Third Sunday of Advent, December 13, 2020 – Isaiah 61:1-2A, 10-11; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

“Oh, somewhere … hearts are [happy] … and somewhere children shout, but there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out.” Those are the stirring last words of a poem by Earnest Thayer written at a time when people wrote and recited poetry for entertainment.

I chose it to begin my homily because, as I mentioned at the beginning of Mass, today is Gaudete Sunday - the Sunday of Joy. It seems to me that if you feel like I do, you feel like joy is in pretty short supply these days. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about what joy means in the sense of our scriptures and in the sense of our liturgy.

Most people would equate joy and happiness as synonyms. But they are really not. Happiness is a feeling. It’s the opposite side of the coin. The yin and yang of feelings are happiness and sadness. Joy sometimes seems like an emotion, but it’s really a conviction. And that’s what we need to talk about this morning. What is the conviction of joy? Let me give you an example.

One Christmas, when I was only ordained a year or two, I had to come back from my parents’ home to my parish in Staten Island to do a wake service. It spoiled my parents’ Christmas. It spoiled mine. I’m sure it spoiled, or at least I felt it spoiled, the Christmas of the people in that funeral parlor. I thought it was the worst thing that could possibly happen to a family, until it happened to my family.

When I was also still fairly young in the ministry, I had an elderly aunt who got very, very sick in the late autumn. Everybody was crossing their fingers and hoping that she would make it to Christmas. But she didn’t. She died just a few days before Christmas. And my family found themselves in the funeral parlor, at a wake, on Christmas day. We went out to dinner at a local diner. In reflecting back on the experience after it happened, I realized that, although we were sad at the loss of our loved one, and sad to have our Christmas changed in such a way, we were oddly at peace. We sat and talked, laughed in the diner. We greeted one another with affection as we came into the funeral parlor. Looking back on it, we began to realize that there was joy in all of that, despite the tremendous sadness.

So how do we deal with the kind of society - the kind of situation or situations - that this year has given to us as we approach the great celebration of Christmas? There are two things that our scriptures say today that are very important. The first one is test everything. Test everything. Keep what is good.

We are in time of testing and what we need to do is not immediately fold under pressure. But use our own common sense, and listen to the people who know what they’re talking about, to hold onto what is good after testing it. And there is so much that is still good. From the work of the medical professionals, to the kindness of strangers, to the generosity of our parishioners, and of Americans in general, there are so many things that are good if we take a few minutes to find them.

The second thing is what we find in today’s gospel. Now, John the Baptist appears in all four gospels. He takes center stage at the very beginning of Mark’s gospel. And Matthew and Luke, with slight differences, also place him near the beginning of their gospels. And he has his fifteen minutes of fame. But not so in John’s gospel. John’s gospel really dims the spotlight on John the Baptist. By beginning by saying, “There was a man named John, but he was not the Light. He was only a testifier to the Light.” That’s all. And then the story does not focus on what John does or what he preaches, but on his denials.
Isn’t it a strange thing to be asked, “Who are you?” and then answer by saying what you’re not? People don’t often do that. I mean, there were a couple of songs in the sixties and seventies that tried to do that. But it’s not easy to do - to define yourself by what you aren’t.

When people meet casually at a party or something, almost the first question adults ask other adults is, “What do you do for a living?” because it makes for nice small talk. We rarely if ever answer that question by a list of the things that we aren’t, but that’s what John the Baptist does. He says “I’m not the Messiah” and “I’m not the prophet” and “I’m not Elijah returned.” So finally, in desperation, the people say, “Then what are you?” And he says, “I’m a voice crying out in the wilderness.”

How often have you felt that you are a voice crying out in the wilderness? That nobody is listening. In today’s second reading, he insists that there is one who listens all the time. God listens. And how often have you tried to listen to voices that are in the wind? They’re hard to hear because of the babble all around us. It’s a very hard task, but a necessary one, to filter out the message - the message - from all the other messages that swirl around it. But the most important thing that John the Baptist says in today’s gospel is, “There is one among you whom you do not know.” One among you whom you do not know.

Now, historically speaking, Jesus was very likely in the crowd. After all, John and Jesus are relatives and contemporary in age –there’s only six months that separates them, one from another. Jesus very likely became a follower of John the Baptist when both of them were hale and hearty young men. He still was not known to anybody, but He was there.

Where is Jesus today? Our church tells us that there are two ways in which Jesus is present. The first is in the church itself. When we are in a church building, Jesus is always present in the tabernacle. So small. So unnoticed. So trivial. But there. Every place in the world where there is an open church and a tabernacle, Jesus is present.

Jesus is present right here with us this morning. He was present already when we listened to the revealed word. He’s present in me, according to church doctrine, by my ordination. He’s present on the altar when we are about to consecrate the bread and wine. He’s present right here in all of you. You and me, we make up Christ’s body here on earth, with Christ as our head. What’s the hymn we sing all the time? “Christ Has No Body Now But Yours.” He’s present in all of you. He’s present in the church throughout the world which, day in and day out, century in and century out, has been busy about the work of preaching, and teaching, and forgiving, and comforting, and healing. It goes on silently all the time, even when nobody is noticing.

But there’s another way, also, in which Christ is present. Christ was present in every isolation ward since the beginning of this pandemic, when people, deprived of the love of their closest relatives and friends, had Jesus by their side as they drew their last breath. Present in the caregivers, exhausted and fearful as they were, who stood by to hear the last words, and watched the last breath, of people who were deprived of everything else. Christ was there in them at the moment when Christ was about to welcome them home. Christ was there with them, the caregivers. Christ was in all those people who were injured or killed over the past year. As they lay bleeding and dying, Christ was present in them. Christ was present in the ones who came to rescue them and to quell the violence. Unless people drive Christ away, positively and deliberately, by vicious sin, Christ remains present in them, in the tasks they perform, in the persons that they are. Sadness is a feeling. Joy is a conviction.