The third Sunday in Advent is Gaudete Sunday, or Rejoicing Sunday, and the lectionary scriptures all proclaim the joy of God’s work in the world. And yet, beloved church, I have to tell you, I was having a hard time accessing some joy to preach about.
It’s been a very rough year for all of us. For our church, our community and state, our nation, and the whole world. We’ve been mostly unable to worship together in person for nine long months, and friends, I miss you! I miss the joy of us being all together. Singing together. Hugs and handshakes. Faces and voices. Being in our beautiful meetinghouse. The sights, sounds, smells, and textures of our sacred life together.
In the United States, three hundred thousand people have died. Three. Hundred. Thousand. Fifteen thousand in Illinois alone, including my cousin Billy in March. And millions more have suffered mild to severe symptoms of a contagion that attacks the respiratory and circulatory systems, often leaving a legacy of permanent organ damage.
George Floyd’s blatant murder by police in Minneapolis sparked a summer of racial justice protests and challenges. Our national elections were conducted freely and fairly, and yet there has been a tremendous number of challenges to the outcome through the legal system, coupled with plenty of hateful and violent rhetoric.
Unemployment in our nation has been high throughout the year, and we are now hearing of an uptick in shoplifting of basic necessities like bread, pasta, and baby food from grocery stores by people too broke to feed their families and too desperate to know what else to do, and yet our elected officials turn a blind eye and a deaf ear.
I know a lot of you have faced serious challenges to life and health this year too. The last two weeks of October alone, I found out I’ve had a cyberstalker for the past three years, took a threatening phone call in the church office, and had to have my beloved 18.5-year-old kitty Simon put to sleep.
And here we are, on Gaudete Sunday, and I’m supposed to be preaching about joy when it feels more like time to preach on Psalm 13: How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
So yesterday morning, I took a look at my Facebook memories from December 12 in all the years I’ve had a Facebook account, and here was this quote from journalist and author Rebecca Solnit: “Joy is itself an insurrectionary force against the dreariness and dullness and isolation of everyday life.” The quote comes from the book Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. In it, Solnit looks at a series of efforts toward transformative change, from racial, gender, and LGBTQ justice to environmental protections and action on climate change, many of which looked like they had limited or even no success – and she lifts up the stories of how those efforts really did, in the long run, make a difference or create change.
A second quote bubbles up in my consciousness anytime I meditate on joy, and it is this: “Resistance is the secret of joy,” from Alice Walker’s novel Possessing the Secret of Joy.
On the surface, these two quotes seem somewhat removed from the sacred notion of joy, of the coming of the incarnate Christ as bringing joy – and yet they each speak to exactly what our scriptures are talking about.
Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians – his earliest letter still extant – was written to a relatively young church plant that had not received all the nurturing Paul had hoped to give because the Jewish religious leaders of Thessalonika had become increasingly annoyed by his efforts and essentially ran him out of town on a rail. So he sent them Timothy in his stead and wrote them this letter to encourage them in the good work that had begun in them. Chapter five is the last chapter, and our lesson for today is Paul’s closing thoughts to this church, almost a laundry list of things to keep in mind and keep working at. And this section starts with these words: “Rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”
Paul then goes on to instruct the Thessalonians to respect their prophets and preachers, pray for his missions elsewhere, and greet one another with a holy kiss. And he offers them blessings: 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.
Have any of you ever been part of congregations that still practiced the holy kiss? It was standard Brethren practice for decades. The book Pleasant Hill by Ethel Harshbarger Weddle, of which our church copy is circulating around, briefly mentions this practice as part of the gathering of the faithful but notes that it had pretty much died out by the time the book was written in the 1950s. Well, I am here to tell you that the practice had not entirely died out in Brethren circles by then, because when I first joined Olympic View Church of the Brethren in Seattle, Lois Thomsen greeted me every Sunday with a holy kiss. She was the only one there still doing it, but she kept that tradition alive until her passing.
Our psalm for today articulates a dream, a vision, of the time when the Lord restores the fortunes of Zion. And our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures comes from the second to last chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah when the exiled peoples are in the process of returning home from Babylon and beginning to rebuild their communities.
Isaiah’s vision is one of pure delight: “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But 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; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.”
The passage goes on to describe how parents will no longer have to bury their infants – an incredible word of encouragement to a people for whom as many as two-thirds of the babies born did not live to see their first birthday. The years of the old shall be long and all shall be able to live in abundance by the work of their hands. Even dangerous animals will cease their predations and live peaceably with the very animals who were once their prey. The passage closes with the promise that “They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.”
The context for the last ten chapters of the book of Isaiah is that Cyrus the Persian had liberated the Hebrew slaves in Babylon, and after fifty years of captivity, they were free to go home. People who had been born in Babylon and had only seen Jerusalem in their imaginations as their parents described it; elders who had been small children or teenagers when Jerusalem was captured. They returned home to see destruction – the beautiful Temple built by King Solomon razed to the ground, homes and neighborhoods damaged and destroyed, strangers living in their family dwellings.
So, Isaiah had his work cut out for him. The people were excited to be home but could easily fall into despair about how much things had changed, how much work there was to do. I imagine Isaiah, after putting down the words God had given him on the scroll, calling the people together and inviting them to close their eyes and imagine the restoration that God was promising to them. Giving them a dream, a vision, a taste of what all the work they would need to put into rebuilding was about, what they would be working toward.
