Why Rejoice?
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle C
I recently saw a survey conducted by the Muzak Holiday Channel concerning the most popular Christmas songs played at this time of the year. They are 1) "The Christmas Song," 2) "White Christmas," 3) "Winter Wonderland," and 4) "Silver Bells." It is interesting to note that they are all secular songs that focus on the "warm fuzzies" and sentimental feelings of the season. There are no Christian or religious songs here.
The songs reveal what is really at the center of this annual orgy of self-indulgence. Our culture no longer even calls it "Christmas" but instead prefers to call it "The Holidays." The songs urge us to be full of joy and merriment because of how we have been blessed. It is because of all those good things that fill our lives now that we ought to be joyful and to sing merrily those wonderful "carols of the season." We are encouraged if not pressured into spending and buying gifts, often beyond our means, as a way of assuring ourselves that life is really pretty good. Self-aggrandizement becomes self-congratulation.
The traditional, explicitly Christian carols that we sing at this time of the year also express our joy and happiness, but with one big difference. In these songs the source of our joy is not in the blessings of the now. We are not rejoicing because we are able to buy gifts and afford a lavish Christmas dinner. No, the source of our joy is strangely in the past! It is an event that took place 2,000 years ago: the birth of a child in an obscure place in an obscure time, laid in a manger because there was no room in the inn. That is the source of our joy now.
How odd!
The same could also be said of some of the best "praise songs" of the Christian tradition. Contrary to many of the sappy and sentimental "praise songs" that get sung in churches today, songs that solipsistically whine "I feel happy because I feel happy," the best and most enduring praise songs of the church base their joy not in the feelings of the moment but in an event of the past. In fact, some of these songs emerged from situations where the now was a living hell and anything but something that would fill your heart with joy.
In this congregation we love to sing the African-American spiritual "I'm So Glad, Jesus Lifted Me." It is filled with hope and joy and marked with a lively rhythm and an upbeat melody. The irony of the song is that it is a song that was first sung by blacks struggling with the suffering and oppression of their slavery. Their now was miserable. Yet, they could sing with joy because of something that happened in the past. That past event was the resurrection of Jesus.
One of the great, classic "praise songs" of the Christian tradition is "Now Thank We All Our God." With a deep and poetic lyric and a powerfully uplifting melody, it expresses an abundant joy and certain confidence in God. But the irony of this song is that its author, Lutheran pastor Martin Rinkert of Eulenburg, Germany, wrote it during the darkest days of the Thirty Years War. As this religious war raged around him, thousands of people had fled the countryside into the supposed safety of the city of Eulenburg. As a result the city was overcrowded and the services were stretched to the limit. Soon the Black Plague broke out and people began to die in droves. At one point Pastor Rinkert was conducting fifty funerals a day. Finally, he lost his own wife to the dreaded plague. In the midst of this terrible suffering, when everything in the present moment was drenched in misery, he wrote this marvelous and joyful song. His reason for joy had nothing to do with the now but had everything to do with the past. It had everything to do with what God had done in Jesus Christ. And it was because of that event of the past that he could find reason to express his joy in the present. His feelings of the moment were filled with sorrow and pain. He had lost those most dear to him. Nevertheless, he had a reason to rejoice. It had nothing to do with the present and everything to do with what God had done in Jesus Christ.
How odd!
We see this same odd joy reflected in today's First Lesson from the prophet Zephaniah. It was sixth century B.C.E. Judah and the religious reforms instituted by King Josiah had failed. The prophet had already uttered some scathing oracles of doom announcing the coming "Day of the Lord" when Israel would be destroyed. The "Day of the Lord" finally did arrive in the devastating assault of the brutal Babylonian army on Jerusalem. Everything that mattered to Israel was obliterated. The signs of its divine election, the evidence that God had chosen them, the Temple, the city of Jerusalem, and the Davidic monarchy were all destroyed. It was a political and social crisis. Most of all it was a religious crisis. How could they continue to believe in a God who had allowed the very signs of his existence to be destroyed? How could such a God be trusted? Did such a God even exist? And if he did, he was either a puny weakling or a fickle monster. It was the greatest crisis and darkest hour to have ever come upon God's people. It was a time for the people of Israel to weep and gnash their teeth.
