Searching For Advent Joy-- Reflection and Poem for 13 December, 2015

A Reflection for III Advent                                       All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC December 13, 2015                                                            Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Zephaniah 3:14-20    Canticle 9 (Isaiah 12:2-6)      Philippians 4:4-7        Luke 3:7-18

Searching for Advent Joy

This is the 3^rd Sunday of Advent and the theme of this week is joy; the deepest rejoicing when God is fully present. As Paul says in his letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say Rejoice.” 

The lessons for today have to do with different styles of presenting the “Good News”, and, quoting the old line, “Which do you want first, the “Good News” or the Bad News”? On the one hand, we have the John the Baptizer style that begins with the phrase “You brood of Vipers.” This is the direct thrusting, full-frontal assault on the sin of the listener to move them out of the comfortable rut they are in, move them from facile outward complacency, to where they might find deeper joy. This style is meant to drive the listeners to their knees as they become aware of the fact that they are wallowing in their sins and then, and only then, can they be receptive to hear the words of Grace that help them to rise up anew. It can be a hyper-masculine effective method to try to promote fear, guilt, and shame and is favored by different kinds of people, from Revivalists - usually outsiders who come into town and use highly emotional language to work on feelings - to the religious institution insiders and hierarchy who use highly rational arguments based on theology from people like St. Augustine and Calvin as a way of bringing guilty discomfort with the present way of thinking. Guilt does work, usually in the short term, and can have immediate temporary effects, so it is good for building religious institutions made of people who come together to get a dose of being lectured at in order to make it through the week. It is like going to an authority figure - like a football coach or teacher or drill sergeant - to be prompted to remember the basics. 

On the other side, we have the inclusive feminine St. Francis style of mystic and poet who use symbols to focus on the grace of God, hoping by example to create a longing for living a fuller life of joy. We usually see St. Francis statues in gardens and as bird feeders and not in office buildings because he is one of the most admired and least imitated saints of God. G.K. Chesterton once wrote that St. Francis “was not a mere eccentric because he was always turning towards the center and heart of the maze; he took the queerest and most zigzag shortcuts through the wood, but he was always going home." These are the “Clowns of God” who are not good for building Institutions that push creeds, but they have a gift of joy.

I think of two books which have titles relating to “Clowns of God”. One is a children’s book by Tomie de Paulo based on an old medieval French legend about a juggler who had no gift for the Christ child except his gift of juggling. There is a line from a character in that old Morris West novel I read decades ago before I went to Seminary:

“Once you accept the existence of God - however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him - then you are caught forever with his presence at the center of all things. You are caught with the fact that human beings are creatures who walk in two worlds and trace upon the walls of their caves the wonders and the nightmare experiences of their spiritual pilgrimage.”

From time to time I vacillate between the three options of pushing emotional shame, of stirring up rational guilt, or of projecting a vision of what joy looks like. The choice of which preference de jour I invoke depends on the mood I am in when I start writing the sermon. If the lessons stir up shame in me, you will be facing a drill sergeant; if guilt, you will face a teacher; and if joy, you will hear a storyteller juggling symbols of joy. Our common faith dwells in the tension of proclamations of the Good News of joy, and Jesus is the dynamic tension between them that we are looking for in this Advent

Listen to two other poets from our lessons for today, the first from the Prophet/poet Zephaniah who sings:

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;

shout, O Israel!

Rejoice and exult with all your heart,

O daughter Jerusalem! . . .

The LORD, your God, is in your midst,   . .

rejoice(ing) over you with gladness,

The second is from the Poet/Prophet Isaiah:

Cry aloud, inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy, *

for the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel.

When I think of that kind of joy, I think of the last line of the book Anne of Green Gables where, before she goes to sleep, Anne whispers “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world”. That line comes from poet Robert Browning in Pippa’s Song:

THE year's at the spring,

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;

The lark’s on the wing;

The snail’s on the thorn;

God’s in His heaven ----

All’s right with the world.

Pippa’s Song is part of a long dramatic poem, Pippa Passes. In this drama, a young silk winder, Pippa, whose life is far from beautiful, on her only day off from work, New Year’s Day, decides to sing her song throughout the town to bring joy. But in the four places she passes by, the people who hear her sing are infuriated because her joy reminds them of the insufficiency of the comfortable rut they are in, wanting to tune God out because it means risking all for something better and therefore the “Good News” becomes “Bad News”. At night when Pippa returns to her bed she prays:

This morning's hymn half promised when I rose!

True in some sense or other, I suppose,

Though I passed by them all, and felt no sign.

(As she lies down.)

God bless me ! I can pray no more to-night.

No doubt, some way or other, hymns say right.

All service is the same with God

With God, whose puppets, best and worst,

Are we : there is no last nor first.

Today, what is the song that you hear to help you find joy?

Searching for Advent Joy (Poem)

Shuddering about the days wilting;

what I had done and continue to do

before and later. All these past due

memories, cloud over with guilting

self-centered actions bringing shame

excused because of “felt good” time.

But all defenses are covers for grime

settling for good not joy. Can’t claim

days to live again; yet thanks be given

for baptizing regrets by water-winging

clowns of God who live of joy singing

of earth’s deep shores being of Heaven

Help me to fully join that troop absurd

as we live into following flesh of Word.