Advent 3A - "Sharing the Wild"

December 15, 2019

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Amen.
I wrote this morning’s sermon – having contemplated it all week – in the middle of the night. Somehow, it just seemed fitting for me to sit in the dark and write, given that this Advent season takes place in the darkest time of our calendar year. Compounding the night’s darkness, this week especially, darkness in the form of violence – violence in Jersey City and the tragic murder of a Barnard College freshman – all seemed to block even the light of day. Perhaps you have felt it too . . . maybe for these reasons, or something totally different, yet just as personally tragic. When even the days are dark, the nights just seem interminable.
That interminable night is what Isaiah is speaking to, in today’s first reading. The Israelites were journeying through a dark period in their lives. Exiled to Babylon, they were violently uprooted from their homes and missing everything that was familiar. Is it possible to sing the song of God in a foreign land, they asked? Joy, to them, was barely a lingering memory . . . fading more and more each day, with each season. They asked each other, to try and remember: what did joy look like . . . sound like . . . feel like? Must we wait until morning for joy? Or is joy possible even in the darkness of night?
These were also the questions on John the Baptist’s mind. In today’s reading from Matthew, John the Baptist, who has confidently and boldly been preparing the way for Jesus for years now – even baptizing Jesus with his own hands - is beginning to doubt if dawn will ever come. Now, because of his message, he is enduring the darkness of prison, and finds himself wondering if he has staked his life on the wrong person. So he sends an earnest and desperate message to Jesus – “Are you the One that we have been waiting for or is there another?” Just like the Israelites, John’s night also seems endless.
Where we place our hope, especially when we are in darkness, seems to be the quintessential question of Advent. Well, honestly, maybe it’s the most important question of our lives! Isaiah cries, “Take courage! Do not be afraid! Look, God is coming.” The prophet is speaking of joy which comes, not on the other side of pain and suffering, but right in the midst of it. Joy, you know, is not about ease or having every day be a sunny one. Rather, joy comes from the defiant and persistent claiming of God’s promises – the promise of presence, the promise of salvation, the promise of hope - even in the darkness of night . . . even in the wilderness of exile.
One of my favorite books this year is called, appropriately, “The Book of Delights,” and it is written by poet and professor, Ross Gay. For this book, Gay moved away from poetry, and instead wrote a daily essay – for one full year - about something that delighted him; a beautiful exercise, both for its simplicity and its depth. One essay in particular – called, “Joy is Such a Human Madness” - caught my attention this week.
He writes, “Among the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard anyone say came from my student Bethany, talking about her pedagogical aspirations or ethos, how she wanted to be as a teacher, and what she wanted her classroom to be. She asked, “What if we joined our wildernesses together?” Sit with that for a minute. That the body, the life, might carry a wilderness, an unexplored territory, and that yours and mine might somewhere, somehow, meet. Might, even, join.
And what if the wilderness is our sorrow? It astonishes me sometimes—no, often—how every person I get to know—everyone, regardless of everything —lives with some profound personal sorrow. Brother addicted. Mother murdered. Dad died in surgery. Rejected by their family. Cancer came back. Evicted. Fetus, not okay. Everyone, regardless, always . . . . Is sorrow the true wild? And if it is—and if we join them—your wild to mine— it’s a kind of annihilation.
What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying.
I’m saying: What if that is joy?”
In a sense, that is exactly what Jesus is communicating back to John. Jesus says, ‘Go back and tell John your stories.’ Your stories of what your eyes have seen. What your ears have heard. The reality of who Jesus is as the Messiah – as “God-with-us” – emerges only through the lives of God’s people. That’s you. That’s me. That’s the ordinary people all around us.
We know that our darkness, our wilderness is not the end of the story. Neither was it the end for the Israelites in exile struggling to find their song. Nor was it the end of John’s proclamation of Jesus. These stories from scripture today are jagged and rough. Yet don’t take offense, Jesus says. Don’t run away. Join your jagged story with another’s jagged story, and find God’s presence there. That’s where there’s joy.
Lastly, I have one ironic fact to share with you - that John the Baptist is remembered by the Church as the patron saint of spiritual joy. Do you wonder why that is? Perhaps it’s because he understood the depth and complexity of the life of faith. Because joy in a prison cell has nothing to do with sentimentality. And questioning his life’s purpose and asking Jesus if he was the One was being honest and real about the power of doubt and fear. Perhaps John knew that joy was the product of sharing stories of God’s work in the world.
Today’s pink vestments and hangings are symbolic of that joy. Symbolic that joy can happen smack-dab in the middle of the darkness . . . in exile . . . or in the prison cell . . . or in the wilderness. . .
Join your “wild” with mine, and with each other’s. Because in those moments, the desert will start to hum. “The wilderness and the dry land will be glad, the desert will rejoice and blossom; and rejoice with joy and singing.”
Amen.

*Thanks to Debi Thomas (Journey with Jesus) and Ross Gay, “The Book of Delights” for their preaching inspiration.