It is this context that makes the words of the prophet Zephaniah in today's First Lesson so utterly amazing. In this uninhibited spurt of enthusiasm he utters a magnificent song of joy. Contrary to appearances, in spite of the pain and sorrow that must have torn his heart and the hearts of those around him, contrary to the experience of the now, independent of the suffering of the present moment, Zephaniah sings for joy!
How outrageous! How amazing! How odd!
It is interesting to examine the basis of Zephaniah's joy and optimism. It defies the logic of common sense. First, Zephaniah simply announces that God has already removed his judgment against Israel. Even though the rubble of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem lie all around him, he insists that things are not what they appear to be. In fact, they are just the opposite. Even as the Babylonians are carrying off the Israelites to their captivity in Babylon, Zephaniah insists that the disaster is already over. The deliverance and liberation from captivity is about to happen. It is just around the corner.
And what is the basis of this hope and joy? The future! He is absolutely certain that one day in the future God will keep his promises, rescue his people, and destroy their enemies. He is so confident that it is as good as accomplished. Therefore, let the party begin now!
He utterly refuses to base his faith on the reality of the present. He rejects the experiences of the moment. His joy is solely based on the future. Today we might call such people fools or deluded or crazy. Where are the men in the white coats? Let's get him committed! But to the people of Israel he was a prophet. He was speaking for God. They believed him ... and rejoiced!
How out of step! How peculiar! How odd!
It is for the same reason that so many consider the church's celebration of the season of Advent to be so completely and utterly odd. The same could be said for the Christian Gospel. Both refuse to ground their message and hope in the vagaries and peculiarities of the present moment.
With the celebration of the season of Advent, the church refuses to be caught up in our culture's annual self-indulgent plunge into the excesses of the now. Our culture, insofar as it is even familiar with the word "advent," seeks to collapse it into the season of Christmas. I even once had a conversation with a Lutheran pastor of a large and successful church who had decided to turn the four weeks of Advent into the four-week season of Christmas and to move the season of Advent (he preferred to call it "pre-Christmas") back into mid-November. How sad!
The parties, the gift-giving, the festive lights, the rich foods, the sentimental songs, all are ways of assuring ourselves that life is good. We have "made it." And God bless America! We deduce our relationship with God backwards from our experience of the present. And since all of us want to believe that God is good and likes us just the way we are, it is so important to "celebrate the holidays" and to have a "merry Christmas."
But letting the season of Advent remain Advent and refusing to collapse it into the season of Christmas is important. It is not just that we want to spoil everyone's desire to get an early start on celebrating Christmas. No, on the contrary, it promises truly to let Christmas be Christmas and have its joy be grounded on something more permanent and enduring than the fleeting fluctuations and permutations of the now.
Just when we thought we could turn Advent into Christmas, in rushes John the Baptist. Dressed in his animal skins, munching on locusts and wild honey, and screaming, "You brood of vipers!" he is not the kind of guy you want to have come to your holiday party. The Christian lectionary during the season of Advent is dominated by the imposing and disturbing figure of John the Baptist. He is about as far from jolly old Saint Nick as you could imagine. His abrasive appearance in our Advent Gospel readings is intended to remind us that, if there is a reason to rejoice during this season, it is not because life is good and all is well and God bless America!
On the contrary, this fiery prophet reminds us that all is not well and that we had better stop pretending that all is well. The signs of "the End" and that this world is under the judgment of God are everywhere. There is that lump in your breast, the blood where it isn't supposed to be, the pink slip when you arrive at work, the bodies of babies in dumpsters, the depressing litany of divorces, the continuing wars and rumors of war, the economic prosperity that is a pipe dream for all too many and a fleeting illusion for others. If we are to be joyful in this season of Advent, if we are to be joyful in any season, why? What is the basis of our hope? The fiery and disturbing words of John the Baptist insist that it can't possibly be now because now is still so flawed and so far from perfection. The four-week season of waiting we call Advent refuses to let us give into our culture's mad rush to turn Christmas into a month-long celebration of excess. It reminds us that the source of our joy can't possibly be the blessings of the now. The basis of our joy and hope is in what is coming, in what is not yet.
