Gaudete: Rejoice!
Isaiah 35:1-10
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
Eleven years ago during this week of Advent III, my mother died in a
Kansas City nursing home. Her story seems to fit with the message
of today's beautiful poetry from Isaiah and Jesus’ answer to the
messenger from the imprisoned John the Baptist. And while her
experience is both personal and literal, I hope it will be instructive.
A bit of background. My mother was outgoing and gregarious.
During World War II and following when our family had only one car,
Mother, like other wives, was basically confined to the
neighborhood. The telephone was her lifeline. She loved to
talk -- and laugh. I remember eavesdropping on her end of
adult conversations and wondering how she could possibly find so many
topics to discuss. Her favorite social activity with my father
was ballroom dancing. Why, she had once won a dance
contest. And, oh, how she loved to organize -- the Altar Guild,
the PTA, her college sorority alumnae group – it didn’t matter.
She was a go-to gal.
After my father retired in 1973 and just as they were beginning to
travel together, Mother suffered a cerebral aneurysm and was not
expected to live. Cutting edge surgery saved her, but initially
left her partially paralyzed on her right side and able to utter only
the words “yes,” “no,” and “damn.” She spent six months in a
rehabilitation facility, then continued speech and physical therapy for
several years. Ultimately she learned to shamble unassisted with
a cane or walker and, at the peak of her progress, could leave her
apartment and stroll by herself in the nearby shopping area.
A greater handicap was her speech -- affected by aphasia -- which often
made it difficult for her to find the right words and for others to
understand what she was trying to say. The frustration of being
unable to communicate as she once had changed her. She avoided
social occasions and had a genuine fear of meeting new people.
This withdrawn, sometimes embittered person was not the mother of my
childhood.
Other than my father’s devoted care of her for those twenty-three years
between the aneurysm and her death, the one constant in her life was
her faith in God and in a Jesus whom she knew quite personally. I
remember her saying, “Can’t read, can’t write, can’t dance ... so
what? Jesus loves you.” Although she believed God was
everywhere, I can tell you exactly where her Lord most especially
resided – in the sanctuary of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church where she
occupied the front pew for the 8:00 a.m. service every Sunday
morning. I have no doubt that the Eucharist was her motivation to
keep going.
Her last two years were spent in a nursing home. In 1996 Larry
and I made a trip to Kansas City to deliver Christmas presents to our
three children and their families, planning to stay only
overnight. We arrived in the evening, too late to visit
Mother. However, about 8:30 that night I received a call from the
nursing home informing me that Mother’s organs were shutting
down. When I arrived at her bedside half an hour later, she
opened her eyes, smiled, and murmured my name. She had always
loved Christmas, so I spent some time recalling holiday memories.
Then I sang a few carols. Tiring, she clung to my hand as we said
the Lord’s Prayer together. Finally I sang “Silent Night.”
Her face became transfigured. Her cheeks were rosy, the wrinkles
gone. She smiled the most beautiful, peaceful smile, then rolled
on her side, her knees drawn up, her hands fisted beneath her chin like
a child’s, and went to sleep, still smiling. She never woke up.
Now I tell you this, not as a sad story, but a triumphant one. No
matter her sins -- and, like all of us, Mother had them -- sins of
envy, frustration, anger, selfishness and spite -- she knew about
Isaiah’s highway -- the one called the Holy Way. Even in her
altered state, she understood she could travel it through repentance,
forgiveness, prayer, and faith. She knew that joy and gladness
awaited her at the end, and that sorrow and sighing would eventually
flee away.
I left the nursing home that night absolutely convinced that mother
was, at last, leaping like a deer and that her tongue was singing for
joy. The desert of her long and difficult journey was, indeed,
blossoming, and God, in his infinite love, had strengthened her weak
hands and made firm her feeble knees.
