Today, we
light a rose colored candle. In the
middle of our advent wreath resplendent in purple, we have a single rose
candle. Its roots date back to ancient
customs of the Church taking a break from the penitential Lenten season with a
joyful Sunday break, when the Pope would give a pink rose to a citizen halfway through
Lent. Advent, fashioned after the
season of Lent, also has a break in the royal and penitential purple color,
and apocalyptic prophetic and dire
readings. Today is that break. Today is known as Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is the Latin word for Rejoice, a word
that is sprinkled all over our readings today.
This has
been a hard week. By hard week, I mean
contentious, tiring, startling, horrific.
Friday’s massacre in Connecticut leave many with horrible doubt, fear
and sorrow. Newtown, is a small town of
about 27,000, about the same size as Grant’s Pass. Newtown is listed in the top 100 safest
cities in the US, and yet Friday, dozens of people were senselessly
killed. In our own beautiful corner of
the country, in our own backyard, this past week we experienced a shooting at a
mall in Portland. Add to that personal
drama that seems to escalate during December, and this has been a hard week.
So what
about these events? Where do they fit,
given what we hear on Sunday?
I can’t
make sense of, or explain why evil and suffering persist. I will offer a few practical suggestions about
grief and suffering.
You know that moment when you’re trying to
console a friend who’s been through something horrible, and through their
tears, they suggest you don’t know what it’s like, because you’ve never been
through what they’ve been through? That
is so true. We hurt because they
hurt, but we don’t really know their pain, personally know it.
Unless you
have a shared experience, you can feel bad for someone, or sympathize,
but it’s difficult to really feel the same things, to feel bad with
someone or to empathize.
As gut
wrenching as grief is, as Christians, we
are not alone. Our whole faith is
symbolized by the cross, an instrument of senseless, humiliating, tortuous
death. With Christ’s death, God has been
through the same human suffering. God
didn’t avoid that part of this life. But
rather, through Christ, shares it with us.
Be horrified. Be sad. And know that through Christ’s suffering, God
knows that human raw grief. We
who sit with grief are not alone.
But sitting
with grief is not the same as steeping yourself in it. Our bodies respond to stress with an
involuntary natural physiological reaction.
The more repeated exposure to
those stressors, the more practiced our body becomes at that fight or flight
response. Eventually, our bodies are so
trained to that physiological unconscious response due to that repeated stress,
that we become hypersensitive. Smaller and smaller things can us off. Pretty soon,
we are constantly in that
state. It happens to combat veterans,
and it can happen to us, if we voluntarily bombard ourselves with stressful
images and stories. Try not to steep
yourself in those stressful images. It
truly is not good for body, and cannot be good for your soul.
I believe today’s
readings and focus on rejoicing do tell us something about grief, evil and
stress. The readings today are full of
beautiful rich images of joy and rejoicing.
And they provide a road map of how to experience that joy. As humans, if we go the other way, the way
not spelled out today, that’s when fear, anger, and evil can occupy the space
otherwise reserved by God for the joy and love and happiness.
The readings tell us to
Rejoice in the Lord, again I say rejoice.
Ring out your joy.
Rejoice and exult with all your heart.
These joy-full sentiments are the destination, and the readings
give us the road map on how to get there.
First, we need to trust in the Lord. As the
psalmist says, I will trust in the Lord and not be afraid. We need to trust. Whether it’s a situation in the nation, our
state, your work or your head, imagine for a moment that God really does
have it in control. That God will be
with you through it. That it’s not your
problem to control or connive or direct or save. You don’t get to take yourself out of this
scene, but rather realize that you’re not the director of the show. So for a moment right now, trust in the
Lord. Trust that God is in charge. God, not you, will script this. Christ, not
you, is the savior. Trust that you’ll
get through, however things turn out, but trust that God is with you.
When we can trust in the Lord, then we can truly experience
the peace of God, or “the peace of God which surpasses all understanding,
another great snipit from today’s readings.
We can experience a deep seated, incomprehensible and illogical peace with
the world. Not because you’re happy.
But because from that place of trust, you are at peace. I have experienced that peace once in my
life, and I know it was a peace from God, and it came after I stopped
pretending to be in charge.
From that place of peace that passes human understanding, we
can get to the place where we fear
disaster no more and where we stop worrying, more wisdom from today’s
readings. Being in a state of worrying
is opposite to being at peace, so when you’re truly at peace, you don’t
worry. Because if you are worrying,
you’re not at peace. Getting to the
“don’t worry about anything” isn’t so much another mile marker on this journey, but it’s more
like a landmark when you’ve arrived at the “peace which passes all understanding”.
Only after we trust and experience that peace, then can we
rejoice in the Lord. Please do not
misunderstand. This is not happiness,
like the old Bobby McFerrin song, “Don’t worry, be happy”. This isn’t a feeling you put on, or
something else to do, to achieve or attain.
Rather, the joy comes from a deep letting go, starting with that trust
in the lord. And while experiencing the
joy, then you can let your gentleness be
known to everyone, another great phrase from today’s readings. I’ve known people like that. People who have
deep seated joy, and are serenely gentle.
Just like our bodies learn to respond to too much stress, we
can practice getting to Rejoicing. Maybe
only little day trips to begin with.
Trust in the lord. Experience the
peace. Rejoice. Pretty soon, the trusting can get easier and
it’s easier to get to Rejoicing. If we’re
lucky, we’re able string together more and more, and longer and longer episodes
of trust, peace and rejoice, spending
less and less time in that other dark place.
That’s other dark place is where people are when evil
surfaces through them.
Where we strive for trusting in the lord, some trust in
themselves or their paycheck, or their drugs, or even family members. They place their trust in any number of
things that in the end may not prove trustworthy. When their misplaced trust is broken, it’s
crushing.
Where we obtain peace stemming from that trust, others
experience worry and anxiety.
If we follow the trust and peace route, we arrive at
rejoicing. When we follow doubt and
worry, we arrive at despair, and anger.
It’s when people don’t trust in an all-loving, absolutely
trustworthy God, when they don’t experience the liberating peace and don’t find
joy in the Lord, that’s when there are holes in the soul where darkness
enters.
It has happened this week in big, awful events. It happens all the time in littler ways in
my life.
Next week, we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate God’s
entrance into our lives again in human form.
Today, on Gaudete Sunday, that falls after a really hard week, grieve.
Realize you’re not alone in your grief.
More importantly, trust in God, experience the peace, the peace that
passes all understanding. And rejoice in
the Lord. Again I say rejoice.
Amen
