ISAIAH 35:1-10

PSALM 146:4-9

JAMES 5:7-10

MATTHEW 11:2-11

Sermon – December 12, 2004

The theme for the third Sunday of Advent is joy. This is the Sunday we light the rose-colored candle, traditionally associated with today’s reading from Isaiah 35 about the desert blossoming “like a rose” (in the King James version’s translation), or “like a crocus” in the current translation. This Sunday is the time we move from the rather solemn and austere worship of the first half of Advent with the Great Litany and the Penitential Order and the vital themes of the Second Coming of Christ and our need for repentance and change, to reflecting on what God has, does and will bring those who truly do love God. And one of those gifts is joy.

Joy is greater than happiness – deeper, stronger, holier. It is a gift of God which we can receive and take into our hearts to nourish us spiritually and emotionally whether or not we are “happy”. God’s joy is offered to those who will have a “merry Christmas” and to those who might not. God’s joy does not depend on our personal circumstances; God’s joy can be received by the bereaved, the sick and the unemployed just as much as by those who are suffering none of those things.

God’s joy becomes real to us when we hear or read of God’s blessings to people in Scripture, to people now, and hear God’s promises of overflowing, transforming joy to all who love God in the future. Whatever our circumstances, by faith we can look forward with eager longing to abundant joy in the future and to take heart by stories of God spreading joy in the past and the present.

Yes, the world is still broken, and sometimes our hearts ache when we experience suffering because of the world’s brokenness, but especially at such times we can take heart from news that the world’s mending has begun.

Let’s start with today’s wonderful Old Testament reading. It comes from a time in Israel’s history when the people had been devastated and the very identity and survival of the people of God seemed, to some, in doubt. After dwelling secure in Jerusalem for over 400 years, worshiping in a temple built by King Solomon and ruled over by Kings who were direct descendents of King David, in the year 587 B.C., Jerusalem was conquered and utterly destroyed by the Babylonian Empire, the temple burned to the ground, and the King, the leadership and anyone with any education and all skilled craftsmen were taken off into exile in Babylon - modern Iraq. A few subsistence farmers were left to eke out a living on the soil of the Promised Land under Babylonian rule.

In exile, these people of Judah wrestled with what it meant to be the people of God hundreds of miles from home: “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” lamented the psalmist. Were they really the people of Judah, God’s people, if they had no country, no temple, no King? Should they just give up, go with the flow and become Babylonians? Was God in fact “dead”, or had God punished them for their sins and abandoned them as well?

In their despair, they discovered the power of what they did have: collections of sacred writings which were gathered together, edited and enhanced and revered anew: scriptures. They gathered to read them, to sing Psalms, to say prayers as a community, to hear sermons, and in so doing discovered a kind of worship which enabled them to survive and flourish as Jews to this very day: the synagogue. They kept faith in God and found strength and comfort, as well, from each other.

They persevered for over 40 years, until one day a prophet arose whose name we don’t even know, because the message is more important than the messenger. The prophet said all the words we heard this morning and more, including the words the people had almost given up hoping to hear: “The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing, everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

And indeed it came to pass that in 539 B.C. the Babylonian Empire fought and lost one final battle and the victor, Cyrus the Great of Persia, told the Jews they could indeed “return and come to Zion with singing.” They could go home to Israel, to the land promised by God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And they could persevere and, unlike so many ancient peoples – including their conquerors – they could endure for millennia more, while the powerful nations of their day are exhibits in museums.

Kinda makes you think God was involved, doesn’t it?

And because they kept the faith long enough to experience restoration and renewal, there was a young Jewish couple named Mary and Joseph to give a home to the Messiah when he was born as one of his people to offer redemption and new life to all people: Jesus.

The words in Isaiah 35 speak of joy three times, and declare that one of the blessings God bestows is not only making the desert bloom, but healing. The ultimate healing of the whole world and the end of all brokenness as well as sin will come when the Kingdom of God comes, as this Scripture reminds us, but ahead of that vast banquet of healing comes...the “appetizer course”, healings in this world and this life.

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,” the prophet declares. But that’s not just poetry: as Jesus tells the messengers from John the Baptist who question him in today’s Gospel, that and much more are happening now that Christ is alive and active in the world.

And the Good News of the Gospel is: Christ is still alive and active in the world. The “appetizer course” continues to be served – healings which remind us how much God loves the world and whets our appetite for the banquet yet to come, and reminds us who is the source of all blessings.

I look out at the people of this church and I know we are very much living in a broken world filled with real fears, real challenges, and real sorrows – but also filled with real miracles. Getting back to Isaiah, miracles are indeed like the “crocuses” referred to in the passage. When we see a crocus poke its head up out of the snow in late March, we know that spring is coming. There may still be more storms – more challenges and sorrows – but that does not stop the fact that spring will come. Even if the crocus is not in our own garden, we still take heart because we know spring is coming. Miracles are like those crocuses, early signs here and now of the vast blossoming of healing which will come by God’s touch.

