3 Advent (a)
December 15, 2013
Is.35:1-10
Ps. 146: 4-9
James 5:7-10
Matt. 11:2-11
Last
year on Gaudete Sunday, we were in
the immediate aftermath of the terrible shootings which occurred at the
elementary school in Newtown Connecticut.
And we had to remind ourselves about the creative purpose of the command
to “Rejoice!”
The Third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete Sunday or Rose Sunday and in our
liturgy we are commanded to Rejoice! "But
preacher, I do not feel like rejoicing.
Go away!"
But I am the preacher and it is Rejoice
Sunday, so we’re going to rejoice whether we want to or not. It is like a frustrated unrequited parent who
says, “Children you will do this and you will have fun!”
We need the command to rejoice in our lives
not as a denial of what we are experiencing in terms of pain, hardship or
suffering, but we need the authority of what joy and hope can create for any
situation in our lives.
Modern skeptics from Marx to Dawkins can
criticize biblical faith for promoting unreality even as in our post-modern
world, modern science has given us the ability to distract ourselves from the
hardships of reality in countless number of ways. The modern world has given us endless modes
of distracting entertainment.
When the people of Israel were in exile and
in suffering, they could not go into their homes and watch the Jerusalem soccer
team play on their cable TV. They could
not get at least some temporary distraction from their pain by watching a
Jewish male hysteric comedian like Jerry Seinfeld make fun of his daily cosmic
Angst. What the ancient suffering people
had were prophets who were the forerunners of Walt Disney. The prophets spun in their literature an
artistic entertainment of another kind of reality. They told their people to rejoice because
some day they would go home to their perfect home; it would be a magic kingdom
all centered around Mount Zion. I am
offended by people who in our lives can have endless modes of entertainment and
distractions from the suffering of our lives which exist on a continuum from
the horrors of war, children with cancer, poverty, to mental depression, to
ennui, or a boredom in the ability to experience an engaging pleasure and not allow people of the Bible to have their corresponding ways of dealing with suffering. We today also have the medical results of
modern science in providing us with a pharmacopoeia to block all sorts of
pain. We of all people should be sensitive and attentive to the fact the biblical people existed mainly in times
of suffering and deprivation. Since we
are so specialized, we often can only see the Bible as a Holy Book of holy
things. We fail to understand the
entertainment and the distraction function of some of the discourses of
faith. "Utopia? It isn’t going to happen and it can’t
happen. So you people of faith are
people living on illusion. Okay, let pop
another Disney movie in the DVD to entertain the children and let’s plan the
trip to Disneyland for Spring Break." Do
you see how inconsistent we can be in allowing all sorts of entertainment to be
parallel with loss and pain in our lives, but somehow we won’t let the prophets
bolster the morale of their people with images which promote the primacy of
goodness and health over the deprivations of evil and illness?
Religious people have often taken the bait
and fallen into the trap of defending the biblical writings in the wrong
way. Utopia, has not happen you
say? Well, not yet, but it will happen
in the future? Monkeys don’t fly? Are you sure?
They might in the future and so you need to keep an open mind? Defenders of the Bible have often defended
utopian visions and apocalyptic endings as a literal future and when the utopia
does not happen and when the world does not end, they always have the future to
defer to well. It has not happened yet
but it still could.
The time before life and the time after life
is special time. It is a functional time
for us now even though we have no way to prove these "before life times" and "after life times." They function as
habits of the human mind because we cannot avoid asking and dealing with
questions of origins and afterlife.
In this life we know that there can be a
seemingly random or uneven distribution of fortune and misfortune which happen
to people as individuals, families and as nations. Part of the art of living is adjusting our
human response to live with the very best response to the particular conditions
which face us at any time life.
And when loss and evil and misfortune are
upon us sometimes the equivalent of gallows humor is the creative
response. If we’re going to go down then
we are not going to let our spirits be crushed.
We will not be defeated, we will not give in, we will go down
rejoicing. Some of the most poignant
humor is known at a memorial service when the memory of a character who has
passed on just makes one break down in laughter even while the tears of loss have
not yet dried.
Can we admit with the people of biblical
faith that we are very complex emotional multi- tasking sorts of people who
cannot be limited by misinterpreting things through a false literalism which is
not honest to human emotional complexity?
We may not relate to the specifics of the entertainment or
comfort function of Isaiah's utopia or promise of a better life. We may not relate to the belief in an
imminent ending of the world like the writer of the letter of James did when he
said the “Day of the Lord” is at hand.
When suffering is so intense and widespread, then you want the end of it to happen
so much that you have to believe that it will happen soon. This is a true fact of human nature, even if
you understand that not everyone in the world is suffering in the same way at
the same time.
The biblical literature of utopian and
apocalyptic end respond to our child aspect of personality in that we want
pleasure and relief now, not five minutes from now and not next year. This primary naiveté which we have is a
natural response to the greatest warning sign in life, namely, pain. Pain declares the necessity of a response to
end it. The manifold mobilization
against the causes of pain includes a whole range of whatever can come to
language. And we have a whole range of
biblical literature to deal with the reality of human pain, even as we continue
to build our arsenal of human responses to pain. And one response is to rouse the human
capacity of hope with the command to “Rejoice.”
Help is on the way. There will be
another day. Let us hold on together for
another day. Let us assert the primacy
of goodness and health over the deprivation of evil and illness.
The Gospel provides us with an event in the
Passion of John the Baptist. Before his
death, John was put in prison. In the
Gospel of Matthew, both John the Baptist and Jesus are presented as people who
expressed doubt in the moments of their suffering. Jesus on the cross, is quoted by the Matthean
writer as using the famous cry of Psalm 22, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” And John the Baptist from prison is not seen
to be the confident confronting prophet; he has doubts about his ministry and about
Jesus. John sent his messenger to Jesus
from prison. Perhaps John wanted Jesus
to be the conquering King Messiah. “Jesus,
are you the great one who is going to intervene and end all of this? Are you going to rescue me from prison? Have I preached in vain? What’s happening Jesus, when are you going to
bring in the heavy artillery?”
Jesus said, “Go tell John that the blind see,
the deaf hear, the lame walk.” I am one
who promotes health and healing and life in a world where death seems to win out.
And what is the Gospel for us? The Gospel for us is to rejoice because we
need to be on the side of health and healing.
Illness and death get their definition and reality from health and life
and not the reverse. The Gospel for us
is to rejoice because we are here to proclaim the primacy of health and
life. There are some who live as though
evil, greed, and illness are the main facts of human nature and so the quest is
to be the best at evil and greed and promoting the dis-ease of others for one’s
own benefit.
We as stewards of the Gospel need to remain
faithful to the morale booster of “Rejoice!”
Rejoice, because no matter what happens, goodness, love, health and
justice are the norm. And so today, let
us never forget to rejoice. Amen.
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