Isaiah 61:1-11
How many of you know the adage, “Wear clean
underwear, because you never know when you’ll be in an accident”? While I do
not want to know how many of you follow that rule, I suspect many of you think
about what you wear each day. Am I dressed or ready for the car to break down?
Am I dressed or ready if I had to sit for a while and wait? Am I dressed and
ready for walking around the store, getting gas, watching a toddler, changing a
tire, having lunch with a friend?
This is a question I ask myself all the time.
Especially as the number of clothes I have that fit begins to dwindle, I ask
myself, “Is this what I want to be wearing for a hospital visit? For an
emergency call? For pastoral authority in the office?” Sometimes I’m not
dressed, or I don’t feel like I am, for what I need to do.
On Friday, after the initial shock of the news out
of Connecticut, I was thinking about opening the church into the evening for
prayers. When I decided to do that, I was wearing jeans and a sweater. A fine
outfit for sitting in the office and writing a sermon, not what I wanted to be
wearing when we were opening the church and I was talking with the people who
came in and out all day. “I’m not dressed for this”- I kept thinking. What I
really meant was- I’m not ready. I’m not prepared for this.
This is not the first time this has happened. Someone
here once told me- it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing, just show up. Good
advice, but I know I’m not the only one to whom this happens. How many of you
felt overwhelmed this week- either by the season, by events, or by memories? How
many of you have had a call during the day or in the night- for which you
weren’t dressed, for which you weren’t ready?
Thus, in considering that the third Sunday in Advent
is Joy Sunday, I don’t feel dressed for it. If we had colored candles, this
would be the pink one (the others being blue or purple). Joy Sunday! And that’s
what the task that the prophet Isaiah delivers to Israel and that is also
communicated to us, as our task, through Jesus. It is our task to seek joy, to
be found by joy, to communicate joy.
Isaiah says the role of the prophet, which is now
the mantle that goes over all of Israel and extends to all who live by faith is
this: The spirit of the Lord God is upon
me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the
oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the
day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who
mourn in Zion --- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness
instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. (61:1-3)
Do you feel dressed to do that? To declare the year
of the Lord’s favor? To bring good news to the oppressed and to comfort all who
mourn? Do you feel ready to proclaim joy?
Joy is not happiness. It is one of the fruits of the
Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness)- not
something we can produce ourselves, but something that God brings forth in us.
Joy has the twinge of the fight, of how far it took to get there, it is hard earned
and treasured. Joy is the light that shines in the darkness and shines that
focused beam, making us aware of how dark things can be. How can we be ready
for joy? How can we be ready to proclaim it? How do we dress for this?
The only way to be dressed for joy is to be clothed
in Christ. To be clothed in the
experience of weeping at the death of a friend, to know betrayal, to have eaten
good-bye meals, to have people turn away from grace, to feel forsaken… and to
still taste resurrection, to still hope in return and restoration, to trust in
the possibility of peace, to rest in the light of Love.
The only way to be dressed for joy is to be clothed
in Christ, clothing which comes with all of these experiences, the accessories
of faith, if you will- the very real experiences of this very real life. Joy is not the absence of suffering,
but the presence of God.
I
cannot tell you why bad things happen. I cannot tell you that we will live to
see the good that God will bring from some of the tragedies of our lifetimes. I
cannot undo the exile of the Israelites and I cannot redo Friday with a
different outcome.
God
is not the “why” of tragedy and devastation. God is the how- the how we get
through it. God is the where- consoling to the grieving, receiving the dying,
walking with the confused and afraid. God is the who- the One who made all
things and loves all creation. God is the when- a mystery to us, but a promise
of renewal and bringer of unexpected joy. God is the what- the what we shall
wear, the what we shall say, the what we shall turn to.
When
there is no “why”, there is a Holy Who/Where/How/When/What that clothes us in
grace, that dresses us in mercy, that accessorizes us with joy. We come as we
are to God’s dressing room- the baptismal font, Holy Communion, a conversation
with a friend, a time of prayer- and we are draped in Christ.
What
do you wear to do that proclaiming, to be a priest of the Lord, a minister
proclaiming God’s favor (as Isaiah says you are)?
(Make
the sign of the cross). You wear the sign of the cross and…
There! You’re dressed for proclamation. You are
wearing the promise of the Holy Spirit, the mark of Christ crucified and risen,
the symbol of hope for the whole world. You will never be more ready to bear
joy. You will not find anything that fits you better. There’s never been a more
graceful fit, a closer fit, a more beautiful shape. The cross is the clothing
we’ve got… its emptiness, its inability to be the final word, its attempt to
stop the Word of Life… it is how God dresses us to go out into the world. The
sign of the cross is our clothing for grieving and for rejoicing, for sorrow
and for joy. The sign of the cross is our Christmas sweater, our Easter suit,
our Epiphany workout clothes, our Pentecost learning outfit, our clothing for
waiting, for hoping, for proclaiming.
It
is Advent and we wait. We wait for a great deal, including joy. But we’re
dressed for it, when it comes. Saved and clothed in righteousness by Christ’s
own faithfulness, we are dressed to heal, to share hope, to be a part of the
work of the kingdom. In the midst of tragedy and hope, we are dressed, in the
cross, to seek and to be found by joy. Amen.
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