John the Baptist points to the "Coming One," to Jesus. As Luke's editorial comment at the end of today's Gospel reminds us, John the Baptist's raging against the complacency and whitewashing of the present was ultimately heard as "good news"! Why? Because all he wanted to do was to focus his hearers' hearts away from themselves and the illusions of the present moment and onto Jesus. He is their only hope. He is the only reason to rejoice. And he will not disappoint them.
Like the prophet Zephaniah before him, John the Baptist calls our attention to the One who is coming. Zephaniah did the same thing when he called his hearers to look away from the destruction of the moment and the rubble of Jerusalem to the future, to the coming Day of the Lord, when at last everything would be set right for God's people. Their days of forever being the doormat of other nations would finally be over. Their days of disappointment and frustration would finally end.
That day of liberation and deliverance, that Day of the Lord, finally did come -- in Jesus. Jesus, the Immanuel, the "God with us," came to suffer the shame, the humiliation, the failure, the sin, the rejection that has always plagued God's people and us. In Jesus, God suffered "for us" and "with us." He exchanged our plight for his blessing. During Advent we are reminded that the reason for our joy lies not in the blessings of the now but in the One who is coming. Advent reminds us that the now is so broken that our hope must come from someplace else, from some one else. Christmas celebrates that this one has come. And he has carried with him to the cross everything that is wrong with now and suffers the consequences. When he is raised "on the third day," at last we can be sure that we have been delivered. Everything that is wrong has been defeated. It is at last time to rejoice!
The season of Advent reminds us that we now live "between the times." The Day of the Lord has come in Jesus. God's enemies have been defeated. But all is still not yet accomplished. We now live in the "not yet" waiting for that Last Day when Jesus will "come again" to complete finally the victory that has already begun.
It reminds me of being up early in the morning just before sunrise. It is still dark. But as I begin to see the first rays of light begin to illuminate the horizon, I am certain that the sun will soon appear and a new day will begin. I now live in joyful and certain anticipation of what is to come. I live "between the times" of night and dawn.
It is like waiting for the airplane to arrive. The runway is still empty, but you know that it is on time and it will soon be touching the earth. You live in joyful anticipation of the arrival of your friend. You live "between the times."
You have just discovered that your wife is pregnant. For the next nine months you will be living "between the times" in joyful anticipation of a new baby. Until she actually begins to "show" the new baby in a growing tummy, you wait. You are excited with joy, a joy that will be confirmed in the future. Every day is filled with joyful anticipation of the new life that will grace your family.
This future-based joy of the season of Advent permeates the scripture readings of this third Sunday in Advent. This joy is reflected in the fact that the tradition of the church has always called this Sunday Gaudate Sunday, which in Latin means "Rejoice!" You might see an Advent wreath in some churches with a pink candle. That pink candle is lit on this third Sunday in Advent to reflect this joyful spirit in a season that is reluctant to shout for joy while it waits for Christmas.
The joy we emphasize on this Gaudate Sunday is similar to the joy expressed by the Israelite exiles in the sixth century B.C.E., by the first-century hearers of John the Baptist, by the seventeenth-century inhabitants of plague-ridden Europe, and by the eighteenth-century African slaves in America. Like them, the source of our joy is not in the experiences of the now but in the reality of what God has done in the past and promises to do in the future. They invite all of us, the dying, the lonely, the poor, the sick, and the broken to join them in songs of joy. Our joy and faith need not be undermined by the sufferings of this present moment. Because of the Jesus who came and who will come to at last set all things right, we can rejoice now in the present!
Therefore, joy can permeate all of our life. As I keep on reminding everyone who comes to Christ Church, everything here is a "get to." There are no slavish "have to's." What we have to offer is a gift. It is free. God's love comes with no strings attached. Therefore, we confess our sins, we bury our dead, we work at our jobs, we serve our neighbors, we give away our money, we offer our Christmas gifts, and we sing our Christmas carols -- with joy! And that joy is based not on the superficial, emotional whimsies of the present moment but on what God has done in the past and what he promises to do in the future independent of anything we do. When I look at the daily fluctuations and inconsistencies of my own life, this is certainly good news!
