Episodes
Sunday Dec 14, 2014
Come, Lovely Soul
Sunday Dec 14, 2014
Sunday Dec 14, 2014
Come, Lovely Soul
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC December 14, 2014, the third Sunday of Advent.
Texts: Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11; John 1:6-8,19-28; J.S. Bach’s Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme
The Cantata woven through our worship today employs the image of a wedding feast celebrating the relationship between the lover, Jesus, and the beloved, the Church. The story is of the joyful anticipation of the lover’s approach and of the life and fullness that the relationship will bring. This Advent Mass is appropriate for the third Sunday of Advent—or Gaudete (“rejoice” in Latin) Sunday—when the traditional focus is on “joy.” The pink color of the candle we light on this Sunday is a symbol of the joy that emerges as we draw closer to the birth of Christ.
This week, I sat in the tension between the joy of this day and the communal lament and outcry over the racial injustice happening at every level of our society; I sat in the tension between the hopeful anticipation of healing and wholeness of this day and the new revelations of U.S.-sanctioned torture; I sat in the tension between the promises for the poor and needy proclaimed in our text today and the budget passed by congress that, at first glance anyway, seems once again to be good news mostly for the rich and powerful. As I prayed with our texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for today from Isaiah and John I was reminded that the work of faith in every age is to stand in life’s tensions as a witness to the light of God’s love, mercy, and justice.
Isaiah (or the “Third Isaiah” as scholars would identify him) spoke to a disappointed Israel who, after having returned to Jerusalem from their long exile, struggled to rebuild Jerusalem and its temple to the glory they remembered. The words of the prophet were words of encouragement for the disheartened people of his day who were trying to rebuild not only their city, but their lives. Isaiah proclaims that God’s Spirit is upon him and that God has sent him “to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners…to comfort all who mourn.” (Is. 61.1-2)
John the baptizer (making an encore appearance this week from the Gospel of John) was sent from God as a witness, “to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.” (Jn. 1.7) This version of the story is written most likely in the midst of a particular Christian community of the late 1st century, a community undergoing a painful separation from the Jewish society to which its members had belonged. The emphasis upon John’s confession of faith in the one who is to come is written both as an inspiration and a challenge to those who may have struggled to keep faith in the midst of such a painful time.
Both the Third Isaiah and John the baptizer were powerful witnesses to God. Both of them claim their particular role and message within the larger story. They stand in the tensions of the day and remind us that God is at work, that God is coming to meet us in the wildernesses and tensions and broken places of our lives, and that, with God’s help, we—like them—have a part to play in what God is doing in the world.
In the fall of my sophomore year in college, I took Acting I. It was more difficult than I thought it would be. To take words off a page and truly embody them in some way that doesn’t feel fake or forced is no easy task. And comedy? Forget it. If I ever got a laugh in any of my monologues, it was by sheer accident—like I would forget a line and accidentally find comedic timing for a brief, shining moment. The thing I remember most vividly about my Acting I class was a collaboration in which we each auditioned for the second year directors and then they cast us in scenes for an actual performance on campus. My friend Tom ended up casting me (not his first choice, by the way) in the role of “Mama” in the dramatic, final scene of the 1983 play, “‘night, Mother.” I was barely 20 years old and was supposed to play the mother of a grown daughter, a daughter who was planning to take her own life. Neat. What I learned from Tom and the process is that the director can see how who the actor is and how the actor moves, speaks, and reacts affects the unfolding drama, how all those factors can be used to help the story emerge. The actor doesn’t have the benefit of stepping out of herself to observe how all the pieces come together. The actor’s role is to play her part and to do it as well as possible, with the guidance of the director. //
In the midst of all that is happening in our world—and in our lives—you and I are called to stand as witnesses to the light of God’s love, mercy and justice. We have a role to play. We may end up cast in a role that seems beyond our capacity. You and I may struggle to imagine what the role might be. We may struggle to see how anything we could do makes any difference at all. We may struggle to keep faith in the midst of so much brokenness. But the story we tell in these holy days is not just a story about someone else; it is our story, yours and mine. I am aware that the story of baby Jesus in Bethlehem can seem so distant and remote, like it happened in a universe having nothing to do with our own. And the promise of the Christ returning sounds like something out of a science fiction movie—something far-fetched or at least so far in the future that our stories about it and the promises for peace and joy