1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24
December 11, 2011
Third Sunday of
Advent (Gaudete Sunday)
First United Church – Sermon by Rev. Caela
Simmons Wood
I’ve noticed that a lot of people
don’t seem to like Christmas. As December moves along, it seems that I hear
more and more complaints about how stressful this time of year is – too many
parties to attend, too many presents to buy and not enough money to buy them,
too much pressure to be the perfect parent who somehow finds the time to hold
down a 50-hour-a-week job and makes sugar cookies every weekend and still finds
time to travel across the country to see Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas.
You know these complaints. You’ve
heard them or perhaps you’ve made them yourself.
A friend of mine who has a young
toddler posted an article on facebook earlier this week about Holiday Affective
Disorder that she found on Babble.com. She said, “I have this, or at least some
version of this. Just ask my husband about my pity party the day we tried to
take our Christmas card picture.”
Just what is this mysterious new
condition? “Holiday Affective
Disorder covers a wide range of manic symptoms including overwhelming feelings
of nostalgia, frustration and extreme guilt paired with weight gain, binge
eating, high blood pressure, and sleeplessness. Sufferers have delusions of
grandeur, believing they have the ability to create meals of prime rib and make
place cards out of pine cones while hosting family, friends, random neighbors,
stranded co-workers, and pets, while also wearing an infant and taking care of
hyperactive children.”[1]
The
article goes on to humorously detail what it looks like when you put way too
much pressure on yourself during the holidays. It even suggests a drinking game
for family holiday meals – “Every time Uncle Lou says something offensive, take
a sip of wine.”
Although I
chuckled at parts of the article, recognizing the symptoms in myself and in my
friends, I was saddened by the proposed “solution” at the end:
“Remember: If it can be cooked, it can be cooked by someone
else.
If it can be sewed, it can be glue-gunned.
If it can be made, it can be
bought on Etsy.”
Now I
don’t want to be one of those obnoxious “let’s put Christ back in Christmas”
people who get really annoyed if you refer to Christmas as X-mas. As a
sidenote, the X comes from the Greek letter Chi and was commonly used in the
early church as a way to refer to the followers of Christ – so, really, X-mas
it totally appropriate. Or maybe we should call it Chi-mas?
I digress.
I don’t
begrudge people who want to celebrate the secular version of Christmas. If
Christmas if about Santa Claus, and sales at Kohls, and gingerbread lattes at
Starbucks, and the office holiday party, then, okay. That’s a holiday, sure.
I think
we’ve truly reached a point where there are two versions of Christmas in the
U.S. There’s a secular Christmas which revolves around the trimmings and trees,
Santa and his reindeer, gift giving, cookie baking, and all-Christmas-all-the-time
radio stations. I love that stuff as much as the next person. Aside from the
blatant worshiping of consumption, I take no issue with it. There are plenty of
things that the secular Christmas teaches us that are good– sharing, loving,
creating traditions, focusing on our loved ones, taking time off from work,
taking care of those who are impoverished. I’m on board with all of that.
But those
of us who are followers of Christ have another option at Christmastime.
For
starters, we don’t have to worry about maniacally celebrating Christmas from
Halloween until the 25th of December. We have a liturgical season of
Advent to guide us in our preparations for the birth of the Christ Child. I saw
a quote somewhere this past week and, sadly, can’t remember where so I can’t
give the author credit, but I still want to share it with you. To paraphrase,
“If you get to Christmas and you’re exhausted, you haven’t done Advent right.”
Amen and
amen.
Advent and
the Christian Christmas are totally different than the holiday season of
craziness.
Instead of
working ourselves into a tizzy, we are called to prepare in a quieter, more
intentional way for the birth of Christ. Instead of focusing on the trimmings,
we are invited to look deep within ourselves and our communities at the dawn of
the Christian New Year. Instead of frantically creating our own traditions, we
are encouraged to live into Christian traditions that have existed for many
centuries. Instead of beating ourselves up, trying to measure up to all the
hype of the season, we are allowed to rest secure knowing that the grace of our
God envelops us, no matter what the season brings.
Of course,
the challenge is that most of us celebrate both Christmases, right? How do we
find a balance between these two holidays that share a date, but pull us in
different directions?
When I
first looked over the lectionary readings for today, I didn’t think much about
the short passage from Paul’s letter to the church at Thessolonica. It seemed
to just be a few pithy words of generic advice – not rocket science and not
particularly tied to Advent.
Paul’s
first letter to the Thessalonians is probably our earliest piece of Christian
scripture. Written in the year 51 of the Common Era, it was written even before
the Gospel of Mark. Paul is writing to a group of Gentile Christians and
today’s passage from chapter five is the blessing at the end of his letter.
At first
glance, it’s not much: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in
all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Both
boring and seemingly impossible all at once, right? Not the type of text I
usually enjoy ruminating upon.
But then I
started thinking more deeply about these simple words. Paul exhorts the
community to continually be filled with joy….and this is Gaudete Sunday, the
third Sunday in Advent, the Sunday where we contemplate what it means to live a
joy-full life.
A few
weeks ago, I stopped at a McDonalds to grab a coffee while driving to
Indianapolis for a meeting. They had put their holiday menu up – you know the
one. All bells and Christmassy fonts and warmth and candy canes. As I was
admiring the font, I stopped and actually read the text. Next to a photo of a
mint mocha it said, “My comfort and joy.”