Because of the One who came and who will come, we also have our eyes opened to see how he continues to come now in the present. Words that sound all too ordinary and human now are heard as God's Word. Ordinary bread and wine, simple water from a faucet, now are "the means of grace," the very tools God uses to heal and redeem this world. Even in the midst of tragedy and suffering we can rejoice now, not because we are na•ve and foolish but because the basis of our joy is what God has done in Christ and not our feelings in the present moment.
There is probably nothing in our recent experience that has caused us to question the goodness of God more than the tragedy of 9-11, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Where was God as those towers came crashing down and thousands lost their lives? I have seen several e-mails and newspaper and magazine accounts that have tried to answer that question. Most of them have been inadequate. Many have tried to argue that God really was there doing good -- as the police and firemen helped thousands to escape, as the thousands of volunteers stepped forward to help victims, as many had their lives saved because they missed a doomed flight or were late to work that day. But I find such explanations arbitrary and inadequate. Such explanations seem to be nothing more than desperate attempts to "get God off the hook" and still make him look good. Let's face it. The suffering and evil of 9-11 was monstrous. There is no way around it.
Where was God that day? In the aftermath of the clean-up, some creative iron workers probably portrayed it best when they welded together a huge steel cross from the wreckage and placed it in the middle of the rubble. Where was God for all those people who lost their lives? God was there with them in the midst of the deadly wreckage. God suffered with them on the cross. When Jesus died on the cross, he suffered with and for everyone who has ever had to suffer the irrational suffering of this world gone mad. The basis of our hope and joy in these moments of pain and suffering is only there, in him, in that great event of the past and in his promise to come again to make it all right.
One late night, I was watching one of the newscasts from "ground zero." Most of the time the media in the interest of "good taste" had not reported the gruesome details of the recovery of human remains. But one uncensored "live report" got on the air late one night. I have seen no report of it since. According to the report, 23 bodies were recovered all huddled together in a circle, all holding hands, in a stairwell, all crushed to death. What were those 23 people doing all gathered together holding hands? Were they praying? Were they crying? Could it be that they were singing? Could it be that a song of joy was on their lips and in their hearts? Could it be that like so many of God's people before them, they were free from the suffering and pain of the now and were able to rejoice by looking forward to that day when Jesus would come again to make all things right at last? Only God knows for sure. But if it were so, it would not be new. God's people have always known why they rejoice.
The songs reveal what is really at the center of this annual orgy of self-indulgence. Our culture no longer even calls it "Christmas" but instead prefers to call it "The Holidays." The songs urge us to be full of joy and merriment because of how we have been blessed. It is because of all those good things that fill our lives now that we ought to be joyful and to sing merrily those wonderful "carols of the season." We are encouraged if not pressured into spending and buying gifts, often beyond our means, as a way of assuring ourselves that life is really pretty good. Self-aggrandizement becomes self-congratulation.
The traditional, explicitly Christian carols that we sing at this time of the year also express our joy and happiness, but with one big difference. In these songs the source of our joy is not in the blessings of the now. We are not rejoicing because we are able to buy gifts and afford a lavish Christmas dinner. No, the source of our joy is strangely in the past! It is an event that took place 2,000 years ago: the birth of a child in an obscure place in an obscure time, laid in a manger because there was no room in the inn. That is the source of our joy now.
How odd!
The same could also be said of some of the best "praise songs" of the Christian tradition. Contrary to many of the sappy and sentimental "praise songs" that get sung in churches today, songs that solipsistically whine "I feel happy because I feel happy," the best and most enduring praise songs of the church base their joy not in the feelings of the moment but in an event of the past. In fact, some of these songs emerged from situations where the now was a living hell and anything but something that would fill your heart with joy.
In this congregation we love to sing the African-American spiritual "I'm So Glad, Jesus Lifted Me." It is filled with hope and joy and marked with a lively rhythm and an upbeat melody. The irony of the song is that it is a song that was first sung by blacks struggling with the suffering and oppression of their slavery. Their now was miserable. Yet, they could sing with joy because of something that happened in the past. That past event was the resurrection of Jesus.