Beloved church, we are so in need of just such a vision. Looking around at the state of our nation and world, it is easy to fall into despair. There is so much hatred and division, so much racism, misogyny, and homophobia that has been laid bare, in addition to many people who have not stopped at threatening or even committing violence against others simply for disagreeing with them about democratically-elected candidates for office. So many have died of Covid, so many will live with permanent scarring and disability, so many families have empty seats at the table, so many healthcare workers have worked daily in an unrelenting atmosphere of trauma and pain. So many retail workers and ordinary people on the street have been verbally or even physically attacked for daring to ask someone to wear a mask.
There is so much work to do. So much healing is needed. So much restoration and reconciliation. How do we even begin?
We begin just as Isaiah began, and as Jesus began. With a vision. What do we want our world to look like? Do we not want to live in a world where the hungry are fed, the homeless are housed, the lonely are befriended? Do we not want to live in a world where people are judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character? Do we not want to live in a world where women, LGBTQ persons, and people of color do not have to fear for our lives when we go out after dark or interact with the police? Do we not want to live in a world where women and children are safe in their homes, where our leaders govern justly and compassionately, where our environment is cared for and plants, animals, water, and land, are protected from degradation?
Close your eyes and imagine it. Imagine a Springfield where you can’t tell the difference between Black neighborhoods and white ones by looking at the quality and condition of the housing. Imagine an Illinois where the murder rate in Chicago isn’t a talking point regularly bruited by pundits and newscasters. Imagine a United States where women’s contributions are valued as highly as men’s, where the poverty rate has dwindled to zero, where every community takes pride in the ways it protects and cares for its ecosystems. Imagine a world where no child is without nourishing food, clean water, decent housing, and access to education and healthcare. Imagine all the money spent on military hardware going to feed, clothe, house, and educate all those in need. Imagine it.
And when you open your eyes again, don’t give in to the temptation to despair because the world you see is so different from the world we can imagine. Indian novelist Arundhati Roy has said, “Another world is not only possible; she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
How do we bridge the gap between what we see and our knowledge that another world is possible, that God’s shalom is what God most earnestly intends and desires for us and this world? I think part of it comes from a spiritual practice my friend Saunia calls “holy noticing.”
As I drive around Springfield these days, I notice some things. I notice some signs in people’s yards. A particular one is made of wood, painted white, not quite three feet across and not quite a foot high. It reads, in black letters, “Everything will be ok,” with a red heart. Springfield resident Dave Heinzel made 200 of these signs and gave them out for free to anyone who wanted to display them. I see other yard signs too, like the “Hearts for Healthcare Workers sign.” I see little free libraries and micropantries and people both using them and refilling them. Earlier this year, right here on my block, one neighbor put out a box of free items and another a table of free potted plants and cut flowers.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. And these Springfield neighbors have made an effort – small but important and necessary – to bring that world about.
At the Greater Springfield Interfaith Association Thanksgiving service, I saw nearly a hundred people come together to listen and share stories and words of encouragement from a variety of faith perspectives. We were challenged by a Native American speaker to remember that for Native communities, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning, of remembering all that has been lost to injustice and genocide. And then that same speaker shared a prayer of Thanksgiving from the Haudenosaunee tradition, followed by sharing from artists, poets, musicians, and brothers and sisters of Sikh, Jewish, Christian, and Hindu traditions. People from faith backgrounds that have historically been at sometimes murderous odds with one another came together in a spirit of appreciation, gratitude, hope, and love.
Another world is possible. And it is cause for rejoicing.
Paul’s words are important for us in another respect because we not only need to engage in holy noticing, we need to be about holy work, what people of the Jewish faith refer to as tikkun olam, the healing of the world. And as a church, there are many ways we do this. Holiday meals, food drives, hosting and volunteering with Compass for Kids, and much, much more. And Paul reminds those in the new church in Thessalonika that they, too, are to be about this kind of work – making connections with others, sharing with them the good news of the incarnate and resurrected Christ and God’s vision for radically inclusive community to be built through him. And that we can’t spend all our time doing this work without getting tired, discouraged, and burnt out. We need to keep praying. Keep gathering and greeting each other with signs of love. Stay grateful for both blessings and challenges. And rejoice, rejoice, rejoice evermore.
Sometimes all it takes for me to be joyful is to know that today, I did not let the powers of sin and death and hatred and greed rule me. Today, I was able to be kind to myself and others. Today, I was able to speak a word of truth to power. Today, I was able to contribute to the work of tikkun olam. Today I let the Holy Spirit work in and through me, and that is a joyful thing.
Resistance – resistance to the powers of evil and darkness – is a joyful thing. And joy itself is a form of insurrection in a world that seems to want everyone to be suspicious and hateful and selfish. I imagine my neighbor who put out the table of free flowers and plants peeking out her window from time to time and feeling joyful to see a few more gifts anonymously given and received. The State Journal-Register carried photos of Dave Heinzel delivering his signs with a big smile on his face. And those of us who’ve worked with Compass have seen and experienced the joy of connecting with children who are learning, growing, having fun and making friends.
When I served as a youth pastor in Seattle, my mentor Carol Mason would meet with me periodically, and she always closed our meetings by asking what she could specifically pray for me. I remember once telling her that I had a lot of challenges at the time but also a lot of blessings and joys, and could she pray that I stay focused on the joy.
Bobbi Dykema is currently serving as pastor at First Church of the Brethren in Springfield, Illinois. She is also on the pastoral team of the Living Stream online Church of the Brethren and serves on the steering committee of the Womaen’s Caucus. Bobbi is passionate about racial and gender justice, beauty and the arts, and reading scripture as a living document.
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