I almost
pulled out of the drive thru lane, I was so mortified.
When I
hear the words “comfort and joy” I immediately think of the Christmas hymn “God
rest ye merry gentleman.” You know “oh, tidings of comfort and joy – comfort
and joy”? It’s an elaboration on the angel’s greeting to the shepherds in
Luke’s version of the nativity story. For me, those are words that are forever
tied to the birth of Christ – not to a mint hot cocoa from McDonalds.
Those who
are suffering from Holiday Affective Disorder don’t need glue guns instead of
sewing machines, and they don’t need fancy coffee from McDonalds to cure their
holiday blues. They need something deeper and more meaningful to sustain them
through the onslaught of stress and mania that secular Christmas brings.
What would
it look like to connect more deeply with the true gift of joy during Advent?
Now, I’m
just going to tell you some ponderings I have about joy that are running around
my heart. I’ll own, up-front, that these are not based in reality in any way –
they’re just a feeling that I have when I ponder joy.
I guess
I’ve been a Christian too long because, for me, joy pretty much always has
religious overtones. I think of it as being distinctly different than
happiness. I know if you look them up in the dictionary, it says they are
synonyms and there’s nothing about God in the definition for joy, but when I
hear the word joy, I just can’t shake the feeling that it has a distinctly holy
connotation.
Joy, for
me, is not something external. It’s not something that can be given to you or
wrapped up under the tree. Joy is more like a deep river within your heart.
It’s cool and refreshing in the hottest days of summer and warm and bubbly in
the coldest nights of winter. It exists there, within each of us, no matter
what the circumstances.
On the
happiest days of our lives or in our times of darkest sorrow, that river of joy
still runs inside us. We can chose to ignore it; we can choose to remain partially
aware of its presence; or we can pause and dive straight into it, allowing its
refreshing waters to wash over us and nourish our truest selves.
This river
of joy exists for all eternity and it is a gift from God. It will never dry up
and it can never be taken away. Joy explains why some people, who are going
through the most intense pain imaginable, still have hope for the future. These
are people who take time, each and every day, to bathe in the waters of joy.
It also
explains why some people, who have been given so much, still feel dissatisfied.
Though they have innumerable reasons to be happy, they have lost touch with
their inner river of joy. They have forgotten the simple and abiding pleasure
that comes with visiting the river. They have traded in their joy for
happiness.
And
happiness, though shiny and sparkly, pales in comparison to joy.
When I
first read Paul’s instructions to the Thessalonians to “rejoice always” because
“it is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” I got a little annoyed. I mean,
for starters, who can do something “always,” anyway? I get nervous when I’m
commanded to do something “always.”
And then I
got more annoyed when I thought Paul was telling me that we’re supposed to
rejoice because God wants us to. How can you order someone to rejoice? What
kind of God is bossy enough to hover over me and say, “Rejoice! Do it now! For
the Lord hath spoken it!”
But then I
thought about all those times when it seems to be impossible to find joy. And I
thought about how, at those moments, it is the very presence of the Holy that
enables me to find some measure of hope. It is the call of Yahweh that reminds
me about the river of joy nestled deep in my heart.
Maybe it’s
not so much that God is ordering us to be joyful….maybe Paul is just kindly
reminding us that God wants us to be
joyful. Like a mother who wants only what’s best for her child, God wishes and
fervently hopes that we will always find a way to joy. Both in our times of
happiness and sorrow, God calls us to remember to be in touch with joy and rest
in the waters of that deep, abiding knowledge that whatever comes, all is well.
Paul did
not write these words to individuals. He wrote them to a specific community of
believers. His commandment to rejoice was not one meant to be heard on an
individual level. Instead, he wanted the entire community to rejoice.
Advent and
Christmas are times when we come together as community to seek joy - whether that’s
around a family dinner table, the tree on Christmas morning, or here in the
sanctuary as we gather at the table to share in Christ’s meal.
As we move
into this new year of the church calendar, I hope that we will remember and
reclaim Paul’s commandment to rejoice always. We have an opportunity to remind
each other of the deep rivers of joy that exist within each of us gathered
here. We have the ability to join our rivers together into a powerful force
that can call out to others in our community – come to the waters! Come, and
rejoice!
In the
coming weeks, there are many opportunities to rejoice together.
Tonight,
we gather at the table to celebrate Jesus’s continual invitation to be one with
the ongoing Spirit of Christ. On December 22 we will gather in the chapel for
our first-ever Blue Christmas service – a time for reconnecting with the quiet
spirit of joy that can sustain us even as we struggle with the surface-level
happiness that permeates the season. There’s Christmas Eve, of course. And we
have a special gift this year – the ability to worship together as a community
of faith on Christmas morning. An opportunity to reconcile both the secular and
Christian Christmases as we move from the stockings hung by the chimney with
care to the manger and rejoice in the birth of God in our midst.
I’m not
reminding you of these upcoming worship services because I think you can’t read
the announcements in the bulletin.
I’m
reminding us because amidst the promises of happiness in price-matching from
Wal-mart, the claims of comfort and joy wrapped up in a McDonalds latte, and
the good wine that flows at the office holiday party, the Church has something
more to offer.
Tidings of
comfort and joy.
Not
because God commands it, but because it is God’s deepest desire.
God wants
us to find joy this Christmas.
1 comment:
Thank you for sharing this with a wider community. Waiting, watching and hoping together with you this Advent.
~Shari
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