Rejoice Always!
I don’t think I’ll be giving up any deep trade secrets by telling you this, but lots of times we preachers give titles to sermons that we have not yet written. Bulletin and e-mail deadlines force the issue, and sometimes a title is as close to an idea as we have at the moment. That happened this week, and, for better or for worse, the sermon that actually emerged under the title “Rejoice Always!” might have more accurately been called “Hope Always!”
But as you listen now to the final text that the lectionary places before us on this third Sunday of Advent, you’ll hear just how it was that I began with rejoicing. I trust that in a few more minutes you will see how I turned to hope. Listen now to this morning’s fourth reading, and open yourselves to a word from God in
4Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. 2I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. 3Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life. 4Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen … keep on keeping on … and the God of peace will be with you.
What a remarkable word for a season of rushing ‘round like the proverbial one-armed paper hanger. Though the stress of the season press in upon you, though the check-out lines get long and testy, though traffic be snarled, though the illness of loved ones surround you in worry, though the tensions of work press in upon you, though the frustrations of family life entwine you, though the fear and terror of our time haunt your days with distrust and your sleep with nightmares, “do not worry about anything; rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!”
Wow! Of course, it would be easy to reduce this to the level of Disney: hakuna matada – don’t worry, be happy. After all, Paul was a saint, for crying out loud. He could afford to rejoice – right?
Well, perhaps not so much. Consider the occasion of this letter. Paul is in prison, awaiting trial. The threat of execution hangs over his head. The young movement of “people of the way” is struggling with birth pangs that include missionaries whom Paul calls, in this same letter, “dogs,” “evil workers” and “enemies of the cross of Christ.” Both his life and his life’s work are hanging by a thread.
And yet, Paul says again and again in this letter, “rejoice! Rejoice!”
Paul got some things wrong in his letters – surely the patriarchal tone of his writing was bound by time and culture and is rightly set aside as a relic of first-century Middle Eastern thought. But the heart of the matter he got precisely – and the heart of the matter is a matter of great hopefulness.
Indeed, Paul used the word “hope” dozens of times in his letters, and gave us such memorably phrases as:
v Endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
v Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.
v There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling,
v And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
That last one, from the great hymn to love in the Corinthian correspondence, elevates love to the greatest good, and in so doing indicates precisely the kind of hope that Paul speaks of so often. It is an advent hope. It is the hope grounded in a deep trust of what has been given already and in a profound anticipation of what is yet to be revealed from the loving heart of God that beats at the center of all that is.
Indeed, witnessing to this hope is our highest calling as people of the way of Christ. While we are surely to be realistically discerning in our assessment of the present time, we are always to be a people of hope. This means that critical thought and inquiry are always appropriate, but that cynicism is not a faithful response to the world.
I know this is a sometimes difficult word for those of us enamored of Seinfeld, who get our news from The Daily Show and who believe that Stephen Colbert really is God’s gift to the earth – as one web site put it. I think it was Stephen Colbert’s web site.[1] It’s hip to be detached and ironic, and to wax cynical and amusing. I know – because I certainly pretend to be hip!
Be detached, ironic cynicism is an unfaithful response to a world that desperately needs not detachment but greater ties of human affection, that needs not irony but purpose and, that needs not hipness so much as hope. Well, there will always be a place for hipness! The world does still need hipness!
I probably cannot convince you that Paul is or was hip, but how about Zephaniah or Isaiah or John the Baptist in his fashionable camel’s hair cloak? Each of them proclaimed a message of hope, a promise that, in Zephaniah’s words, God “will save the lame and gather the outcast, and change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.” Or, as Isaiah promised, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Or, as John the Baptist proclaimed, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
These are words of hope, and, as John understood, such a promise compels a response. Such a promise invites us to live into hope. This hope is the promise of Advent.
This season of hope does not simply wash over us and reassure us that, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, all will be well. Rather, this season of hope – these prophetic promises filled with hope and expectation – call forth in us a hope-filled way of living day to day in spite of the evidence.
This is Advent hope and faith: that we trust in spite of the evidence and, through our very living full of hope and faith we witness the evidence change. To paraphrase my friend Jim Wallis, down at Sojourners, “Faith is believing in spite of the evidence and witnessing the evidence change.”
That’s what these Advent stories are all about: a profound and active hope that trusts God’s providence in the world and acts in response to it to witness the changing evidence. Mary and Joseph and their families lived under an oppressive imperial rule, and yet found the faith to trust the angelic promise in spite of the evidence, and then they witnessed the evidence change in their very midst. Old Zechariah was stunned into silence as he watched the evidence change. His unexpected son, John, lived out beyond the margins, in the wilderness, getting by on locusts and honey, and yet found the faith to trust prophetic words, and then witnessed the evidence change in his very midst.
Paul, bound and in jail, found the faith to trust the message he had been given and witnessed the evidence change.
Witness, in every one of these cases, amounts to much more than passive watching. This is not couch potato faith by remote control. Witness means to speak out, to move and act and live into the deepest hope of our faith. We are doing this together here at Clarendon.
And, sisters and brothers, the evidence is changing in our very midst this season; so much so that I find myself this morning able to echo Paul’s words – meaning, of course, that in spite of himself, old Paul must have been hip!
“Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love … my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen, and the God of peace will be with you.” Amen.
[1] Actually, those exact words were found at http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=55303429.
posted by David Ensign at
7:11 AM
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