Pink Hearts
A Sermon Preached by the Rev’d Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on December 16, 2007 – the Third Sunday of Advent
One of the most exciting trips I’ve ever taken brought me to Israel. If you ever have the change to visit the Holy Land, do not let it pass you by. You will come back forever transformed by the sights of the bible, by the knowledge that you set your feet on the very street on which Jesus’ sandals trod, touched the very temple where the apostles prayed, and perhaps view the very rock which saw the shadow of Abraham’s hand as he took his knife to slay his son Isaac. In the north, in Galilee, you find places of unspeakable beauty, the blue Sea of Galilee surrounded by the rolling green hills.
From the heights of Mount Tabor, you can behold the far expanses of towns and fields, lush with people and crops. When you travel south, you move into the barren wilderness.
Of all the places in Israel, nothing is as desolate as the deserts surrounding the Dead Sea. As you stand in the dry wilderness and look out over the salty waters of the Dead Sea, you look up at the bleak stark hills and across empty miles of wastes which cannot sustain life. The salt water is useless, the soil is dry and worthless, the hills are bare of grass and trees. I, for one, was grateful to get back on the tour bus and head up the mountains to the comfort of our Jerusalem hotel with a ready supply of water, a tasty meal and the comfort of a soft bed. I, for one, would not want to make the desert my home.
Yet as I look around me, I find that many of us are living in an emotional state that resembles those dry waste lands of Israel. The trees are bare of all leaves and their drab grey and browns do little to uplift our spirits. While the snow looks beautiful as it falls, give it a day and the soot turns the lovely white into a dull gray. The uplifting blue skies are hidden by clouds. The sun appears every so briefly during the day and all of us can feel the intrusion of the wintertime blues.
For many of us, this holiday season brings us terrible burdens. There just do not seem to be enough hours to bake all the cookies, clean and decorate the house, put up the tree, finish all the shopping and wrapping for those perfect Christmas gifts, send out the cards and attend all the Christmas parties. Somewhere in the picking up the kids from an early dismissal due to two inches of snow, the realization that no store will have the perfect gift for our child, the anticipation of preparing a Christmas dinner after an exhausting week of gift wrapping, cookie baking and snow shoveling, we realize that our smiles are empty, our hearts are breaking and we would love to find the comfort of a log cabin where we can curl up with a good book or movie, near a warm fireplace, with our ideal lover next to us and enjoy the intimacy of a quiet night.
Rather than singing: Have a holly jolly Christmas, it’s the best time of the year.
We would rather sing: You’ll be doin all right, with your Christmas of white, But Ill have a blue, blue Christmas
When I look over today’s readings, I think that many of us can identify with John the Baptist, locked up in a prison. But the bars that contain us come in the form of fulfilling the expectations of others, with our own needs totally unmet and time coming to a crashing halt as December 25 draws ever closer.
I think we can all identify with John the Baptist sending for news of where the Messiah can be in the world around us, a world filled with hustle and bustle and none of the peace we so yearn for at this season. Like John in prison, we too can find ourselves trapped in expectations laid on us, duties we take on ourselves; situations in which we might find ourselves hopeless to find a solution. Like John locked in his cell, we can find ourselves burdened with losses perhaps too heavy to carry, the gnawing pain of situations we are powerless to change, the loss of loved ones who have died either recently or in the past, the distance from family and friends when we would have them close to us. In our prison cells, we can send word to Jesus and ask him what can we expect of him? What word can he speak that would bring us comfort?
Jesus says to us what he said to John’s disciples.
“Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” These are the very words we also heard from Isaiah: “the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”
Jesus is saying that the time is changing, that the world is shifting and God has drawn close to the people. In the midst of all our busyness, we all need to find a place to sit alone for a while, even if only for five minutes. If we regularly sit alone, we need to reach out to someone, to touch the life of someone else, to show compassion for someone in need. Whatever we are doing that is driving us crazy, we need to stop and do the opposite.
Then, in the midst of the frantic days before Christmas, we can retreat to the source, to the love of our souls, to the peace seeking to be born in our hearts. For the Christ who is coming is not to be found in Christmas trees, gifts, lights and cookies. Wonderful as these things are, yet more wonderful is the one who wants to open our eyes to a vision of peace we cannot imagine, to unloose our tongues to sing God’s song, to steady our feet to walk in God’s ways, and to establish us into those right relationships that herald the dawn of God’s presence among us.
Thy kingdom come, dear Christ, thy kingdom come. Fill our hearts with the joy we so need to balance our sadness. Touch us. In the coldness of this third Sunday of Advent, kindle a fire that will make our hearts glow. That will turn us a wonderful shade of pink.