Fittingly, this third Sunday of Advent is also known as “Gaudete”
Sunday, symbolized by the rose-colored candle in the Advent
wreath. “Gaudete” is the Latin word for rejoice. This
morning’s reading from Isaiah gives us a glimpse of what lies at the
end of the road, the road the prophet calls the “Holy Way.” When
we walk that highway with penitence and humbly seek to do God’s will,
Isaiah tells us we shall walk with the redeemed. We shall
ultimately be shed of the burden of sin, forgiven and ransomed by God’s
all-encompassing mercy. We shall rejoice!
A few moments from now, we will renew our baptismal covenant. By
affirming our renunciation of evil and promising to follow and obey
Jesus Christ, we recommit ourselves to walking that “Holy Way” which
leads to hope and salvation.
The season of Advent calls us to consider our own shortcomings.
To rejoin the highway from which we have strayed. To prepare our
hearts for the gift of the Christ child. Because, you see,
my mother wasn’t the only one afflicted. In our own ways, we are
all handicapped by something. Our Advent self-reflection involves
such difficult questions as these:
Am I blind to my own arrogance, blind to the suffering of my fellow
human beings? In my self-absorption, do I fail to see and respond
to the love and understanding others offer me?
Perhaps I am deaf to the words of those who ask my forgiveness,
heedless to those who invite the use of my gifts in service to others.
Am I speechless when I should utter the word of love, mute when
resentment or ill will causes me to brood, or silent when injustice
occurs?
Or maybe I am lame, indulging my senses rather than caring for my
health and well-being. How often am I crippled from
over-exercising my ego or paralyzed by my heart’s inactivity?
It is all too tempting to excuse ourselves, rationalize our behavior,
and hope for the best. Yet as James tell us in today's second
lesson, “the Judge is standing at the doors!” [5:9] The Baptismal
Covenant is so much more than empty words -- it gives us our marching
orders for the highway, the Holy Way. And the destination is
glorious -- a place where the desert blooms, the burning sand becomes a
pool, and where no ravenous beasts lie in wait to destroy us. A
place of healing and rejoicing.
Too often, though, we seek the path of least resistance or wander into
the byways of indulgence. We want the reward of the glorious
destination without the expenditure of self-denial or discipline.
We see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear, and go where we
want to go.
In this morning’s Gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus addresses this
failing when he asks the crowds what exactly it was they anticipated of
their encounters with John the Baptist–a nice trip to the countryside
to see the reeds blow? A royal personage dressed in soft
robes? A spectacle? What, he asks, is the matter with them
that they don’t see what is right before their eyes, even if the
reality does thwart their expectations of a Messiah?
Why can’t they accept the evidence of their senses, he wonders.
Jesus sends the messenger on his way with these words: “Go and
tell what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and
the poor have good news brought to them. [11:4-5]
Right under their noses the prophecy is being fulfilled; but because
they expected a vastly different leader, it is they who are blind, they
who are deaf.
Isn’t that just like us? We are frequently so preoccupied with
the tugs and pulls of daily life that we seldom recognize the evidence
of God’s miracles all around us, especially if we cling to the
expectation of another reality. But we don’t have to wait until
some glorious future time to see God at work in the world. To
experience his boundless love. We have only to open our eyes and
ears.
In reflecting on my mother’s experience, I see there were miracles
everywhere. The newly-discovered surgical super glue which sealed
the leak in her cranial artery, the first step she took unassisted, the
50th wedding anniversary celebration she was able to enjoy with my
father, her quiet, unwavering confidence in God despite her
limitations.
Naturally, we family members had wished for a different outcome for
Mother, had hoped for a total recovery. As in the arid desert,
the blooms in her life were sparse and subtle. But they were
there -- are always there if we open our hearts.
Isaiah urges us to “walk the walk.” Our Baptismal Covenant
commits us to “walking the walk.” And when we do, the handicaps,
afflictions, and, yes, sins that have encumbered us fall away.
This is, most assuredly, “Gaudete” Sunday -- a time of rejoicing!
“And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with
singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain
joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” [Isaiah
35:10].
AMEN.
Laura Shoffner
Sunday, Dec. 16, 2007
Advent III
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