The Third Sunday of Advent / Year B
Psalm 126
If you are starting
to feel good about life again, you might want to visit the website depair.com
which specializes in what it calls “demotivational” products. The site asserts “no industry has inflicted
more suffering than the Motivational Industry” through the billions of dollars
spent on books, speakers, and those annoying posters aimed at inspiring a
workforce. “At Despair, we offer the
cure for hope and for surprising affordable prices.”
If you look at page
5 of your bulletin you will see images of some of my favorite despair posters:
(a group of people putting their hands together as a
sign of teamwork) Meetings – None of us is as dumb as all of us!
(a picture of a sinking oil freighter) Mistakes – It
could be that your purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others.
(a salmon about to be eaten by a bear) Ambition – A
journey of a thousand miles sometimes ends very badly.
(a person standing at the foot a tall, steep
mountainside) Challenge – I expected times like these but I never thought
they’d be so bad, so long, and so frequent.
This from the
website: “Motivational Products don’t work.
But our Demotivational Products don’t work even better. The Motivational Industry has been crushing
dreams for decades, selling the easy lie of success you can buy. That’s why we decided to differentiate ourselves
– by crushing dreams with hard truths!”
Can there be a
better summery of the year 2020 than “I expected times like these, but I never
thought they’d be so bad, so long, and so frequent.” That pretty much says it all. The word ‘despair’ comes from the Latin de, meaning ‘without’, and sperare, meaning ‘to hope’. These feel like despairing times, days
without hope.
If Christianity is
about any one thing, no doubt it is about hope – the hope we receive from the
Good News of God’s redeeming love made known through and possible by Jesus
Christ. The Catechism teaches “The Christian
hope is to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life and to await
the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God’s purpose in the
world.” There are moments in our lives
when this is easier said than done. 2020
has been one of these times.
Again this morning
we read about John the Baptist. He
conducts his ministry during a very dark period in human history, but the heart
of his message is about hope. John the
Gospel writer says of the Baptist “he was not the light, but came to testify to
the light.” Can there be a more hopeful
message than “Make straight the way of the Lord” – a reference to an ancient
prophet’s hope one day a savior will come.
This morning we are
blessed by the reading of the 126th Psalm, with its message of
hope. Notice how the first four verses
seem to indicate the moment of despair has passed: “When
the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who
dream…” However, the final three verses
are cast in the future tense: “Those who
sowed with tears will reap with songs
of joy. Those who go out weeping,
carrying the seed, will come again
with joy, shouldering their sheaves.”
Yes, the times may be bad, long, and frequent, but they do not
last. There will come a harvest. There will be singing. There will be joy.
As inspirational as
this psalm is, there is one disconnect between it and our times. By using the imagery of planting and harvest
it implies a person can have a rough idea of when God’s restoration will occur. In my experience – and certainly in our
current situation – often the end is not in sight. Patience and hope must go hand in hand.
Last Monday the
Presiding Bishop shared a poem by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on a Zoom call
with the House of Bishops. On Tuesday
our bishop shared it with the diocesan staff.
On a Wednesday Zoom with clergy, Canon Roy shared it with us. I suspect I am not the only priest citing it
in a sermon today. The poem is titled
“Patient Trust”, and you can find it on page 6 of your bulletin:
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without
delay.
We should like to skip the
intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the
way
to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all
progress
that it is made by passing
through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with
you;
your ideas mature
gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves,
without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today
what time
(that is to say, grace and
circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this
new spirit
gradually forming within you
will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of
believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of
feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
I
have a hope something new is happening in me through the changes of the last
year. I don’t know what it is, it will
only reveal itself completely when we are able to reenter the world the way we
used to, but discover it and we are different.
And I have a hope something new is happening at St. Paul’s as well. Again, it will not be evident until we are
able to regather as God’s people in this place.
This is a time when we pray, as the psalmist did so long ago, “Restore
our fortunes” and this is a time when we open ourselves to the work John the
Baptist calls us to do: “Make straight the way of the Lord.”
