St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen, Jersey City NJ
December 17, 2017
Year B: The Third
Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Canticle 15
1 Thessalonians
5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28
Smallness
“Rejoice
always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the
will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
Today is the Third
Sunday of Advent, often called “Gaudete Sunday,” from a Latin word meaning,
“rejoice.”
The
change in color from blue to rose is meant to signal that, ready or not, our
Advent time of waiting and preparation is almost over.
Today
we begin to shift our attention from John the Baptist, that fiery prophet of
repentance and baptism, and focus on Mary, the young woman from the countryside
who said yes to God and changed everything.
God
is about to come among us in a new way!
Rejoice!
I
started today’s sermon with words from today’s second lesson, from the First
Letter of St. Paul to the Thessalonians:
“Rejoice always,
pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of
God in Christ Jesus for you.”
Rejoice always.
Easier
said than done, right?
Especially
these days with our many personal troubles and fears, with our incessant
24-hour news cycle, for many of us it’s hard enough to rejoice sometimes, hard enough to rejoice once
in a while, let alone rejoice always.
We
certainly hear a lot of rejoicing going on in Mary’s Song, the Magnificat, which we said today in place
of the psalm and we hear a lot of rejoicing in the hymn, Tell Out My Soul, which is a poetic paraphrase of the Magnificat.
In
the Gospel of Luke, pregnant Mary sings her song while she is visiting her
kinswoman Elizabeth, who, it turns out, is also miraculously pregnant -
pregnant with the future John the Baptist.
Thinking
about that scene, I’m struck by the contrast between this intimate but not so
unusual encounter – two pregnant women sharing the excitement of new life – and
the big words of Mary’s Song:
“God
has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. God
has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty.”
“Tell
out my soul, the greatness of the Lord!”
And,
I think it’s that contrast between the small intimate encounter between two pregnant
women and the big words of Mary’s Song – it’s that contrast that shows us the
way to rejoicing sometimes and, maybe, even rejoicing always.
Because
the truth is that God’s greatness is found most easily, most clearly, in smallness
– as small as a baby being knitted together in the womb – as small as a feeding
trough meant for animals but doubling as a crib.
God’s
greatness is found most easily, most clearly, in smallness – as small as
holding the hand of one we love, as small as half a room in a nursing home – as
small as a last breath.
Rejoice
– because God’s greatness is found in smallness.
I
haven’t mentioned it lately, but we continue to offer our monthly healing
service over at the nursing home on Montgomery Street – and continue to pray at
all of our services for its residents and employees.
To
be honest, after four years or so of going over there, it’s become kind of
routine for us. Gail, Vanessa, and I know what works and what doesn’t. We know
who’s likely to interrupt the service by yelling or wisecracking and we know
who’s going to sleep through the whole service.
Occasionally
one of the employees at the nursing home will call me, asking me to come over
and offer “Last Rites” for a resident who’s life is drawing to a close.
This
never becomes easy, exactly, but by now I’ve done it so many times that it also
has become routine.
Anyway,
a couple of weeks ago, I got one of those calls. As I made my way over there, I
imagined the scene I was about to walk into: probably a very old and sick
person lying in bed, unconscious, approaching the end of life, with no one else
in the room.
But,
when I got to the room, I was startled to find a young woman – certainly
younger than me - lying in the bed – her eyelids heavy, drifting in and out of
consciousness, but still pretty alert.
The dying woman’s
mother and sister were there, clearly exhausted by grief, but, and this is a
little hard to explain, but they were so still,
so seemingly grace-filled and peaceful, even in the face of such sadness, such
loss.
They didn’t really
need the prayers, the ritual.
To
be honest, I had walked into that room pretty much on autopilot, but I was
awakened to see the greatness of God in the smallness of shallow breaths and
the determination to face - really face - something so tragic, so
heartbreaking.
After I left them,
still a little dazed, I stopped at the nurses’ station and asked if it would be
OK to drop in and say hi to a resident who I visited from time to time. I’ll
call her Maria, though that wasn’t her name.
Maria, who was in
her early 70’s, had attended our monthly services from the start and I could
tell that, unlike many in our congregation, she was still alert and was particularly
interested in what we were doing and saying.
For most of the
residents, the music is their favorite part – but Maria enjoyed my little
homilies the most – so I liked her right away!
Anyway, after a
while I began making trips over to the nursing home to visit Maria in her room
– actually her half of a room, the size of a modest closet, really – and
learning her remarkable story.
She had grown up
an only child, kind of solitary, and, she entered the convent when she was really
still just a girl, as was the custom in the Catholic Church as recently as the
1960s.
Like many nuns of her
generation, she eventually left the convent, though she remained a deeply faithful
Catholic. She went on to pursue higher education in Biology, eventually earning
a PhD (with honors) from Cornell.
She went on to a
distinguished scientific career, running labs, traveling to conferences and
delivering papers, and so on.
(I know this
because she told me – and because she gave me her resume, maybe because she
thought I might not believe her!)
Then, her health
began to fail and one disaster after another befell her. Finally, more than
pretty much anybody I’ve ever met, she ended up losing everything – her home, her career, her books (a loss she mourned
especially deeply), and all of her money.
She ended up a
ward of the State (with a state-appointed guardian who had the power to approve
or disapprove every single expense, including even something as small as a pair
of shoes) and she ended up living in a half a room over at the nursing home.
She usually only
left the nursing home for doctor’s appointments.
Her life was one
of the most tragic I’ve ever encountered – and, one level, her life in the
nursing home was the pretty much the smallest
life I’ve ever experienced.
And, yet, she
remained a deeply faithful person, someone who, despite all of her misfortune,
still loved God – was, in fact, in love
with God.
She was a deep
pray-er and she was also a profound spiritual poet.
Here’s a sample:
I can only trust /
that you will continue to lead me / through that unquestioning trust / which is faith / it is only you, my Beloved /
who matter / all my gifts are given/ it is for you to decide / how and when /
they are to be used /for your glory / not mine.
During our times
together in her little half-room, sharing our stories, praying and having
communion together, I experienced God’s greatness.
Rejoice – because
God’s greatness is found in smallness.
That day a few
weeks ago, after I had given Last Rites to the dying young woman and when I
went to the nurses station to ask about visiting Maria, the women behind the
counter looked stricken and whispered, “Oh, she died, just a couple of days
ago. She had been sick, in the hospital.”
I felt my stomach
drop and tears come to my eyes. In the hours and days that followed, I felt
angry that no one had called me and I felt guilty that too much time had passed
since I had last checked in on her.
Most of all, I
felt profoundly sad that she died alone in the hospital and there was to be no
service, no memorial, to commemorate the end of this remarkable life.
But, the more I’ve
thought about it, I’ve concluded that, although I would have liked to pray with
her at least one more time, there was something fitting about her death, something
appropriate about the smallness of it.
She died alone,
alone with the God who loved her – the God she loved so deeply. And, that’s
more than enough.
Because the truth
is that God’s greatness is found most easily, most clearly, in smallness – as
small as a baby being knitted together in the womb – as small as a feeding
trough meant for animals but doubling as a crib.
God’s
greatness is found most easily, most clearly, in smallness – as small as
holding the hand of one we love, as small as half a room in a nursing home – as
small as a last breath.
“Rejoice always,
pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of
God in Christ Jesus for you.”
Amen.
Posts