One of the great, classic "praise songs" of the Christian tradition is "Now Thank We All Our God." With a deep and poetic lyric and a powerfully uplifting melody, it expresses an abundant joy and certain confidence in God. But the irony of this song is that its author, Lutheran pastor Martin Rinkert of Eulenburg, Germany, wrote it during the darkest days of the Thirty Years War. As this religious war raged around him, thousands of people had fled the countryside into the supposed safety of the city of Eulenburg. As a result the city was overcrowded and the services were stretched to the limit. Soon the Black Plague broke out and people began to die in droves. At one point Pastor Rinkert was conducting fifty funerals a day. Finally, he lost his own wife to the dreaded plague. In the midst of this terrible suffering, when everything in the present moment was drenched in misery, he wrote this marvelous and joyful song. His reason for joy had nothing to do with the now but had everything to do with the past. It had everything to do with what God had done in Jesus Christ. And it was because of that event of the past that he could find reason to express his joy in the present. His feelings of the moment were filled with sorrow and pain. He had lost those most dear to him. Nevertheless, he had a reason to rejoice. It had nothing to do with the present and everything to do with what God had done in Jesus Christ.
How odd!
We see this same odd joy reflected in today's First Lesson from the prophet Zephaniah. It was sixth century B.C.E. Judah and the religious reforms instituted by King Josiah had failed. The prophet had already uttered some scathing oracles of doom announcing the coming "Day of the Lord" when Israel would be destroyed. The "Day of the Lord" finally did arrive in the devastating assault of the brutal Babylonian army on Jerusalem. Everything that mattered to Israel was obliterated. The signs of its divine election, the evidence that God had chosen them, the Temple, the city of Jerusalem, and the Davidic monarchy were all destroyed. It was a political and social crisis. Most of all it was a religious crisis. How could they continue to believe in a God who had allowed the very signs of his existence to be destroyed? How could such a God be trusted? Did such a God even exist? And if he did, he was either a puny weakling or a fickle monster. It was the greatest crisis and darkest hour to have ever come upon God's people. It was a time for the people of Israel to weep and gnash their teeth.
It is this context that makes the words of the prophet Zephaniah in today's First Lesson so utterly amazing. In this uninhibited spurt of enthusiasm he utters a magnificent song of joy. Contrary to appearances, in spite of the pain and sorrow that must have torn his heart and the hearts of those around him, contrary to the experience of the now, independent of the suffering of the present moment, Zephaniah sings for joy!
How outrageous! How amazing! How odd!
It is interesting to examine the basis of Zephaniah's joy and optimism. It defies the logic of common sense. First, Zephaniah simply announces that God has already removed his judgment against Israel. Even though the rubble of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem lie all around him, he insists that things are not what they appear to be. In fact, they are just the opposite. Even as the Babylonians are carrying off the Israelites to their captivity in Babylon, Zephaniah insists that the disaster is already over. The deliverance and liberation from captivity is about to happen. It is just around the corner.
And what is the basis of this hope and joy? The future! He is absolutely certain that one day in the future God will keep his promises, rescue his people, and destroy their enemies. He is so confident that it is as good as accomplished. Therefore, let the party begin now!
He utterly refuses to base his faith on the reality of the present. He rejects the experiences of the moment. His joy is solely based on the future. Today we might call such people fools or deluded or crazy. Where are the men in the white coats? Let's get him committed! But to the people of Israel he was a prophet. He was speaking for God. They believed him ... and rejoiced!
How out of step! How peculiar! How odd!
It is for the same reason that so many consider the church's celebration of the season of Advent to be so completely and utterly odd. The same could be said for the Christian Gospel. Both refuse to ground their message and hope in the vagaries and peculiarities of the present moment.
With the celebration of the season of Advent, the church refuses to be caught up in our culture's annual self-indulgent plunge into the excesses of the now. Our culture, insofar as it is even familiar with the word "advent," seeks to collapse it into the season of Christmas. I even once had a conversation with a Lutheran pastor of a large and successful church who had decided to turn the four weeks of Advent into the four-week season of Christmas and to move the season of Advent (he preferred to call it "pre-Christmas") back into mid-November. How sad!
The parties, the gift-giving, the festive lights, the rich foods, the sentimental songs, all are ways of assuring ourselves that life is good. We have "made it." And God bless America! We deduce our relationship with God backwards from our experience of the present. And since all of us want to believe that God is good and likes us just the way we are, it is so important to "celebrate the holidays" and to have a "merry Christmas."
