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3rd Sunday of Advent (B)
I want you to think for a moment about your body and all its parts. Think of all the things that are going on in your body right now. For most of us, our ears are working if they are picking up the sounds coming out of my mouth. And then just imagine… the sound goes in your ears and is somehow sent to your brain which creates an idea from those sounds. And then, your brain kicks in and you may agree with the idea or not. And then the brain can send signals to make your mouth work in response.
Inside a human body are countless hidden, silent processes, all going on at once. How little of it we see from the outside. Cells are growing and dividing; enzymes are fighting viruses; nerves are carrying messages back and forth; cancerous cells are being attacked by the immune system; even while the hairs are falling out or greying, the body is digesting food, and is imperceptibly aging. Whether we are healthy or sick at a given moment depends largely on countless, silent, hidden processes.
You know, we rarely stop to think about all that... but it is amazing that most of the time it all works, from the moment we are conceived until the day we die. And if we ever did stop to think about it, as perhaps we are doing now, we would turn to our creator with deep gratitude and say “thanks!” Thank you that I am so wonderfully made… and thank you that it all generally works. That gratitude might even allow us to be less perturbed when everything isn’t working perfectly, because we would remain thankful that it generally does work.
I mention this because Saint Paul in the second reading today presents to the Thessalonians a concise statement of our Advent focus this year. He says:
The one who calls you is faithful…
In all circumstances give thanks…
May the God of peace make you holy…
Paul there makes clear that God is faithful to us… and the realization of that can brings us peace. One of the ways we begin to realize that is through being thankful… not just occasionally, but as Paul says “in all circumstances”… all the time. Our gratitude should extend to every moment. Imagine if we gave thanks to God for our intricately working bodies even just once a day, which is probably more than we do now… the amount of gratitude in our lives would grow quite a bit.
This is a story from the New York Times from three years ago. A few weeks before Christmas, Jessica was alone at the grave of her best friend Eve. Eve had been Jessica’s college roommate, the maid of honor at her wedding, and the closest thing she ever had to a sister. But the previous Christmas Eve, Eve was killed by an abusive ex-boyfriend who surprised her in her home. Jessica was devastated by Eve’s senseless death. Could she have done anything to prevent such a tragedy? Jessica was consumed with guilt and grief.
One thing Jessica was sure of: she wanted no part of Christmas this year… or ever again. So she sought to escape Christmas at Eve’s grave, where Jessica would often go when things got to be too much. Not far from Eve’s grave was a new headstone, in the shape of a fire truck. The picture of a little boy was carved into the side. He had died of cancer. Grass had not yet covered the earth where he had been buried.
A pick-up truck pulled up next to the boy’s grave. A man got out of the cab and went to the truck bed, where he began tinkering and hammering. Jessica presumed it was the boy’s father. An NFL game filled the air from the truck’s radio. Jessica couldn’t imagine this poor dad’s grief, facing his first Christmas without his young son. If anyone had reason to dread the holidays, this man did.
Jessica gave him his privacy, staying crouched behind Eve’s gravestone one row over, with her bouquet and hot latte. She tried not to be distracted by the football game or resent that she could not talk out loud to Eve as she did sometimes. When the coffee was gone and her bones were stiff and cold, Jessica got on her feet and trudged back to her car. As she pulled away in her car, Jessica looked behind her and saw what the man had been doing. Her foot went to the brake, and her hand to her mouth. Jessica writes:
“A short, plump Christmas tree had been erected on the little boy’s grave. All that time the man had been decorating it with round, colorful, glittery ornaments, and now it stood sparkling with cheer, a lone, definite bright spot on an otherwise gloomy hillside. My friend’s final resting place had a front row seat to the best kind of holiday display there was, one made from selflessness, love, and hope. Later, I wished I had turned back to talk to the man. I should have thanked him for showing me what moving on might look like at a time when I was unable to see how on my own. And to let him know what a gift that was to me.”
We can all think of times in our lives when we did not go back and say “thanks”, when we failed to be grateful to another human being. There are probably even more times that we have also failed to say thanks to God. Believe me, God does not need our “thank you”s. But we need to say “thank you” to God, because the spiritual effect of this kind of continuous gratitude can change our lives in amazing ways.
God is a great gift-giver, and the gift of Jesus, whose birthday we soon celebrate, is either sincerely appreciate and received with gratitude on our part at Christmas… or ignored because of the distraction of all the other presents. When we receive the gift of Jesus with gratitude, we are able to let go of the resentment that has often made us prisoners for years. When we receive the presence of Jesus into our lives, we open our hearts and our minds to allow him to act through us. This changes us and it changes our world. We discover that we are forgiven, and loved, and made whole in Jesus. And then we areable to forgive and love others, helping them to be made whole in Jesus.
There is no greater reason to give thanks during the Eucharist we share today. As Saint Paul said,
“Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.”