it offers just seem like a fairy tale. And the fact that things continue to be so deeply broken, with little sign of real improvement, tempts us to conclude that the whole story must be, after all, little more than a figment of wishful thinking. Even if it sounds crazy or too good to be true, consider the extraordinary confession that we make as Christians: the Incarnation of God, Christ coming into the world in flesh like yours and mine, confirms that flesh like yours and mine is hallowed and holy, significant and beloved. The love of God—so fully revealed in Jesus—is given to each and every one of us and we are given grace to “make it flesh”—incarnate—in our own lives. And the story of Christ’s return and of the full redemption of all God’s beloved creation affirms that our lives not only have meaning, but a telos, a purpose, a goal: we participate in the unfolding drama that is leading to God’s vision of a world restored. The fact that this great drama—filled as it is with tension and struggle—is located not on some other planet or some imaginary world, but is set right here in the world that you and I inhabit, tells us that our own history is connected to God’s history. Even your life and even my life are important—in ways that we may never (and most likely never will) understand. Frederick Buechner puts it this way:
“God acts in history and in your and my brief histories not as the puppeteer who sets the scene and works the strings but rather as the great director who no matter what role fate casts us in conveys to us somehow from the wings, if we have our eyes, ears, hearts open and sometimes even if we don’t, how we can play those roles in a way to enrich and ennoble and hallow the whole vast drama of things including our own small but crucial parts in it.”[i]
That you and I have “crucial parts” in the “whole vast drama of things” and that God is the director—what a thought! Just think about God as the one who can see the whole drama unfolding, the one who knows where you fit in the big picture, the one who sees what each one of us brings to the story—our histories, our gifts, our wounds, our weakness, our voices, our creativity, our strengths, our fears… God the director helps and guides us to play our given role fully and well. And if you are thinking that you don’t know what your role might be, then perhaps the thing to do is to ask God, to discern, to pray, to study, to listen. You might discover that you’re already playing it—and well! You might be given new direction.
One of the things I heard on Thursday evening at our initial conversation about engaging faith for racial justice is that folks are trying to discern what to DO, both in their daily lives and in our communal witness. The question for each of us to consider today is just that: what is your particular role right now in God’s work in the world? How can you be a witness to the light of God’s love in the work for racial justice? How does God invite you to make your faith, hope, and love more incarnate in your daily life? We are at different places on the journey and so will have a variety of answers to the questions based on our lives and relationships. Collectively as a congregation, as Pastor Ben wisely stated on Thursday, we begin by acknowledging that engaging faith for racial justice is a long-term commitment, not a “project” that can be accomplished in the short-term. He also reminded us that we at Foundry are, in general, “pretty dang privileged.” Therefore, we begin by looking outside ourselves and listening to other voices rather than just our own in order to discern where and how God wants us to engage. I hope many of you will join in the conversation this Tuesday at Capitol Hill UMC. //
As I read the text of Wachet auf, I was struck by a simple phrase uttered by the voice of Christ to the Beloved (you and me): “Come, lovely soul…” This is an invitation, extended to us in mercy and in love. Christ is coming to us and will “open the room for banquets of heaven.” Consider what a heavenly banquet might be—not in some distant country in the sky, but in the world in which we live. A banquet of heaven is a feast of love and of compassion, of mercy and justice, of kindness and friendship, of mutuality and laughter, of healing and reconciliation. We are invited to that banquet today. We are invited to participate in that feast. We are invited to take our place at the table and to play our part as only we can. We are invited to be witnesses to the life that flows from the banquet hall. [To accept the invitation, to embody love and compassion in this world, will require confrontation with the status quo; because there are those in the world who benefit from the way things are and who are unable or unwilling to hear or heed the invitation to a banquet in which all people receive blessing and bounty and are seen and known as beloved. Fear and greed and power and privilege close ears and hearts and hands. But even in the face of these and so many other obstacles—or perhaps because of these things— ] Come, lovely soul, come, beloved, and enter more fully into the life of love and compassion that is the Kin-dom. There you will find meaning, you will find courage, you will find hope, you will find companions to encourage and inspire you, you will find love, you will find joy. Real joy. Even today. “No eye has ever seen, no ear has heard the sound of such gladness. Our joy shall grow, lo, lo! Ever in sweet rejoicing.” (from Wachet auf)
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