But letting the season of Advent remain Advent and refusing to collapse it into the season of Christmas is important. It is not just that we want to spoil everyone's desire to get an early start on celebrating Christmas. No, on the contrary, it promises truly to let Christmas be Christmas and have its joy be grounded on something more permanent and enduring than the fleeting fluctuations and permutations of the now.
Just when we thought we could turn Advent into Christmas, in rushes John the Baptist. Dressed in his animal skins, munching on locusts and wild honey, and screaming, "You brood of vipers!" he is not the kind of guy you want to have come to your holiday party. The Christian lectionary during the season of Advent is dominated by the imposing and disturbing figure of John the Baptist. He is about as far from jolly old Saint Nick as you could imagine. His abrasive appearance in our Advent Gospel readings is intended to remind us that, if there is a reason to rejoice during this season, it is not because life is good and all is well and God bless America!
On the contrary, this fiery prophet reminds us that all is not well and that we had better stop pretending that all is well. The signs of "the End" and that this world is under the judgment of God are everywhere. There is that lump in your breast, the blood where it isn't supposed to be, the pink slip when you arrive at work, the bodies of babies in dumpsters, the depressing litany of divorces, the continuing wars and rumors of war, the economic prosperity that is a pipe dream for all too many and a fleeting illusion for others. If we are to be joyful in this season of Advent, if we are to be joyful in any season, why? What is the basis of our hope? The fiery and disturbing words of John the Baptist insist that it can't possibly be now because now is still so flawed and so far from perfection. The four-week season of waiting we call Advent refuses to let us give into our culture's mad rush to turn Christmas into a month-long celebration of excess. It reminds us that the source of our joy can't possibly be the blessings of the now. The basis of our joy and hope is in what is coming, in what is not yet.
John the Baptist points to the "Coming One," to Jesus. As Luke's editorial comment at the end of today's Gospel reminds us, John the Baptist's raging against the complacency and whitewashing of the present was ultimately heard as "good news"! Why? Because all he wanted to do was to focus his hearers' hearts away from themselves and the illusions of the present moment and onto Jesus. He is their only hope. He is the only reason to rejoice. And he will not disappoint them.
Like the prophet Zephaniah before him, John the Baptist calls our attention to the One who is coming. Zephaniah did the same thing when he called his hearers to look away from the destruction of the moment and the rubble of Jerusalem to the future, to the coming Day of the Lord, when at last everything would be set right for God's people. Their days of forever being the doormat of other nations would finally be over. Their days of disappointment and frustration would finally end.
That day of liberation and deliverance, that Day of the Lord, finally did come -- in Jesus. Jesus, the Immanuel, the "God with us," came to suffer the shame, the humiliation, the failure, the sin, the rejection that has always plagued God's people and us. In Jesus, God suffered "for us" and "with us." He exchanged our plight for his blessing. During Advent we are reminded that the reason for our joy lies not in the blessings of the now but in the One who is coming. Advent reminds us that the now is so broken that our hope must come from someplace else, from some one else. Christmas celebrates that this one has come. And he has carried with him to the cross everything that is wrong with now and suffers the consequences. When he is raised "on the third day," at last we can be sure that we have been delivered. Everything that is wrong has been defeated. It is at last time to rejoice!
The season of Advent reminds us that we now live "between the times." The Day of the Lord has come in Jesus. God's enemies have been defeated. But all is still not yet accomplished. We now live in the "not yet" waiting for that Last Day when Jesus will "come again" to complete finally the victory that has already begun.
It reminds me of being up early in the morning just before sunrise. It is still dark. But as I begin to see the first rays of light begin to illuminate the horizon, I am certain that the sun will soon appear and a new day will begin. I now live in joyful and certain anticipation of what is to come. I live "between the times" of night and dawn.
It is like waiting for the airplane to arrive. The runway is still empty, but you know that it is on time and it will soon be touching the earth. You live in joyful anticipation of the arrival of your friend. You live "between the times."
