Zephaniah 3:14-20, Philippians 4:4-7, Luke
10:38-42
"Lighten Up! Don’t Just Do Something, Stand
There!"
Advent is, literally, the "arrival" of the Christ, the
Messiah, the Anointed and the Promised One of God. Four Sundays remember
four different forms of arrival – first, the promise itself, announced
by the prophets of Israel; second, the Jesus of history, born of Mary,
crucified; third, the Christ of faith, risen, born again in the hearts
of believers; and fourth, the end of the world as we know it! "The
Lord" is always, at once, both still "to come" and yet so
"close at hand!"
This third Sunday is called "Gaudete," meaning,
"Rejoice," for the waiting is half-over. Purple gives way,
momentarily, to rose-color. The joy of expectation is exulted in
Alleluias! Truly, we "lighten up!" We accept, once and for
all, the promise, the passion, the presence, the power of God are as
gifts we can "do nothing" to earn or deserve but can only
"stand there" to receive with utter amazement and
thanksgiving. It is the Sunday of Psalm 46: "Be still, and know
that I am God. I am exalted among the nations. I am exalted in the
earth!"
Therefore, exhorts Sr. Joan Chittister, "Life is more than a
trial and a test. It is also the awareness that God’s presence is
always pure gift in strange places!" Here we may think about babies
of poor, young, single, Semitic women, born in the depths of dark nights
and the winters of faraway places, into harsh worlds of oppression and
of occupation, yet greeted by shepherds and workers, and dreamers,
everywhere as the heralding of the heavens themselves, proclaiming the
birth of the promise: Peace on earth, good will to all!
This does not mean for a moment we forget or neglect, evade or avoid,
the pain and suffering of this world, of this time, even of our own
lives, our own times and places, our own heads and hearts. With Barbara
Gerlach, we are "skeptical of those whose joy seems forced, happy
no matter what befalls them. But there is another joy – deeper than
the good times and bad times life metes out, stronger than our best
attempts and sorest failings – a joy that lifts us when we cannot lift
ourselves, a peace that grasps us and returns us renewed."
Remember, Paul writes from prison the words of joy and peace we just
read together. "Rejoice in the Lord," Gerlach hears Paul
proclaim, "for our deepest joy lies not in our circumstances, but
in God!" Ours is a joy, a peace, as Jesus says even in death, such
as the world cannot give us, and therefore the world cannot, at last,
take from us. In that sense the world is more to be pitied than scorned.
"To know the joy that comes from God," Gerlach goes on to say,
"is not to be carried away in blissful happiness, but to be
strengthened and deepened in our love for the world." Strengthened
and deepened in love for the world, love for the earth, love for each
person, love for all peoples, love for all life, love for all living.
If we read the whole short book of the prophet Zephaniah, one of the
last of prophets until John the Baptist, we can almost see God through
the drama of our ambivalence toward this world. Zephaniah begins as if
God were going to destroy the earth as in days of Noah. Whenever we
discern such distress in ourselves, we are bound to project onto God the
coming of a brutal end to all things. We know ourselves, as persons, as
peoples, as nations, as species, to be so royally punishable! And of
course, we intend to take all our "enemies" with us. Does
Christmas, with such profound innocence, not beg the question, Is it
ever possible for us to live without demonizing and dehumanizing other
human beings? Must there always be "enemies" to blame for our
violence and war?
According to Zephaniah, God’s fury focuses most upon the
self-serving failures of Jerusalem’s own politicians, prophets, and
priests! Faith in God, hope for the world, more likely are to be found
among "non-believers" than among those who use "God"
so lightly to sanctify their own privileges and prejudices. God is about
to end all boastful arrogance and all unjustified pride. That will leave
only the poor and the meek, those without any refuge or recourse other
than God!
Christmas is time for our imagining to whom such news of God’s
doing, not ours, will truly be "good news" today. Who among
us, human and every being, throughout our world, our earth, really need
most in this time to hear and to see fulfilled promises, -- of justice,
mercy, comfort, joy, peace and good will toward all? God here identifies
God’s own self, God’s own future, with the remnant of those who are
"poor," not only in economic condition, but also in spiritual
attitude, those who know God is all things to them, to us, that we
cannot possibly earn or deserve the gifts of life, of living, God
creates and provides anew everyday.
According to the radical vision of Zephaniah, to be "poor"
is not to fail in life but to find the very condition needed for us to
hear and see God! From now on the "poor of the Lord" are all
of the "little ones," all of the children of Israel, who know
our future, our hope, our justice, our joy, lie in and with the arrival
of our God in the midst of our everyday lives and everyday living.
