The Wait
It’s called Gaudete Sunday, after the first Latin word spoken in the liturgy: Rejoice! Here’s a Christmas carol for the occasion.
The translation of the chorus:
Rejoice, rejoice!
Christ is born
Of the virgin Mary
Rejoice!
Quite a contrast from the lyrics of the most traditional Advent hymn:
O come, O come Emmanuel
To ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Captives who mourn in exile, waiting for God to come ransom them?
Not exactly the same kind of waiting as a kid longing to unwrap presents, is it?
It has nothing to do with visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads.
Advent is a somber, sobering season: It is about preparing our hearts for God coming to set things right.
This kind of waiting fills the pages of scripture. Perhaps as soon as Eve heard the protoevangelium, she began to long for her offspring to come bruise the head of the serpent.
Certainly the Jews, groaning in slavery, “cried out” for deliverance from Egypt. And later generations, living in exile, were comforted by the prophets’ news that a final deliverer would come.
God tells the prophet Isaiah, for one, to “comfort” his people by proclaiming that one would come to “prepare the way of the Lord.” So John the Baptist came, preparing the way for Jesus to do his work on the cross.
Jesus did the work on the cross … and promised to come back.
The first Sunday of Advent was about Expectation—that God promised to rescue us. They expected Messiah to come; we expect him to come back.
The second Sunday was about Hope—that God keeps promises. He kept the promise to come to Bethlehem; we live expecting him to come back.
Waiting in Brokenness
But like the enslaved or exiled ancients, our expectation and hope shine in the midst of suffering. Candles lit in the dark are no accidental metaphor to the season. Things are dark: broken relationships, hurting people, death. It has been this way since Adam and Eve.
Remember our work is broken, too:
… cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread. …
Genesis 3
Without us continually working at it, everything reverts back to disorder: thorns in the garden, heat death, entropy.
I mean everything: In “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” the dystopian story behind the Bladerunner films, Philip K. Dick describes a future in which we have so much packaging and clutter, useless objects he calls “kipple,” that everyone has to work just to keep it at bay. He predicts that, without the work, eventually kipple will take over.
I wonder what he would have thought of hoarding and Marie Kondo.
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. …” Yeats published the famous words 100 years ago, during another pandemic. His wife had almost died fighting the Spanish flu while pregnant; the world had just finished its first World War.
As his native Ireland’s fight for independence became bloodier, he had reason to lament all the suffering: “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed” upon the world.
With so much chaos, he feared a Second Coming. With things so bad, perhaps God wasn’t in control, so “what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Waiting in Joy
You don’t use the word “kipple” in conversation, but we can all appreciate how never-ending and meaningless work can feel.
And I pray you are not in a war zone, but we have all been touched by violence and horrified at the suffering in the world.
All of our lives deal with chaos and suffering. So imagine the apostle Paul’s peace:
“I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content,” he told the Philippian church. “I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.”
Paul wrote these words while chained in prison.
And he dared to give the church this charge:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. … The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 4:4-7
How could he be so joyful? It certainly wasn’t about his situation.
Instead, he found joy reflecting on the work Jesus had already done on the cross: After living an innocent life, he submitted to mockery, torture and execution. And as John the Baptist said, in doing so he became the sacrificed “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”
Rejoice: Your debts are paid. And he’s coming back to take you home.
Today we light the candle of Joy. Despite “any and every circumstance,” even when we are “brought low,” we know that the “Lord is at hand.”
He’s almost here. It’s time to rejoice.
This is part of a series on Advent. Click here for an introductory post, the first candle, Expectation and the second candle, Hope.