Both my husband and I were sick this week, with some of those symptoms we've all memorized and learned to dread: fever, chills, headache, cough. For five days straight we ate soup and crackers, napping mid-afternoon, doing little work.
My birthday was Thursday. Birthday dinner: half a can of soup. The big activity was registering for Medicare. I was in bed, asleep, by seven.
The one other big activity this week was monitoring latest attempts to overturn PA election results. I was stunned to see that the PA House Republican caucus submitted an amicus brief in support of a suit by Texas and other states challenging PA election results. Every one of those legislators was returned to office in part thanks to those challenged ballots. The PA default position to other states has always been "stay out of our business." I've been grieving to see names of leaders I've met with supporting efforts to discard millions of PA ballots, including my own.
The word for Advent Three is Joy. I confess, that's been a hard one for me this week.
We had planned to gather today with children and grandchildren at Conowingo Dam to watch eagles and herons and eat some birthday cake. Not a normal celebration, but at least a remembrance. That idea was cancelled.
I had also planned to take a day to visit local shops, finish Christmas shopping, then hike along a stretch of river to look for winter ducks. Instead, I ordered some books from Hearts and Minds Bookstore (spoiler alert!) and decided this will be an even more minimal Christmas than planned.
This year we've all had our plans rethought, and scrapped, and rethought again.
Reading in the opening pages of Matthew this week I was struck by Joseph. His plans were set aside, then revised, then set aside again. He held them lightly and listened well to dreams: three in two chapters.
Bethlehem, Egypt, Nazareth.
As he traveled, protecting his wife and child, he no doubt heard murmurs of sorrow: children massacred in the wake of Herod's jealous pride. Refugees camping on the banks of the Nile.
We struggle to live with our own fragile plans, but carry with us the knowledge of others whose stories led in different directions. Every day now more Americans die of Covid than died in the Twin Towers on 9-11. Globally the grief is even greater. Covid, war, poverty, displacement.
What place does joy have in that?
In 1942, Dietrich Bonhoeffer write a circular Advent letter to a band of fellow pastors who stood together in opposition to Hitler and the Nazi regime. The letter began with a list of their friends who had died since the previous letter: ten names, then "“Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads”.
From there he explored what it means to serve the Lord with joy, and probed the danger of becoming numb in the face of so much sorrow and pain:
One person said to me recently, “I pray every day that I may not become numb.” That is by all means a good prayer.
And yet we must guard ourselves against confusing ourselves with Christ. Christ endured all suffering and all human guilt himself in full measure — indeed, this was what made him Christ, that he and he alone bore it all. But Christ was able to suffer along with others because he was simultaneously able to redeem from suffering. Out of his love and power to redeem people came his power to suffer with them.
We are not called to take upon ourselves the suffering of all the world; by ourselves we are fundamentally not able to suffer with others at all, because we are not able to redeem. But the wish to suffer with them by one’s own power will inevitably be crushed into resignation. We are called only to gaze full of joy at the One who in reality suffered with us and became the Redeemer.
It's easy to see the Christmas story as just that, a story. An irrelevant tale.
Yet across centuries and continents, people like Bonhoeffer have found comfort, sustenance, even joy in considering the mysteries of God born as human child.
I have always loved Hebrew 11 and 12, the cloud of witnesses that suffered in faith, some with surprising miracles and wonderful escapes, but others with less joyful outcomes:
I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.
Faith does not promise a positive outcome. Not in this life. I have a brother who suffers from grave mental illness and has for decades. His faith has always been stronger than mine. His suffering breaks my heart.
Bonhoeffer's faith did not deliver him from the Nazi prison. He was executed just weeks before the war ended, at the age of 39.
This pandemic will take from us people of great faith alongside the scoffers who refuse to wear masks and cough in others' faces.
Throughout it all, we're invited to joy:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
I confess, in these grey, wintry days it's easy to grow weary and lose heart.
Praying for myself and others on my birthday, I came across a new recording posted just the day before by two artists I encountered through the Porter's Gate project, singer-songwriter Liz Vice and guitarist Madison Cunningham.
I can't listen to the song without crying, and it says nothing at all about joy, yet it captures for me Bonhoeffer's wisdom:
We are not called to take upon ourselves the suffering of all the world; by ourselves we are fundamentally not able to suffer with others at all . . . . We are called only to gaze full of joy at the One who in reality suffered with us and became the Redeemer.
I pray we will rest in that reality in this strange Advent season, and know the joy that echoes in these moving harmonies.
