Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice
Category: Advent
Speaker: The Rev. John Shellito
Sermon December 13, 2015 Rev. John Shellito
Gracious God you are coming to us in care and compassion. Speak your word of courage and trust into our lives as we prepare for your arrival. In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Inspirer. Amen.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry”
Rejoice in Latin is “Gaudate”—this is also the name some give to this Sunday, our third of Advent. This is often honored with a pink candle in an Advent wreath, like a liturgical breath mark in our practice of preparation—a break when we can pause to notice that we are more than halfway through. Some also associate the rose color with the mother of our Lord—Mary. The encouragement to “Rejoice” is found in our reading from Philippians, and is present in our recessional today. In older tradition it was a regular part of the sung introit as the Priest made their way to the altar for the start of Communion.
And yet, sometimes this encouragement to rejoice can feel difficult. What if we don’t want to be known for our gentleness? What if “do not worry” doesn’t feel like a viable option where we are right now? While we can always take a deep breath and find something to offer up in prayer, whether a thanksgiving or a petition—we may not feel like that is an authentic course of action. There are times where it can feel like we are saying our prayers, rather than praying our prayers. It is vulnerable to speak about our hopes and dreams, especially when opening up about them means we might actually act on those words, or find those words acting on us. Maybe part of being human is recognizing that sometimes our prayers can show us something about our deeper motivations, and we can use that information to reflect on whether those motivations are in line with the divine process, or not. We are always invited to be students of our own story, and God’s role in it.
So, if we are in a place of preparing for Christ in this season, I wonder if we can play with some of the images John the Baptist has given us concerning the role of the coming Messiah. For me right now, this truth-telling wild man might be just what I need in my Advent journey, to shake things up, to call me out if I am getting too comfortable, and to invite me out into the wilderness to pray. He told us that the Messiah would come after him, Baptizing with the Holy Spirit and with fire. He told us the Messiah would bring a winnowing fork, to gather the grain into his granary. This is Christ’s work even now, and we are called to prepare for it to be renewed in us this Christmas, when we celebrate the incarnation of God into our world, and into our lives.
So, what exactly does it mean to have a Messiah who is carrying a winnowing fork? In the ancient world, winnowing followed threshing. Threshing followed harvesting. The harvested grain would be threshed to separate the grain from the stalk. It could be beaten by hand with a flail, or, it could be crushed with an animal treading it out, perhaps with that same animal dragging a large piece of lumber, or metal, in a kind of rudimentary sled, where a farmer might stand to help break apart the grain and the stalk. This is why both Deuteronomy and Paul remind us to “not muzzle an ox when its treading out the grain”—because the animal was helping with the threshing process, and the ancient writers wanted to make sure that the creature could be nourished while it went about its work.
But, once the threshing was complete, the threshing floor still had a pile of grains and stalks that needed to be sorted out. Winnowing was an efficient strategy for this sorting process. A winnowing fork was used to toss both stalks and grain into the air—threshing floors were open air structures, designed without a ceiling, precisely so that the stalks could be carried away by the wind, while the grains (being denser and smaller) would naturally fall back down again, landing close to where they had been thrown. Threshing floor locations were often chosen for their proximity to wind—whether on a hilltop or in a place where a breeze was reliably passing through.
The image of tossing both valuable grain and useless stalk toward the heavens could almost have the quality of an offering—lifting both the wheat and the chaff of our lives so that the wind of the Spirit can carry away that which is not needed for our abundant life. We are told that the Messiah does this so that the fruits of our faith can remain and be used for breaking bread with others, or, for planting a seed for future growth when the time is right.
I think that this can be true on a communal scale, as well as a personal scale. The Messiah we await had an essential role in winnowing the tradition that had been centered around Solomon’s Temple, as diverse communities established new centers for worship across the Roman world. Even today, Christ is engaged in winnowing our tradition, to preserve that which is essential, and nourishing, and to let the breeze carry away that which is no longer needed. Our building renovation can be one part of this winnowing, on a decades-long timescale—to keep that which is essential to our sacred space, and to say goodbye to that which has served its purpose well, but is no longer needed for our journey as a church.
Taking a personal perspective on this image from John the Baptist, I imagine the movement of the Spirit as a steady and strong wind, blowing across the harvest of our lives, where we can imagine a young Christ launching both the fruits of faithfulness and the unnecessary baggage of our mistakes heavenward. I wonder if we can let the God who fearfully and wonderfully created us, also be the God who purifies our life by winnowing out that which is no longer needed for our nourishment or for our ongoing life in relationship with others. Can we let the Spirit carry away the mistakes of our lives like those dried and browning stalks? Can we see that Christ is gathering the seeds of our fruitful abiding in care and compassion, to gather those valuable seeds into the granary, whether for nourishment or planting?
It is always so easy to focus on the difficulties in life. There is so much busy-ness this season—I’m sure one could create an endless to-do list if one wanted to. My question is whether we can embrace the opportunities for rejoicing and for prayer in the midst of the work that needs doing. We can work efficiently, making use of the technology and the time we have, and we can also recognize that Christ is coming to join us where we are. The arrival of the incarnate Word is a promise that the Lord will rejoice with us at the harvest of even our smallest seeds of faith. Philippians reminds us:
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry”
Amen.