Gaudete Sunday, Advent III: Matthew 11
A few weeks ago I went to Hamer Hall, with my 15 year old daughter Eleanor to hear Brian Cox the good looking, former pop star, still youthful brilliant nuclear physicist and cosmologist presenting with the Melb Symphony Orchestra a program called “The Symphonic Universe” - music interspersed by short lectures about the wonder of the universe. It was an amazing experience. David Attenborough has recently passed his mantle to him to speak of the natural world.
One of the things he said is that we live on a small planet circling one of four hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, itself one of over two trillion galaxies in the observable Universe. A trillion is a million million – a 1 with 12 noughts after it (2 of them!)
Brian Cox also told a story about the Famous Belgian cosmologist Lemaitre, a contemporary of Einstein, who was also a priest, who when questioned on what was then seen as the incompatibility of science with Christianity replied “There are two paths to the truth, I have chosen to take both”
What we are dealing with here I realised is that when we think about God we are dealing with mystery and that truly anything is possible in a universe beyond our comprehension. I thought for example about miracles; while not writing them off I had usually regarded them as metaphorical tales to speak to a vastly different pre-scientific world over 2000 years ago but I am no longer so dismissive. Truly we are dealing with a God of mystery “the God of Infinity” we might say, although language fails us. Yet there is also the personal God, deeply intimate with our inner selves. And we know also that there are times when our faith is tested with great anguish, questioning what is happening to us and why.
And we gather today on the third Sunday of Advent celebrating Gaudete Sunday - rejoice, joyous Sunday, a little let-up in the penitential tone of Advent and here we find the apparently strange story of that great person of faith John the Baptist, whose life had been profoundly moved by Jesus’ coming. Jesus’ cousin who we are told leapt in the womb when Mary visited his pregnant mother. The man whose life was devoted to making the path straight for the Messiah. The man who has been faithful yet now finds himself languishing in prison and Jesus not being at all like the Messiah he was expecting who was to transform the world with the awesome power of God. And he sends his disciples to ask Jesus “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” A deeply painful question reflecting John’s self-interrogation – so much rode on it, verging on despair.
And Jesus replies “Go back and tell John what you hear and see”. And then follow The American theologian Debie Thomas writes “In other words Jesus says: go back to John and tell him your stories. Tell him my stories. Tell him what your eyes have seen and your ears have heard. Tell him what only the stories — quiet as they are, scattered as they are, questionable as they are — will reveal.
Why? she asks:
Because who Jesus is is not a pronouncement. Not a sermon, a slogan, or a billboard. Who Jesus is is far more elusive, mysterious, and impossible-to-pin-down than we have yet imagined. The reality of who Jesus is emerges in the lives of the plain, poor, ordinary people all around us. We glimpse his reality in shadows. We hear it in whispers. It comes to us by stealth, with subtlety, over long, quiet stretches of time.”
John is also told “blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me”. We are not told what John makes of this response, but it is significant that he does not give up his vocation of telling truth to power and this will cost him his life.
No-one’s life has been more deeply touched by God to that point in time than John the Baptist Jesus said, yet his life ended before the full revelation of the Messiah was revealed. Jesus tells of the fulfilment of Isaiah’s words that we heard this morning of the lame walking, the blind seeing, the deaf hearing and other prophecies fulfilled, but significantly there is no mention of vengeance and God’s retribution to come. It was this kind of Messiah that John was expecting.
When I first came to this parish over 12 months ago I was moved by this beautiful crucifix behind me, over the altar rail. Wonderfully carved with the words beneath it “So God loved the world”. This was the God that Jesus the Messiah came to reveal.
For the answer to our problems, to the world’s problems is love. Don’t take offence at this and what you see in the way my life is lived Jesus says. If you don’t take offence, if you don’t seek to flee from the challenge this way opens up, you will be transformed
Transformation – greatest miracle is the transformation of the human heart. No other way to do this than by costly love. It will happen though because God is love and our lives are part of the story of God and in this we will find our fulfilment.
The world is being sorely tested to combine in unity, in self-sacrificial love to face our world’s problems. There is urgency yet also a need for faithful patience to which today’s epistle from the letter James reflects upon with deep wisdom.
So we live in mystery and there is no greater mystery than transformation of the human heart as this lovely poem by Wally Swist identifies and is the reason for our rejoicing today.
It’s called:
What we ever really need to know
All we need to know
is that Magdalene, Mary, the mother
of James, and Salome came
in the darkness before morning to
His tomb to anoint the body with
spices and oils. That alone
is beautiful. Just the thought of
anointing the dead body of Jesus
makes us pause with astonishment —
His body battered and bloodied,
then crucified, the five wounds
from the nails in His hands and feet,
the lance mark near His heart.
All we need to know
is that Joseph of Arimathea removed
Jesus from the cross, wrapped
His body in linen, and placed it in
a tomb, which was cut into rock,
like a cave, that a stone, weighing
possibly as much as two tons, was
lifted into the opening, on grooves,
upon which it could be slid into
place, only by several strong men.
All we need to know
is that Magdalene, Mary, the mother
of James, and Salome found the stone
rolled away, the body of Jesus gone,
an empty pile of bloody linens
in which the body had lain.
All we need to know
is that they were all startled into tears
by the depth of their amazement,
that they probably placed their baskets
of oils and spices on the rocky ground,
that they embraced each other,
that they knew what they knew,
that there was a plenitude and
a providence in the joy of their knowing.
All we need to know
is that as the sun rose out of the darkness
the light entered the cave in the rock,
that as the sun had risen,
so had Christ, that the women could
be seen dancing, their arms raised,
crying out, Hallelujah, that as they
danced and sang, what had transpired
from the spiritual alchemy in that cave
was such that His rising up was also
our ascension if we only were so bold
to believe in such a revolutionary act
as our own hearts opening in resurrection
within us, resolutely without question,
opening to Christ consciousness, opening
to I art thou, to such an inviolate
unspoken mystery, the whirling
cosmos inside me and you, to awaken to
what is beatific, as was the light
Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James,
and Salome danced in, which
is really all that we ever need to know.
(Wally Swist)