Advent IV
Eileen Scully, Church of St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener
When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.
Advent is a time of holy waiting. Yes, it is the season of peace, of hope, of joy, and of love, and we light a new candle each week to remember and to reflect on these gifts. Walking around city streets and in shops and city halls and recreation centres, seasonal decorations often include these words: peace, hope, joy, love. This is what the season is supposed to be about, and these words speak to what we yearn for and to that to which we know we ought to aspire. The gift-giving preparations in even the most secular of households very often are expressions of the joy and love experienced in friendships and family.
The counter cultural message of faith in this season is something far far more. Because we are celebrating the gifts of God’s peace, of God’s hope, of God’s joy, and of God’s love. These gifts of God touch in to the yearnings of all people, and of all creation truly, for these gifts.
We do a really good number in ourselves all the time by confusing our desires with God’s actual gifts. As gifts of God, true peace, true hope, true joy and true love are far more than answers to my immediate yearnings for something I want, even when that something I want may seem quite virtuous. I want joy in my life. I might think that if I get what I want for Christmas, that joy will be fulfilled. That’s essentially saying that I know what I need in order to be fulfilled. Frankly, I need a course correction on my desires rather frequently, and Advent is a really good time for that. Especially in these last few days of Advent.
God tells me to wait. My yearning for joy will only be complete when I immerse myself in God’s time and know, truly, that God will satisfy my desires in God’s own time, with more than I can ask or imagine. Advent is waiting season that prepares us for gifts far greater than we can give ourselves and each other. Profoundly counter-cultural, this season reminds us that if we think that we can actually satisfy our own desires, we might really want to interrogate those desires.
So many of our desires are indeed virtuous. Who here doesn’t want an end to suffering, to war, to homelessness and food insecurity? Who doesn’t want relief from the stresses of increasingly competitive workplaces and the needs always always always to be learning new technologies that will leave us behind if we don’t adapt? Who isn’t tempted to yearn for the good old days? And who isn’t tempted to desire some strong leader to come and make everything better for us?
The psalm we just heard this morning raises these pleas: Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel… Stir up your might, and come to save us! Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved. But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself. Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved!
We get it, don’t we.
And yet, if we don’t wait attentively on God, we might miss God’s response to our prayerful yearnings. If we don’t intentionally put aside the rush of the season around us, the intensity of the pressures that come with it, we might not notice that God’s answer is given in the quiet stillness of promise. God’s own answer to the call for a strong saviour is that a very young woman of no earthly importance will give birth to a child who will know the difference between good and evil soon after he is weaned and eating curds and honey.
One of the main problems our society has, which I fear is becoming more and more entrenched in the desires and yearning of so many, is that we tend to confuse strength with forceful power, or worse, with brutality. The signs of this confusion are all around us and some of them are so jarring that they seem to be caricatures. But the destruction that they wreck on the world is no caricature, it is real. The Department of War. The exercise of brutal power to destroy real lives, be they on boats in the Caribbean or in makeshift tents in Gaza. The ignoring of the rights of Indigenous people to steward the lands and waters that they know to be gifts of the Creator. All of these ways of forceful power laugh in the face of God as they presume themselves to be the real rulers of the world.
What is particularly dangerous is the effects these powers have on us. We might ourselves start to view the virtue of strength in the power to get one’s own way over others, or to erase or ‘cancel’ those pesky people whom we don’t understand or aren’t comfortable with. Boys and men have it particularly hard. Is there any antidote to toxic masculinity, the type of use of power that I’m talking about here?
Perhaps if we wait on God, we might find ourselves with a companion of a different sort of masculinity. When we first encounter him, he’s ready to take decisive action in the wake of the upsetting news of his fiancée’s pregnancy. This is Not what he signed up for. This is Not the girl he thought he wanted to marry, if the shame of this strange pregnancy is to cause shame on him and his family. But God speaks to Joseph in that most quietly steady of ways that we hear about in the Bible: through a dream. And the effects on Joseph are to slow down, to reassess the situation in light of what God has revealed, and to act.
Joseph’s part in God’s story is to wait on God and to listen for God, and then to respond from God’s leading with quiet love, hope, peace, and joy.
We don’t hear a lot about Joseph and we hear even less from him. He really has no words in the biblical accounts. As the Holy Family, Mary and Joseph even before Jesus’ birth model for us a different way of walking through this world, waiting on the power of God. In this holy family, Mary gets all the words, Mary is the prophet with the power of speech in a culture where grown women, let alone adolescent girls, were not expected to have voice. And Joseph, well, he’s a man of action, and one who is very different from a comic book or contemporary political Action Man. He takes action: he risks everything – his own and his family’s status in the community, his livelihood, his security – to lovingly protect and nurture this child and his mother, this child who will indeed grow to know good and evil by the time he is weaned, and whose own use of power will always be to heal, to protect the vulnerable, to confront what causes suffering.
God has a way of messing with our presumptions about gender roles; and God has a way of meeting us as who we are, along the spectrum of gender, and helping us to grow into the fulness of who God wants us to be. In this story of Joseph’s quiet conversion and growth in love to put these vulnerable ones first in his priority of care, we can see God at work, as much as we can when God gives Mary her voice.
For several years now I have made my own Christmas cards using an image from a 13th century European illuminated, or illustrated, book of prayers. In the image, we see the Holy Family at rest following the birth of Jesus. Joseph, depicted according to tradition with a long beard sits cradling the infant in his arms, with a look of tenderness. The tenderness of the depiction is in sharp contrast to notions of toxic masculinity and destructive power. The power of the story in in this tenderness and the re-creation of a different masculinity in Joseph. It is a profound and prophetic witness to God’s own power and a model for all men, and truly all people. I am highlighting men, though, because I think it is confoundingly difficult to be a good man these days when we are so lacking in contemporary societal and cultural models of what men can be in their use of power. This tenderness is powerful.
In the 13th century illustration, Mary is in bed, reading a book, likely intended to be the Scriptures.
May we continue to hold a time of waiting in these few days remaining in Advent. Don’t rush them. Look for the tender places in need of care. Don’t let brutality continue to colonize the meaning of strength. Find strength and courage in waiting on God; you may find new stories and new models to guide you as you walk in love, hope, joy, and peace.
Amen.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.