We have people in our parish family who were not expected to be walking, not expected to be well, not expected to be sober, not expected to be alive now; but expectations are not always accurate. There is another power at work in the world, the same Power who caused “then shall the eyes of the blind be opened” to come true for someone I know.

But the story I want to tell you today is not that one or several others I could tell, but it is the experience which I think was most decisive in helping the people of St. Barnabas, including me, realize that miracles aren’t just in the past and in the future; they happen now. Let us all take joy from the story of the blooming of this particular crocus.

It was the fall of 1988, and one of our parishioners, Bridget Elinson, was pregnant. She was English, so all of her family except her husband and two-year-old daughter were an ocean away, so the “extended family” of this church was especially important to her, most profoundly through the events of that long and often dark autumn. The Sanfilippos were an especially important part of this story, so you can hear more of it from Barbara.

Bridget realized that her pregnancy was troubled, and went through a number of tests. The diagnosis the doctors came up with was hydrops, a condition in which the fetus’ chest fills up with fluid while in utero. The baby typically is stillborn or lives only a few hours. A neo-natal intensive care unit nurse at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia told us when Bridget, Barbara and I traveled there, “I have to be honest with you: I’ve been in this ward for five years and I’ve only seen two children with this condition live.” The most optimistic doctor gave Bridget one chance in seven of delivering a live fetus.

Being pregnant is a very emotional experience, and the emotion predictions like that would tend to bring out would be despair. That’s where we were when I was sitting in my office one morning, praying for Bridget when I got a vivid “message”: tell her to hand over all the pessimistic forecasts to God and to visualize a normal delivery. It was as though someone was in the room speaking to me. I called her in Philadelphia and told her the message I had received, which she tried to concentrate on as she was brought up by ambulance from Philadelphia to St. Peter’s Hospital, New Brunswick.

While she was there, the doctors proposed doing an emergency C-Section two months early, on the theory that the baby had some slight chance outside the womb. The Elinsons agreed. My final pre-operation hospital visit to her was the night before the C-section. I asked her if she would like me to do the laying-on-of-hands for healing and prayers and she said, “Yes, of course.” Normally, I put my hands on someone’s head, but this time I got another “message” that direct contact was best. I asked her if it was okay if I put my hands on her belly as I prayed and she said, “Yes.”

As I prayed, we both felt extraordinary warmth between my hands and her belly – warmth both far greater and deeper than mere hands could provide. I left still anxious and sad. Some people are slow learners.

Bridget had asked me to come to the hospital the next day for an emergency baptism right after the emergency C-section. I said I would, as long as she understood that, first, God could bring her baby to heaven whether or not she was baptized, and second, that her baby did need to be alive, however briefly, in order to be baptized.

She said she understood, and so it was that the next morning I was driving up Route 27 through the normal flood of traffic towards St. Peter’s. I was still worried. Apparently the auditory messages hadn’t convinced me that something was going on, so the Master Healer used visual imagery to get through to me. I had a vision which filled the windshield of my car of the hospital’s delivery room door and an angel standing in front of it, who turned, looked at me and winked, and then went through the door – and I do mean through the door. I started to cry and said, “Lord, I still have to drive this car – how can I if you show me these things?” – and the vision vanished. And no, nothing had happened to me in the traffic, either.

I came and sat outside the delivery room door, which looked rather familiar. Shortly after 12 noon, the medical personnel wheeled Bridget out – along with Alexandra, who was breathing on her own.

She weighted four pounds, of which two pounds was fluid in her chest cavity. She was placed in an incubator in the Intensive Care Nursery where I, gowned, scrubbed and masked, took a tiny bottle of sterile water and, putting my gloved hand into the incubator, said “Alexandra, I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

The first 24 hours were touch and go, and then she steadily improved. First Bridget went home and then, on a monitor, Alexandra went home. The doctors and nurses were cautious because they didn’t have a lot of experience with caring for hydrops babies who lived. And then later that winter the Sunday Alexandra came to church for the first time. It was like Easter had come early. What we learned was that Easter comes all the time, if you know where to look.

And oh yes, the day she was born was December 6 – St. Nicholas Day. Nice touch, Lord. Reminds us who St. Nicholas works for.

It was hard for me to talk about those experiences at first, because they were so wonderful, so much more than I had dared hope for, and because it was so – well, obvious, it made me tremble. Still does. The signature of God on that miracle is as plain as John Hancock’s is on the Declaration of Independence.

It makes me long for more such “crocuses”! The answer is there will be more, so many more of them no one will be able to count them or see the end of them or see any more pain or sorrow.

This true story is spiritual food for our journey through life, my friends, food to sustain us on days we need to be reminded of the reality of joy and the joys that are to come. I tell you this story of a “crocus in someone else’s garden” because it is still your crocus. It is a token of what can happen and what will happen. Joy happens. Look for “crocuses.” Tell others when you find one. Thank the Master Gardener. And try, just try to imagine the glories of the everlasting Spring which is coming.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church