Year B
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Canticle 15
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8,19-28

May the words of my mouth…  O God…  speak your Truth…

It’s Advent 6… and we wait…  and while we wait…  today’s reading from 1 Thessalonians reminds us to…    Rejoice always…  pray without ceasing…  and give thanks in all circumstances… and even Philippians 4:4 exhorts us to…  Rejoice in the Lord always…  but really…  these days…  it seems like there’s less to rejoice about…   and less to give thanks for…  

We’re still waiting for this crazy pandemic…  global warming…  not so peaceful transition of power…  racism and social injustice…  food insufficiency…  health care overload…  living wage…  heteronormative…  vaccine shortage…  this every 500 years rummage sale to be over…   and we’re hoping that we can unload all the stuff that isn’t of God and which never served us well…  and we’re praying that we won’t unknowingly relegate to the trash bin…  and later regret…  what is of God…  if only we had eyes to see the gift and the treasure that it is…  

I’m waiting for some gifts I ordered online to arrive…  I don’t like to wrap gifts…  I’m not a good at it…  but Joel is…  the gifts that Joel wraps have such tight…  and even…  and crips folds…  they look like the paper was either spray-painted on… or shrink-wrapped on…  I think too much about how it’s going to just be torn off and thrown away…  I think I’ve got bigger fish to fry…  and so one thing I do…  is just wrap them in some tissue paper and slip them into a gift bag…  easy peasy…  1…  2…  3…  done…  for me…  having to wrap gifts that right way…  is a kind of penance… 

It’s Gau-de-tay Sunday…  it’s a Sunday when we take a break from the penitential nature of Advent…  and we mark this break…  by using rose colored hangings and vestments…  we take a break…  some people don’t know that Advent is penitential…  that it’s a time to express regret not only for our individual…  but maybe especially for our corporate wrongdoing…  for the ways we’re so quick to resist God’s ways…  and embrace human ways…  some people think Advent is just the time we put up the tree and the lights…  and get out the decorations…  and finish our shopping and baking…   and in our Americanized version of Christianity…  it’s become so easy to gloss over the underlying penitential nature…  because we want to rush right on to Christmas morning…  and rip all that wrapping paper right off…  or empty those gift bags…  and see who got what…

But that’s why we celebrate a seven-week Advent…  it’s to slow things down…  to shift our narrow-focus from the birth event itself…  to the wider-focus of why the birth event happened in the first place…  to remind ourselves that God took on human form…   because God intended to heal a broken creation…  to heal the world…  to offer up the gifts that include boundless love…  unmerited grace…  underserved forgiveness…  and eternal life…  and this is a reason for joy…  

The Rev. Valerie Bridgeman… professor of Homiletics and the Hebrew Bible at the Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio… writes… my mother often said…  that joy is based in God…  not in what’s happening around you…  I wonder about her words as I read Isaiah…  it seems clear that for the prophet…  joy is bestowed on people because of God yes…  but also because of changes in the people’s circumstances…  brokenhearted people have their wounds tended…  captives are liberated –– and here she imagines that means captivity from oppressive systems…  unjust countries…  addictions…  and more –– and prisoners are freed…

Can’t you hear the cheers arising from those set free under all these conditions…  and looking ahead…  you see these commitments in the song that Mary sings in Luke (1:46-55) which includes this “reversal of fortune” theme…  some may believe it’s harsh to suggest that the rich will be turned away empty…  after all…  why can’t we all just be among the “haves” right…  but I think the joy of the exploited in the song…  in which they rejoice in what has been visited on them being turned on their oppressors…  is a call to repentance and empathy…  fueled by God’s justice… the rich will go away empty…  not because we’ve imposed human vengeance…  but because they themselves have repented of their greed and hoarding…  and they’ve repented…  because they empathically experience all people…  [yes…  all people…]  as their sisters and brothers who deserve God’s justice too…

And so if joy is based in God…  and not in what’s happening around you…  how do we reconcile this seeming disconnect…  in the November newsletter…  I wrote about how my daughter learned that mixed feelings were normal…  and healthy…  that it was possible…  indeed part of our human wiring…  to hold two or more feelings in tension…  lament for the suffering that’s going on around us…  and joy for God’s promise of salvation…  

Even Fr. Henri Nouwen wrote…  I am increasingly impressed by the Christian possibility of celebrating not only moments of joy…  but also moments of pain…  affirming God’s real presence in the thick of our lives…  a true Christian always affirms life…  because God is the God of life…  a life stronger than death and destruction…  [and so] there is always reason to hope…  even when our eyes are filled with tears…  and we know from Hebrews 11:1 that faith is the assurance of things hoped for…  and the conviction of things not seen…  

In today’s Gospel…  the priests and Levites from Jerusalem ask John three times who he is…  and three times John answers who he is not…  and by doing so…  he is creating a negative space…  John knows that he must name the roles to which he is not called…  before he can affirm that to which he is called…

And by knowing who we are and who we’re not…  we can create a space that the Spirit will fill…  and when…  as The Rev. Phil Hooper wrote…  we are willing to cultivate the space in ourselves for God to accomplish God’s work…  then we must also be willing to disappoint the expectant throng…  we must be willing to embrace the emptiness of what we were never meant to be…  and then…  perhaps…  we will find the One Voice that was ours to claim all along…

When I served on the Nominating Committee for the Ninth Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Southern Ohio…  there were seventeen people in the cohort…  seventeen worldviews…  seventeen perspectives…  seventeen agendas…  seventeen sets of baggage brought to the table…  seventeen kinds of wounds that were maybe hoping to be healed…  perhaps even seventeen litmus tests that would instantly determine who was in and who was out…  and if every one of us insisted that our thoughts and feelings and stuff…  mattered more than anyone else’s…  then we wouldn’t have gotten anything done… 

But we had a consultant from the national church…  who guided us…  who helped us lead ourselves…  and she taught us about reaching consensus…  that is…  knowing deeply and clearly what we thought and felt…  and knowing deeply and clearly why we thought and felt what we did…  but not holding on so tightly…  that we were unable to be formed by each other…  and by the presence of the Holy Spirit…  that we could still name our own personal preferences…  but not be so attached to them…  that we couldn’t relinquish them for the sake of the collective wisdom of that group…  during those months…  and for the task with which we had been charged…  and we did indeed find that One Voice…

We may not find much of what’s familiar this Christmas…  many of us will be in much smaller gatherings…  there’ll be no Two Churches’ progressive dinner…  no candlelit Silent Night…  and as we anticipate what will or will not be…  we may feel bereft…  but in remembering…  we can remember what was and what will become –– pray God next year –– in the empty spaces we are unable to fill now…  and it doesn’t matter what presents are under the tree…  or how they came to be there…  or whether they’re meticulously wrapped…  or have found their way into gift bags…

Because in each of the synoptic Gospels…  Jesus asks the disciples…  Who do you say that I am…  and if we deeply and clearly ask ourselves who are we not…  we will know better who we may become…  and we will put the craziness of this time behind us…  and we will speak with the One Voice that God gifted us from before time…  and therein…  lies our joy…