Suddenly God, in the vision of Zephaniah, is like a young lover again!
Rejoicing all over God’s people! Exulting with loud singing! Removing
disaster, saving our lame, gathering our outcasts, removing our shame.
God is joyfully "bringing us home" for Christmas!
A few of us stood out in cold but short vigil in the park across the
street by the Christmas tree Wednesday night, on the 55th anniversary of
the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (www.un.org/Overview/rights.html),
which begins a text as crucial to a full Advent as the prophets and Mary’s
Magnificat: "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the
equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the
foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world." I
remembered how my first real arrest for civil disobedience came while
singing Christmas carols in the courtyard of the Water Tower Place
shopping complex on the Gold Coast in downtown Chicago, in behalf of
oppressed and occupied peoples in Central America.
The carols speak for themselves – "Come, thou long-expected
Jesus, born to set thy people free; from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee." "O come, O come, Emmanuel, and
ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of
God appear." "It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious
song of old, from angels bending near the earth, to touch their harps of
gold: ‘Peace on the earth, good will to all, from heaven’s
all-gracious king."
"Hark! The herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the new-born King;
peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!’"
"He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations
prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love."
Just last night I saw a billboard for a huge "Gun Show" at the
convention center the weekend before Christmas. I thought of standing
out in front with a sign reading "Guns plus Christmas equals
question mark."
I got to thinking, out of my love for the Jubilee as that image of
God’s forgiveness of both sins and debts, which Jesus comes to embody
and fulfill, how basic is the right to renew our place in community,
when we have been disinherited, disenfranchised, impoverished,
imprisoned, -- however it is we have cut off ourselves, or have been cut
off from right relationship with one another. It is so crucial to get a
fresh start, a new beginning, literally, a new lease on our lives! I am
so grateful for the ways this congregation already offers restoration to
community for those coming out of imprisonment and out of homelessness.
Christmas reminds us how much we all need somewhere to belong.
Jesus so commends in this gospel story Mary’s bold break with
tradition limiting women to "women’s work." Advent is time
for her kind of watching and waiting, looking and listening for signs of
fulfillment of God’s promises breaking in on our lives and our life
together. There is such a power to Mary’s receptiveness here, her
readiness to open herself to that peace not only beyond our achieving,
but even beyond our understanding. We can only accept it as being done
for us.
Gabriel Moran calls this the "paradox of power." For power
is not only the "active coercion" we associate with use of
force, but also the "passive receptiveness" we may associate
with nonviolence, with nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience.
The root word for power as potentia is also the root for
possible, for potential, and for passive. Power, at Christmas, at least,
lies in the mere possibility of that which is yet to be realized, that
which may never have been tried before. Moran says such quiet openness,
such passive receptiveness as we may find in Advent signs and stories
reveal a strength, not a weakness, in us.
We strongly influence our surroundings by our ideas and our words. As
Mary demonstrates here, "Human power resides in listening and
responding. Between humans, force [violence] is a sign that human power
has failed." Every war is doomed to failure. We must learn to act
even more acutely, more imaginatively, less predictably, less
symmetrically, through the element of surprise, the completely
unexpected ways in which Advent shows the expected arrives.
"Passive resistance" is not "doing nothing,"
argues Moran, but is the most "intensely human action!" The
action that most fully and freely reflects the passive, patient,
creative, courageous, devoted, determined nature of our species: We are
not bound, believe it or not, by reflexive return of violence for
violence. We really can do something new, something different! The whole
world is watching, is waiting, is wanting to know: Is this, at last, the
time of glad tidings of a great joy? Of peace on earth and good will
toward all?
"A country that equates power and military power is on the way
to self-destruction," Moran concludes. "The alternative is to
use the human power of mutual pacts that provide as much security as
human beings are likely to find in this world." Agreements,
covenants, promises, treaties, words – that’s who we are! We are
word-makers, word-givers, word-breakers, yes, but also word-keepers. And
Jesus is, for us, the ultimate promise made flesh, given life!
Our Advent devotional booklets names tomorrow as celebration of the
Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (www.sancta.org/intro.html),
the meeting of Mary with the indigenous peasant Juan Diego, and the
birth of the Mexican people as a people. For God, at last, comes to them
in dark skin, with Indian features, speaking their language, adorned in
signs of their native religion and culture, and not with swords to
exercise power over them, but with roses to enjoy power with them. A day
later this week begin the nine nights of "Las Posadas" (www.olvera-street.com/las_posadas.html),
of looking for room in the inns, in the hearts and the homes of this
world, looking, in the best sense, for a passive receptiveness.
Sojourner Truth, freed from slavery, in the early years of the women’s
rights