A Sermon Preached by the Rev’d Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on December 16, 2007 – the Third Sunday of Advent
One of the most exciting trips I’ve ever taken brought me to Israel. If you ever have the change to visit the Holy Land, do not let it pass you by. You will come back forever transformed by the sights of the bible, by the knowledge that you set your feet on the very street on which Jesus’ sandals trod, touched the very temple where the apostles prayed, and perhaps view the very rock which saw the shadow of Abraham’s hand as he took his knife to slay his son Isaac. In the north, in Galilee, you find places of unspeakable beauty, the blue Sea of Galilee surrounded by the rolling green hills.
From the heights of Mount Tabor, you can behold the far expanses of towns and fields, lush with people and crops. When you travel south, you move into the barren wilderness.
Of all the places in Israel, nothing is as desolate as the deserts surrounding the Dead Sea. As you stand in the dry wilderness and look out over the salty waters of the Dead Sea, you look up at the bleak stark hills and across empty miles of wastes which cannot sustain life. The salt water is useless, the soil is dry and worthless, the hills are bare of grass and trees. I, for one, was grateful to get back on the tour bus and head up the mountains to the comfort of our Jerusalem hotel with a ready supply of water, a tasty meal and the comfort of a soft bed. I, for one, would not want to make the desert my home.
Yet as I look around me, I find that many of us are living in an emotional state that resembles those dry waste lands of Israel. The trees are bare of all leaves and their drab grey and browns do little to uplift our spirits. While the snow looks beautiful as it falls, give it a day and the soot turns the lovely white into a dull gray. The uplifting blue skies are hidden by clouds. The sun appears every so briefly during the day and all of us can feel the intrusion of the wintertime blues.
For many of us, this holiday season brings us terrible burdens. There just do not seem to be enough hours to bake all the cookies, clean and decorate the house, put up the tree, finish all the shopping and wrapping for those perfect Christmas gifts, send out the cards and attend all the Christmas parties. Somewhere in the picking up the kids from an early dismissal due to two inches of snow, the realization that no store will have the perfect gift for our child, the anticipation of preparing a Christmas dinner after an exhausting week of gift wrapping, cookie baking and snow shoveling, we realize that our smiles are empty, our hearts are breaking and we would love to find the comfort of a log cabin where we can curl up with a good book or movie, near a warm fireplace, with our ideal lover next to us and enjoy the intimacy of a quiet night.
Rather than singing: Have a holly jolly Christmas, it’s the best time of the year.
We would rather sing: You’ll be doin all right, with your Christmas of white, But Ill have a blue, blue Christmas
When I look over today’s readings, I think that many of us can identify with John the Baptist, locked up in a prison. But the bars that contain us come in the form of fulfilling the expectations of others, with our own needs totally unmet and time coming to a crashing halt as December 25 draws ever closer.
I think we can all identify with John the Baptist sending for news of where the Messiah can be in the world around us, a world filled with hustle and bustle and none of the peace we so yearn for at this season. Like John in prison, we too can find ourselves trapped in expectations laid on us, duties we take on ourselves; situations in which we might find ourselves hopeless to find a solution. Like John locked in his cell, we can find ourselves burdened with losses perhaps too heavy to carry, the gnawing pain of situations we are powerless to change, the loss of loved ones who have died either recently or in the past, the distance from family and friends when we would have them close to us. In our prison cells, we can send word to Jesus and ask him what can we expect of him? What word can he speak that would bring us comfort?
Jesus says to us what he said to John’s disciples.
“Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” These are the very words we also heard from Isaiah: “the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”
Jesus is saying that the time is changing, that the world is shifting and God has drawn close to the people. In the midst of all our busyness, we all need to find a place to sit alone for a while, even if only for five minutes. If we regularly sit alone, we need to reach out to someone, to touch the life of someone else, to show compassion for someone in need. Whatever we are doing that is driving us crazy, we need to stop and do the opposite.
Then, in the midst of the frantic days before Christmas, we can retreat to the source, to the love of our souls, to the peace seeking to be born in our hearts. For the Christ who is coming is not to be found in Christmas trees, gifts, lights and cookies. Wonderful as these things are, yet more wonderful is the one who wants to open our eyes to a vision of peace we cannot imagine, to unloose our tongues to sing God’s song, to steady our feet to walk in God’s ways, and to establish us into those right relationships that herald the dawn of God’s presence among us.
Thy kingdom come, dear Christ, thy kingdom come. Fill our hearts with the joy we so need to balance our sadness. Touch us. In the coldness of this third Sunday of Advent, kindle a fire that will make our hearts glow. That will turn us a wonderful shade of pink.
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