Rejoicing…A Sign Of Wholeness

ADVENT Sunday Week 3

Entrance Antiphon (Phil 4:4-5)

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near

Psalm 146

Lord come and save us

James 5:7-10

Be patient, make your hearts firm

Matthew 11:2-11

Are you the one who is to come

or should we look for another?

Isaiah Makes some big promises today

A parched desert can bloom

We can bloom again.

The world we live in can bloom again.

Are you the one?  John asks on our behalf. 

What DID they go out to the desert to see?

They wanted to see what we want to see. 

Conscious of it or not,

our deepest desire is for what Jesus does in the desert.

We want our sight restored.

We want legs moving and dancing. 

We want our skin cleansed and our ears opened. 

We want life flowing and Poverty enriched.

WHOLENESS is what they went to the desert to see. 

WHOLENESS has a kind of gravitational pull

We are attracted

It is what we want

Right now, if I were to scan through the recent years

Looking for a time when I felt particularly whole

Chances are it would be in proximity to this place.

But not just this physical place,

all the people too, all of us.

In the midst of all of us

and in the midst of the prayer that fills this body

this is where my scanning would land

And chances are the wholeness I would land on

would have been a direct result

of being healed in some way

of being healed or forgiven or reconciled.

At Sunday Eucharist, in the confessional,

at our communal celebrations of God’s mercy. 

But not only here in our church home,

but in domestic life too. 

Like when Rob and I have had a particularly ugly fight

and we find ourselves exhausted and no better off,

we finally give up. 

The contrition, the apologies,

the hugs…tears…the eventual laughs,

that is what makes for feeling WHOLE again.

This Sunday is named Gaudete Sunday. 

Gaudete means rejoice!

and it comes from the first word of the Entrance Antiphon: 

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice!

Rejoicing is a fruit, it doesn’t stand-alone,

you can’t pick it off the grocery store shelf.

It flows from something else

It is the rejoicing of the forgiving father

at the return of his son. 

He is running; his sandals have fallen off;

his turban is flying

Before the son can even begin to make his act of contrition

…the father rejoices. 

God rejoices

when we turn our gaze toward our deepest longing. 

Rejoicing has a prior. 

We rejoice because something…

         inside of us or outside

something that was dead is alive again.

We rejoice because brokenness has been made whole.

We rejoice after the work is done

         and we have chosen

         to continue to grow in discipleship.

With firm and patient hearts

This Advent we complete the prerequisites

Rejoice!