Roses and Straw, Hope and Trust - The Third Sunday in Advent

A sermon preached by the Reverend Holly Huff at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on January 17, 2023, the Third Sunday in Advent.

First things first—what’s with all the pink? This Third Sunday of Advent is also known as Gaudete Sunday, Gaudete meaning Rejoice, taken from the words of our Epistle today: Rejoice in the Lord always! This day is a lift in the more somber, traditionally penitential mood of the season. For the rare Episcopalian who has been keeping a strict Advent fast, today is a day to feast. Rose as a liturgical color points us toward a joyful hope. Midnight blue gives way to the color streaking the skies at dawn, pointing us to the fulfillment of all our Advent waiting. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and the One we are waiting for is in fact already with us, already giving himself to us in every moment, even while Christmas is still yet a few days out.

Rose points us to the blossoming of love in the birth of Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. Love’s flower, hope’s blooming, sign of life in the parched places of our lives and of our world. The 15th century German carol puts it this way:

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!

Of Jesse’s lineage coming, as men of old have sung.

This Flower, whose fragrance tender with sweetness fills the air,

Dispels with glorious splendor the darkness everywhere…

Christmas comes in the dark season, on nearly the longest night of the year. We are approaching the end of another difficult year in which we have faced loss and hardship, a year in which we have struggled with grief, in which we have seen the tearing effects of war, a year in which we have found ourselves complicit in the suffering of our neighbors here yet so often seem powerless to help, a year in which we have struggled for meaning that isn’t bought or sold. Dom Helder Camara, the Brazilian Archbishop lovingly called “the bishop of the slums” for his continual witness in word and action that the gospel of Jesus Christ is good news to the poor and the oppressed famously said, "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” ! And Dom Helder also had something to say about this midnight birth in deep darkness. He says, prays, really, “In the middle of the night, when stark night was darkest, then you chose to come. God’s resplendent first-born sent to make us one. The voices of doom protest: ‘All these words about justice, love and peace—all these naïve words will buckle beneath the weight of a reality which is brutal and bitter, ever more bitter.’ It is true, Lord, it is midnight upon the earth, moonless night and starved of stars. But can we forget that You, the son of God, chose to be born precisely at midnight?”

God enters into our darkness, into our places of despair and grief and waiting and longing. In Jesus God takes up our human life and shares with us the divine life. Perhaps my favorite collect of the church year is the Collect for the Second Sunday after Christmas Day, a Sunday which doesn’t exist this year since Christmas falls on a Monday, so I’ve got to fit it in now! O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP 214) Jesus comes to give us a garland instead of ashes, gladness even in the midst of our mourning. Sharing the divine life with us as he shares our humanity. 

This rosy Advent anticipatory always-already joy overflows from gratitude for what God has done, is doing, and will do. All times held at once, and it is by grace ours to respond to God’s salvation with praise and thanksgiving. As Paul writes, “The one who calls you is faithful” and he will “sanctify you entirely” and keep you sound and blameless in spirit, soul, and body. God will lead us in building up the ancient ruins, and repairing the devastations of many generations. The repair and restoration this world is aching for can’t be done trusting in our own strength, and, it doesn’t have to be. Mary and John the Baptist each get their remarkable boldness from their humble recognition of reality as it is. Humility isn’t about becoming hunched over or self-effacing. Mary and John and Peter too all share a particular audacity and forthrightness and non-apology about who they are and this audacity flows out of their trust in God who is gracious to them and to us. John the Baptist, that forerunner flowering in the wilderness, comes to witness to the light, but he knows he is not himself the light. “I’m not the meal, I’m just the lunch lady.” The one coming after me is greater than me—In fact, I can hardly untie his shoelace! Mary’s Magnificat song shows her to be no shrinking violet either—but her sense of herself is undergirded by God’s favor toward her, the unconditional love and mercy poured out in which she has placed her whole trust. “The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” She sings triumphantly of God’s victory for the poor and hungry and lowly, and the promise of mercy extending up through her forebears and down through out every generation. 

Last year, on a silent retreat at St. Benedict’s Monastery, now closed, in Snowmass, Colorado, I was at mass one day and the priest who was celebrating must have been upwards of 90 years old. He was tottering and had to be helped into the chapel, where he sat in a chair behind at a special, lower altar brought in for this purpose. He seems utterly unconcerned to be so weak, unashamed to need these particular accommodations. His voice was reedy and clear. Seated the entire time, barely lifting his hands, he prayed the Eucharistic prayer in the strongest New Jersey accent—I think it was still a valid mass—New Jersey being the question, not sitting down—and when he prayed that the Spirit would fall on the gifts of bread and wine like the dew from heaven, you knew he was counting on the Spirit to do that, because he could hardly move his hands. I saw in this man utter forthrightness, humility expressed as the courage to be simply what you are.

Mary and John are each humble in that humus-y, grounded, down to earth way. No pretension, just the forthrightness of who they are and their bedrock trust in who God is. That humble, close-to-the-earth place is where hope springs up. That humble trust is where joy breaks out in morning sky. The kingdom of heaven is the whole rosebush, unpruned. Thorns and all.

Humility leading into joy, regardless of circumstance! “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.” Trusting in the Almighty who has done great things for us, our life can be our offering, exactly as we are. We are like the grass of the field: that withers, yes, but sincerely offered the transient stuff of our contingent lives becomes the straw that lines the manger, making space for Jesus to lay his dear head. The straw I have to offer on a particular day might be made of grief, or illness, or despair, or irritation. That’s okay. Jesus deigns to join us in the muck and stable mire, to come to us in the dark. And so we can bring whatever we have and however we are to lay his cradle. Drummer boy plays rum-pum-pum and what shall I give him, poor as I am? Give him my heart. Make space for him in my heart. The Eternal Birth must take place in you and in me. In this humble, forthright, rosy trust we can say with Paul, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and God’s grace to me has not been in vain!” 

The one who is faithful will keep you, spirit and soul and body. 

The one who is faithful will do this.

Amen.