You have just discovered that your wife is pregnant. For the next nine months you will be living "between the times" in joyful anticipation of a new baby. Until she actually begins to "show" the new baby in a growing tummy, you wait. You are excited with joy, a joy that will be confirmed in the future. Every day is filled with joyful anticipation of the new life that will grace your family.
This future-based joy of the season of Advent permeates the scripture readings of this third Sunday in Advent. This joy is reflected in the fact that the tradition of the church has always called this Sunday Gaudate Sunday, which in Latin means "Rejoice!" You might see an Advent wreath in some churches with a pink candle. That pink candle is lit on this third Sunday in Advent to reflect this joyful spirit in a season that is reluctant to shout for joy while it waits for Christmas.
The joy we emphasize on this Gaudate Sunday is similar to the joy expressed by the Israelite exiles in the sixth century B.C.E., by the first-century hearers of John the Baptist, by the seventeenth-century inhabitants of plague-ridden Europe, and by the eighteenth-century African slaves in America. Like them, the source of our joy is not in the experiences of the now but in the reality of what God has done in the past and promises to do in the future. They invite all of us, the dying, the lonely, the poor, the sick, and the broken to join them in songs of joy. Our joy and faith need not be undermined by the sufferings of this present moment. Because of the Jesus who came and who will come to at last set all things right, we can rejoice now in the present!
Therefore, joy can permeate all of our life. As I keep on reminding everyone who comes to Christ Church, everything here is a "get to." There are no slavish "have to's." What we have to offer is a gift. It is free. God's love comes with no strings attached. Therefore, we confess our sins, we bury our dead, we work at our jobs, we serve our neighbors, we give away our money, we offer our Christmas gifts, and we sing our Christmas carols -- with joy! And that joy is based not on the superficial, emotional whimsies of the present moment but on what God has done in the past and what he promises to do in the future independent of anything we do. When I look at the daily fluctuations and inconsistencies of my own life, this is certainly good news!
Because of the One who came and who will come, we also have our eyes opened to see how he continues to come now in the present. Words that sound all too ordinary and human now are heard as God's Word. Ordinary bread and wine, simple water from a faucet, now are "the means of grace," the very tools God uses to heal and redeem this world. Even in the midst of tragedy and suffering we can rejoice now, not because we are na•ve and foolish but because the basis of our joy is what God has done in Christ and not our feelings in the present moment.
There is probably nothing in our recent experience that has caused us to question the goodness of God more than the tragedy of 9-11, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Where was God as those towers came crashing down and thousands lost their lives? I have seen several e-mails and newspaper and magazine accounts that have tried to answer that question. Most of them have been inadequate. Many have tried to argue that God really was there doing good -- as the police and firemen helped thousands to escape, as the thousands of volunteers stepped forward to help victims, as many had their lives saved because they missed a doomed flight or were late to work that day. But I find such explanations arbitrary and inadequate. Such explanations seem to be nothing more than desperate attempts to "get God off the hook" and still make him look good. Let's face it. The suffering and evil of 9-11 was monstrous. There is no way around it.
Where was God that day? In the aftermath of the clean-up, some creative iron workers probably portrayed it best when they welded together a huge steel cross from the wreckage and placed it in the middle of the rubble. Where was God for all those people who lost their lives? God was there with them in the midst of the deadly wreckage. God suffered with them on the cross. When Jesus died on the cross, he suffered with and for everyone who has ever had to suffer the irrational suffering of this world gone mad. The basis of our hope and joy in these moments of pain and suffering is only there, in him, in that great event of the past and in his promise to come again to make it all right.
One late night, I was watching one of the newscasts from "ground zero." Most of the time the media in the interest of "good taste" had not reported the gruesome details of the recovery of human remains. But one uncensored "live report" got on the air late one night. I have seen no report of it since. According to the report, 23 bodies were recovered all huddled together in a circle, all holding hands, in a stairwell, all crushed to death. What were those 23 people doing all gathered together holding hands? Were they praying? Were they crying? Could it be that they were singing? Could it be that a song of joy was on their lips and in their hearts? Could it be that like so many of God's people before them, they were free from the suffering and pain of the now and were able to rejoice by looking forward to that day when Jesus would come again to make all things right at last? Only God knows for sure. But if it were so, it would not be new. God's people have always known why they rejoice.
