A Reflection for III Advent All Saints’ Episcopal, Southern Shores,
N.C. December 14, 2014 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Tell
Them Groucho Sent You
On this third Sunday of Advent, we lit the third candle, the Pink Candle, and
the day is sometimes called “Gaudete
Sunday” from the ancient Introit to the Latin Mass for the Third Sunday of
Advent quoting from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, “Gaudete in Domino semper” – “Rejoice in the Lord always”. Rejoicing
is a theme that Paul will use many times. We think that Paul’s letters to the
church in Thessalonica are the earliest letters we have, and in today’s Epistle
reading from Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he tells them “Rejoice
always”. The Hebrew Testament lesson
from Isaiah recounts a song in which one of the students in the school of that
Prophet sings, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult
in my God.” In place of the Psalm for today, we hear Mary sing the Magnificat:
“My spirit rejoices in God my savior.” In the Gospel lesson from John, John the
Baptizer is joyfully proclaiming the coming of the Lord.
Anybody
notice a theme that seems to run through these lessons? I keep getting hit with
the idea of joy.
It is easy to be joyful when everything is going my way, but can I be joyful
when things are not going swimmingly? I think joy is a choice.
I
came across a quote from one of my favorite Old Testament Prophets, Groucho
Marx “I, not events, have the power to make
me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead,
tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be
happy in it.”
Let’s look
again at these lessons. In the passage of Isaiah, the exiles have come back from
Babylon and the city of Jerusalem is a mess. The city walls had been torn down
and wild animals roam the ruins. The Temple is destroyed, the farm lands in bad
repair, the houses looted, and some of the returnees are going back to the old
ways of exploiting the poor. Yet the song tells them to be joyful as they begin
again from scratch, for God is with them and they are working on something
greater than themselves.
Mary in
her song has just found out that she is now unmarried and pregnant, and yet she
sings of her joy because God is with her and she is part of something greater
than herself.
Paul
writes to the Thessalonians and later to the Philippians, and both of these
churches are having different kinds of problems, but the Spirit of the Risen
Christ is with them as they are part of something much larger than themselves,
and they choose joy.
In the
Gospel lesson, John the Baptizer is out in the wilderness, not to build his own
ego or to build a following for himself, but to die to himself and live to proclaim
someone greater than himself. John chooses joy.
When I was
growing up, Groucho had a radio show and then a television show called “You Bet
Your Life.” It was a game show but “game” in name only; it was an excuse for
ad-libs and interchange between Groucho and his guests. The guests would be
asked questions and they might get some money or lose their winnings depending
on their answers. Sometimes the losers would be asked a make-up question like,
“For $50.00 - who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?”
Not everybody got that answer.
 |
| A 1961 Desoto |
The
sponsor of the show was the Desoto auto company and Groucho would always end
the show by urging people to go to the Desoto dealer and “Tell them Groucho
sent you!” In 1961 Groucho’s show went off the air and in that same year Chrysler
stopped making Desoto. So seven years later when I bought my first car, I never
got a chance to say “Groucho sent me!”
“You Bet
Your Life” is another theme of these lessons we have for today. Betting Your
Life is not like putting a couple bucks down on the lottery. The returning
exiles are betting their lives; they could have stayed in Babylon and been safe
- but miserable - so they chose a life of meaning instead of safety. Mary could
have said no and ended up in a life of quiet desperation. She chose to be
joyful and bet her life and heart. The churches in Thessalonica and Philippi
could have passed on risking their lives in persecution and social ostracism by
not entering into fellowship around Christ as their center. However, they chose
to live into the Lord’s Prayer of working God’s will being done on earth as it
is in heaven. They chose to be joyful and they bet their lives. John the Baptizer literally bet his life, putting
it on the line, giving up the life in his religious family’s comfortable
existence; he gave up his own future. It
was a frustrating ministry, and he paid by having a mid-eastern power-mad ruler
take off his head, but John lived a life filled with joy. For John and the
others, death was not the worst thing to happen for they learned how to die to
themselves daily as their way of living in the joy of God.
Richard
Rohr in one of last week’s meditations wrote: “Death is not a
changing of worlds as most imagine, as much as the walls of this world
infinitely expanding. If you get love here, you have found the eternal
home base, and you will easily and naturally live forever. Life is never about
being correct, but only and always about being connected. Just stay
connected! At all costs stay connected.”
Advent is a preparation for Christmas, and it is not
about the presents we receive but about being present to the joy that is in
every breath of God’s spirit in us. Choosing to be joyful is betting our lives;
to die to our own egos so that we might live fully in this world and the next.
“Tell them Groucho sent you!”
Tell
’em Groucho sent you (poem)
Groucho said, “You Bet your life!”
Mary bet life, heart and hearth
each day on line, she’s her life
every moment in God’s breath.
John bet life, heart and hearth
his ego dies as if to live fully
each moment in God’s breath
to something larger than he.
Oh, die my ego, living to fully
and changing world by rejoicing
with something larger than me;
not getting but present being.
Changing world by rejoicing
on the line each day is my life,
being present to God joining,
Groucho say, “You bet your life!”
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