The Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete Sunday), year C
December
16, 2012
St.
Mary’s House, Greensboro
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Canticle 9 [from Isaiah 12:2-6]
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18
In the name of God
Who creates us,
Who saves us, and
Who remains with us
always,
Amen.
Charlotte Bacon, 6 years
old
Daniel Barden, 7 years old
Rachel Davino, 29 years old
Daniel Barden, 7 years old
Rachel Davino, 29 years old
Olivia Engel, 6 years old
Josephine Gay, 7 years old
Ana Marquez-Greene, 6 years old
Dylan Hockley, 6 years old
Dawn Hocksprung, 47 years old
Madeline Hsu, 6 years old
Catherine Hubbard, 6 years old
Chase Kowalski, 7 years old
Jesse Lewis, 6 years old
James Mattioli, 6 years old
Grace McDonnell, 7 years old
Anne Marie Murphy, 52 years old
Emilie Parker, 6 years old
Josephine Gay, 7 years old
Ana Marquez-Greene, 6 years old
Dylan Hockley, 6 years old
Dawn Hocksprung, 47 years old
Madeline Hsu, 6 years old
Catherine Hubbard, 6 years old
Chase Kowalski, 7 years old
Jesse Lewis, 6 years old
James Mattioli, 6 years old
Grace McDonnell, 7 years old
Anne Marie Murphy, 52 years old
Emilie Parker, 6 years old
Jack Pinto, 6 years old
Noah Pozner, 6 years old
Caroline Previdi, 6 years old
Jessica Rekos, 6 years old
Avielle Richman, 6 years old
Lauren Russeau, 30 years old
Mary Sherlach, 56 years old
Victoria Soto, 27 years old
Benjamin Wheeler, 6 years old
Allison Wyatt, 6 years old
[short
silence]
Nancy Lanza, age unknown
Adam Lanza, 20 years old
Let us pray.
O God, who came into the world
as a fragile child
and who lived as one of us,
even unto death;
Risen One,
Mysterious One beyond our understanding,
who created and creates us,
who seeks us out,
and whom we seek;
Comforter and advocate,
our shield and our strength,
hold us in our grief;
Oh Holy One,
in Whose name we gather,
Amen
Like most preachers in
this country,
I threw away the first
draft of my sermon on Friday afternoon.
Advent took on starker
colors.
It became more urgent, its
prophetic calls more sharp.
At the same time
it went into slow motion
as our world does after
trauma.
Twenty-six people shot and
killed,
each shot several times,
from the medical examiner’s account,
in an elementary school in
a quiet, privileged community
in Connecticut.
Most of them children.
More than half of them
girls.
Their teachers, all women,
killed trying to protect
them.
A young man
not long out of childhood,
killing others and himself,
and before that, killing
his own mother.
The rose color of Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday of rejoicing,
The rose color of Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday of rejoicing,
this third Sunday of
Advent,
and the words of our first
scripture readings for today,
clash with our reality.
It shouldn’t happen.
The blood,
the guns,
the police,
the media,
the empty children’s rooms
with weeping parents,
the questions.
I threw away my sermon.
And then I asked myself:
why don’t I throw away that
sermon every week?
Where, in our sermons,
in our prayers,
in our community work,
are the names of the
children
who die of gun violence
every day?
In 2008 and 2009
—these figures are from
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention— [1]
5,740
children and teens
were killed by guns.
Five thousand
seven hundred
and forty.
In two years.
This number would fill
more than 229 public school classrooms
of 25 students each.
More than 170 of the
children
killed during those two
years
were pre-schoolers.
Black children and teens,
who were 15 percent
of the total child population
in the US
during those two years,
accounted for 45 percent
of all child and teen gun
deaths.
Trayvon Martin.
We remember his name – do we?
But do we know the other names?
We remember his name – do we?
But do we know the other names?
Do our news media publish
them?
Do we pray them?
Do we pray them?
Do we remember them?
Do we weep for them?
Do we weep for them?
This shouldn’t happen
in a quiet suburban
community.
It shouldn’t happen in a
noisy urban community.
It shouldn’t happen to any
mother’s child.
Or to any mother.
Or father.
Or human person of any
kind.
Columbine High School,
Colorado.
Wedgwood Baptist Church,
Texas.
Atlanta day trading, Georgia.
Atlanta day trading, Georgia.
I know you want to put your hands over your ears–
bear
with me and with this list for another minute—
Lockheed Martin, Mississippi.
Living Church of God, Wisconsin.
Red Lake High School and Reservation, Minnesota.
Amish School, Pennsylvania.
Living Church of God, Wisconsin.
Red Lake High School and Reservation, Minnesota.
Amish School, Pennsylvania.
Virginia Tech University,
Virginia
Northern Illinois
University, Illinois.
American Civic Association center, New York state
American Civic Association center, New York state
Fort Hood Army Base, Texas
Tucson congressional
constituent meeting, Arizona
Oikos University,
California
Seattle café, Washington
state
Movie theatre, Colorado
Sikh temple, Wisconsin
I skipped some.
We don’t feel much like
rejoicing on this Gaudete Sunday.
And religious platitudes
won’t help us.
The voice and visions from
today’s scriptures from Zephaniah and Isaiah,
words of justice and joy,
speak to some of us
but fail to reach others
among us.
Some of us feel more like
the passage from Jeremiah,
the same passage quoted
in the gospel of Matthew on the massacre of the innocents:
“...a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and
bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refused to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more.”[2]
When children die,
our God dies.
Our faith is shaken.
Our hope begins to faint.
Our visions and dreams
turn to nightmares.
