read a lesson. While there has been much sadness between me and those friends over the years, I rejoice today in the blessed fact that they have been part of my journey – from tears to songs. Dear people of God, rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, REJOICE! The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg, All Saints’ Episcopal Church, |
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