Should we be excited that the way of life is also the way of the cross? Maybe you’ll be able answer that question if you pay attention at the next wedding you attend.
The circle is complete. This Sunday, all four of the Advent candles will be ablaze with the fire of anticipation, the flame of expectation. We have waited ever so patiently, lighting one candle at a time, moving one day at a time toward the wonderful and blessed event called Christmas.
After this Sunday, there will be no more Sundays of Advent in this calendar year. The Fourth Sunday of Advent is certainly one of the most promise-filled Sundays of the church year. We should be overflowing with hope!
Hope doesn’t always come easy, does it? When I was in Physical Rehabilitation after my accident, one of my Physical Therapists said, way back in December of 2011, that 2012 was going to be the year from hell for me. Well, it wasn’t, but it sure came close. What kept the glimmer of Advent hope alive for me? Well, for one, it was the love, thoughts and prayers of my parish family, but secondly it was their keeping the ministry alive while patiently waiting for me to return. That ministry was the light creeping in through the cracks. It meant everything to me.
I joke about only allowing myself five minutes per day to complain about my problems. There are people out there who are sick, and they haven’t seen their doctors because they haven’t had health insurance since they lost their jobs. There are also many people out there for whom the pandemic has robbed them of their employment. Folks out of work have been told their unemployment benefits are on hold right at the worst time of year.
There are people who have been beaten down by abuse and loneliness, stress and hunger every single day. So, I’m beginning to think that maybe even 5 minutes per day is too much time for me to complain.
Some time ago, I had the good fortune of officiating at an outdoor wedding. It was beautiful, but it was held at one of those vineyards where you had to walk up and down narrow paths quite a good distance to get to where the chairs were set up and the little arched-shaped trellis stood waiting for bride, groom, and their officiating minister.
By the time I got there, I wasn’t sure I could stand for 25 more minutes, and I thought I would never catch my breath. My disposition was shameful by this time, because weddings, like baptisms, are the high points of my ministry as a priest, and here I was feeling sorry for myself, counting every ache and pain.
As we proceeded through the service, we got to that prayer in the Book of Common Prayer. You can always count on the Book of Common Prayer. The prayer that reads as follows:
Most gracious God, we give you thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life.
I want to tell you how powerfully those words impacted me. Something wonderful happened to me at that moment. I no longer felt deflated but felt myself being filled by the very breath of God. Suddenly the hope and promise of The Fourth Sunday of Advent returned to me.
Most gracious God, we give you thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life.
God’s promises don’t always mean everything will be perfect. Sometimes the way of life really is the way of the cross.
We have every reason to share in the hope of the Advent Wreath on this coming Sunday. Our hope resides in the fact that God sending the Christ to be among us as one of us isn’t dependent on how we feel about ourselves. And no one, not even the most villainous terrorist, not even an act of congress, no none of them can keep Christmas from coming! That’s the real message of Matthew’s Gospel on the Fourth Sunday of Advent.
Oh, I know that preachers love to dwell on Mary’s predicament, and Joseph’s incredible attitude of understanding. I know that sermons on betrothals and virginal conceptions make for higher Neilsen ratings on the Fourth Sunday of Advent.
But I really think most of that misses the point!
If you had to reduce our Gospel to the main point, it would be that the Advent of Jesus Christ into our world was the result of Divine Intention; the result of the very will and volition of the Almighty God of love!
Twice in this Gospel passage alone we are told that the birth to come will be from the Holy Spirit.
As one theologian put it, Jesus is not just the product of human evolution, or the highest achievement of humanity, but he is the product of the intentional intersection of a loving God into human life.
All the mystery and wonder of angels and dreams are there in our Gospel this week to underscore the awesome and wonderful fact that God planned to break into human history all along!
There was once a man named Joe who worked in the coal mines in Kentucky. Day after day, he made his way into the dark tunnels to mine coal. And one day, the unthinkable happened. There was a cave-in. Hundreds of tons of rock and coal buried Joe and four other workers in that cave.
When help finally arrived, they began to dig feverishly, working in shifts around the clock to get through to the trapped workers.
The work was hard, and the fear was painful, but the worst of it all was the waiting. And everyone had to wait. The terrified families all had to wait. The workers who were digging through the rocks and rubble had to wait. The news media and the people who watched the news had to wait. And most of all, the men who were trapped had to wait.
They had enough oxygen to last awhile, so they could breathe.
But after the batteries in the lights on their hard hats wore down, they were in total darkness.
And so, they waited. . .
Later, after they had been rescued, Joe said that the hardest part of the experience was not feeling the oxygen running low and the shortness of breath. It was waiting for the return of the light.
He had sat there in pitch blackness, unable to make out even the slightest image with his eyes for literally hours. He said the thing he looked forward to with the most anticipation was light… just to be able once again to see the light. And his eyes filled with tears as he recalled what it felt like when the first light finally broke in. He said, It felt like I was dead and that God had come to invite me back to life.”
Each candle we light on our Advent Wreath is a symbol designed to invoke the same feeling that Joe felt when the first light broke into the deadness of the breathless cave.
Things can sometimes look dark for us, but the fact is that all new births are the result of the work of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is working on your behalf every minute of every day; it’s just that sometimes the minutes seem longer than 60 seconds.
Our Gospel assures us that our Advent wait will surely be worth it, for the light of Christmas is on the way.
Yes, the circle of Advent candles will now be complete, and in just a few days, we will light the white Candle, often called the Christmas Candle. If you think about it carefully, it could be called the Wedding Candle. We will light it because we will be celebrating a wedding. . . a wedding called Christmas, the wedding between God and humanity.
Let us pray:
Most gracious God, we give you thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life.
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By definition, I am a heretic. That does not mean that I have no faith. Knowing that God is LOVE and that Jesus is the love icon, gives me faith that LOVE is what my purpose in life is to LOVE as much as I’m able. Hate is the other spectrum of LOVE and I seem to travel back and forth on the spectrum, trying to move toward the LOVE end. Not always easy. Christmas is the season of LOVE.
beautiful.