Into this world
this very world
Jesus was born
and is born
and will be born.
In this world,
John the Baptizer
spoke,
and speaks,
to both rich and poor,
to the occupied and the
occupiers,
the conquered and the
empire,
the religious and the not
so religious,
the violent and the
silent.
Last week we encountered John
already,
preaching repentance –
-- repentance and forgiveness.
Repentance first.
And did you notice that the
author of the gospel of Luke
very carefully named the
context, political and economic,
of John’s preaching -- do
you remember?
"In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor
Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of
Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea..." and so on –“the
word of God came to John...”
We might well say:
In
the seventh year of the Roberts Court at the Supreme Court of the United
States, the seventeenth year since the founding of the World Trade
Organization,[3] the one hundred and twelfth Congress, the
fourth year of the presidency of Barack Obama, when Bev Perdue was governor of
North Carolina, the word of God came...
This week,
the gospel’s author, and
John the Baptizer,
get very practical.
What should we DO?
What should we do?
One of the things we tend
to do when a catastrophe happens is to simplify.
We want a cause. We want a
reason. We want a simple answer.
We want it theologically
and we want it socially.
We want it theologically:
You know that saying, “Everything
happens for a reason”?
What a load of theological hogwash that is.
What a load of theological hogwash that is.
As if we could know.
On an emotional and
spiritual and theological level,
we don’t know.
We need to sit, in Advent,
in the night,
in our not-knowing,
the not-knowing in which
faith is forged,
the place where hope will
be born
–in this we trust—
in the faint light of the
rose and purple candles.
But this will not happen
fast
or easily.
And socially, we want a
simple answer too.
That is another kind of
“everything happens for a reason”
which might be rephrased
as
“everything happens for one reason.”
“everything happens for one reason.”
No; I think
that things generally
happen
for several reasons.
In the case of the
Connecticut killings,
and of other killings by
gun violence in this nation,
the lax gun laws, yes.
Yes. Yes.
AND
the fact that it is easier
to get a gun
than to get mental health
care.
The lack of good mental
health care.
The stigma
that those of us who have
suffered from mental illness still bear.
The glorification of
violence in our entertainment industry
and the shaping of our
desires
through this industry.
The images and models of
masculinity in our culture.
Social isolation.
And this country’s
particular sin:
We enslaved each other
through violence.
We are a country enslaved
to violence.
AND
whatever it is
that causes humans to
kill each other,
as the ancient story of
the brothers Abel and Cain recounts.
We are all entangled with
this.
Call it evil, call it sin,
call it the way of the world;
call it what you want.
We are, one way or
another, a part of it –
- some perhaps more than
others, but all of us.
Today’s collect[4]
puts it in old-fashioned
language: “we are sorely hindered by our sins.”
We hear this against the
backdrop of last week’s gospel:
the reality of repentance
and that of forgiveness.
What should we DO?
Say the people
in today’s gospel.
John the Baptizer,
in the Gospel of Luke,
encounters different
audiences
who ask what they should
do
to change.
The crowd asks.
The tax collectors ask.
Even the soldiers ask.
John takes these groups of
people
where they are.
They are not starting from
the same place.
No hoarding, he says to
one group.
No skimming, to the other.
No extortion, to the third;
no abuse.
It’s not everything.
But it’s a place to start.
In Advent,
we live
between God’s patience
and God’s impatience.
Advent is a time to
rediscover
both of these,
God’s patience
and God’s impatience,
and to discern
when and where
to respond to them
by living in them:
Living God’s patience:
in grieving together,
in holding each other’s
hands,
in listening,
in doing the small, daily
things
that assure us, after the
catastrophe,
that we are still alive.
Living God’s impatience:
in outrage
and action
for justice;
for change.
Dorothee Soelle, the
German theologian,
has always been helpful to
me.
She grew up during the Shoah
[the Holocaust]
and after World War II,
she said,
she didn't have much stomach
for
“the God who so gloriously
reigneth."
For her,
in that period of history,
God was weak
and did not have enough
friends.
The God who is with us
in Advent,
and who will be with us at
Christmas
as a fragile child,
needs us
as friends.
as friends.
Let us pray.
Come, o brother Jesus.
Come, o wounded savior.
Come, weak God who shows us strength where there is
none.
Come, challenger of empires
and of the language of empires
and of the weapons of empires.
Come to us and make us your friends.
Come to us who are charged with protecting
you,
your children,
your life.
Come to us who fail;
come to us who struggle;
come to us who need forgiveness.
Come to us
and teach us to work
patiently
stubbornly
together
for life.
Come, Lord Jesus.
Weep with us.
Hold our hands.
Stay in our hearts.
Come, Lord Jesus.
Anger us.
Be our guide.
Teach us to be your friends.
Teach us your hope.
Amen.
[1] These
figures and others are detailed and analyzed in the Children’s Defense Fund report on children and gun
violence, "Protect Children Not Guns 2012." http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/protect-children-not-guns-2012.pdf
[2] Jeremiah 31:15.
[3] In a shorter, related meditation
for an Advent retreat, I also included in this enumeration “in the sixty-eighth
year since the establishment of the Bretton Woods Institutions.” I include these transnational economic
institutions (the Bretton Woods institutions –the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund— and the World Trade Organization) because
politics and economics, as they were two thousand years ago though in different
ways, are deeply connected, and because our lives are affected by economic as
well as political institutions. You can replace the names and institutions
above at will. Try it.
[4] Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great
might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your
bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ
our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and
for ever. Amen. Collect for the Third Sunday of Advent, the Book of Common
Prayer.