|
Sermon
December 11, 2005
The Reverend Pamela Snare
“For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth…be glad and
rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem
as a joy, and its people as a delight. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and
delight in my people…” (Isaiah 65:17a, 18-19a)
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances;
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (I Thessalonians
5:16-18)
It is no accident that the words “joy” and “rejoice” resound heartily in
our first two readings today. For ten centuries or more, this third Sunday
of Advent has been known as “Gaudete” or “Rejoice” Sunday. The first word
of the entrance antiphon, that is to say, the first word for this mass was
(and still is in the Roman Catholic Church), “Rejoice,” taken from
Philippians 4:4: “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, Rejoice! The
Lord is near.” The vestige of this use of Philippians 4:4 on III Advent is
still to be found in our Book of Common Prayer, Year C, where Philippians
4 is the second reading.
Joy, rejoicing, is a predominant theme in both the Old and the New
Testaments. In Galatians 5 joy is the second of the nine fruits of the
Holy Spirit. The psalms overflow with references to joy and the
exhortation to rejoice. In John’s gospel, at the Last Supper, when Jesus
is delivering his parting teaching to the disciples, he says to them: “I
have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your
joy may be complete.” Finally, readings from the prophet Isaiah dominate
in Advent because he returns over and over again to the imperative,
“Rejoice!”
Joy, as a fruit of the Holy Spirit, means that its presence is evidence of
the presence and indwelling of the Spirit. In the entirety of the
Scriptures, God is the source of all joy, and joy is a mark of his
kingdom, as in our first reading : “No more shall the sound of weeping be
heard in it (that is, in Jerusalem), or the cry of distress.” God created
men and women, you and me, for joy.
This is why, in the early Christian fathers, sadness is numbered as one of
the eight principal vices, alongside gluttony, fornication, avarice,
anger, listlessness (acedia), vainglory and pride. Sadness is a vice, a
danger for us because, according to John Cassian, it cuts us off from the
contemplation of God. His language is strong, and I am borrowing heavily
from him. Sadness, he says, “weakens and oppresses the mind.” It “keeps us
from carrying out our prayers with eagerness of heart” and from “dwelling
upon the remedies of the Scriptures.” It prevents us from being “peaceable
and gentle” with others, and makes us “impatient and abrupt in…our duties
of work and worship.” It destroys our willingness to accept helpful,
“salutary counsel,” “drives out steadfastness of heart”, and “crazes and
stupefies the intellect… overwhelming it with…despair.”
Cassian lists several causes of this destructive sadness. It is a
consequence of anger (we all know depression is anger turned inward), or
of “desire for some gain which has not been achieved,” or of a desire to
acquire something that our mind was set on. Sometimes, he says, we fall
into sadness “for no apparent reason, when we are suddenly weighed down
with great sorrow.” This sadness he attributes to the wiles of the devil,
who wants to steal from God’s creatures the joy he intends for us. Maybe
you can identify with some of these reasons for sadness. I certainly can.
There is one kind of sadness which Cassian and the fathers say is
beneficial to us, because it actually draws us closer to God. This is the
sadness of repentance; that is to say, it is grief over having offended
God, “regret that is felt in the depths of the heart for having sinned.”
This kind of sadness is accompanied by a great desire for God, a desire
for holiness, a desire for living in the presence and according to the
will of God. This kind of sadness, my friends, is salutary because it
throws us into the arms of God; it shows us our only hope is in him; it
teaches us our dependence on his mercy; it deconstructs our pride and
leads us in the path of humility. It acquaints us with our frailties and
limitations, and reveals to us the truth of our human condition. That is
why it is salutary. It causes us to acknowledge our complete dependence
upon God. And that, my friends is the only path to joy – to absence of
fear, absence of anxiety, absence of that destructive sadness which leads
to despair.
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances;
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” The joy which today
we are invited to have and to live, the joy that comes from God and that
he intends for us, is not a passing enthusiasm, euphoria, or giddiness;
not a kind of hail fellow, well met, slap on the back. Nor is it an act of
our will, as in, “I will put on a happy face.” Nor is it a denial of
difficulty or hardship in this present life. It is, rather, a deep and
abiding sense of well-being because of a deep and abiding trust in the
goodness of God; a deep and abiding experience of being loved by him and
being established in his presence. It faces the difficulties and hardships
of this life with composure and hope, knowing that those difficulties are
transitory, and that God is at work in them. It refuses to despair of the
mercy of God. It never ceases to give thanks. It looks for and perceives
God’s presence in the midst of trial and hardship.
This is a timely message and exhortation to us, my friends, as we recover
from Katrina and rebuild our homes, our lives, and the life of our
community. The emotional, psychological and spiritual battle that faces us
is not to give in, not to be overcome, by that destructive sadness which
cuts us off from the contemplation of God. We are called in this time, not
to despair of the mercy of God; not to despair of his goodness; not to
despair of his presence. We are called to trust that the Lord is near;
that he is working even now to re-create our lives and the life of our
community. We are called to give thanks for the mercies in our lives
everyday, to keep ourselves in that place of prayer and joy where he
abides. And this is not only for our sakes, but for the sake of others who
may be tempted to despair.
“May the God of peace…sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul
and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do this.” Beloved,
pray for me. I pray for you.
AMEN.
Return to Recent Sermons |