Sermon 121513 Stir Up Sunday Today is the Third Sunday of Advent, but that s not all. Today is not only the Third Sunday of Advent, but also Stir Up Sunday and Gaudete Sunday. Advent we know is those four Sundays before Christmas where we look forward to the celebration of the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ and also to that Great Day when he returns in great triumph and power. The name Stir Up Sunday comes from the collect that was offered earlier in the service: Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; This prayer written for the 1549 Book of Common Prayer by Thomas Cranmer was intended to stir up the faithful during Advent. In England, people today probably connect Stir Up Sunday more with Christmas pudding than with anything to do with the church. This Christmas pudding connection probably goes back to Prince Albert. Christmas pudding has its roots in a dish called pottage, which can be traced back to the 15th century. In Middle Age cookbooks, they are described as stewed broths and were actually a common, everyday food. Like mince pies, it was originally a hearty, meaty dish made with beef or mutton, onions, possibly other root vegetables, spices, and dried fruit, such as currants and raisins. The ingredients were stewed together for several hours, making it more like a soup than the pudding we know today, and was served at the beginning of the meal as a filling first course. Plums were not added until the 16th century, and it s name changed to plum pottage. A common recipe included beef and veal boiled in sack (a wine from the
Canary Isles) with old hock (a German wine), sherry, lemon, and orange juice. Then sugar, raisins, currants, prunes, cinnamon, and cloves were added. It was thickened with brown bread and was stiffer than the modern Christmas pudding. There is a medieval English folk tale of a king who got lost in the forest on Christmas Eve. He had little supplies or food, and was forced to seek food and shelter from a poor woodman s cottage. The man did not have much food either, so the king s servant was asked to mix together a meal from the combined ingredients of the king and the woodsman. The servant put chopped suet, flour, eggs, apples, dried plums, ale, sugar, and brandy in a cloth, boiled it, and the mixture became a delicious pudding for everyone to share. The puddings were made several weeks in advance to allow it to mature. The longer the pudding sat, the more time the cake had to soak up the flavors from the alcohol and dried fruit, so they were sometimes left to mature for months. Puddings were most often prepared on Stir Up Sunday, the last Sunday before the Advent and the fifth Sunday before Christmas. In fact, prior to the 1660s, the Roman Catholic Church decreed that all puddings should be made on the 25th Sunday after Trinity and include 13 ingredients for Christ and his 12 apostles. Traditionally, Stir Up Sunday was the last day that puddings and cakes could be started before December 25th so it had that time to mature. Families would arrive home from church, prepare the pudding, and let it cook. At some point in the day,
each family member was required to stir the pudding. There are several traditions that have been mentioned when it comes to stirring the pudding. Some say that the pudding had to be stirred east to west, to represent the journey of the Magi to see Jesus. Some people insisted that the eyes had to be closed and a silent wish made while stirring with a big wooden spoon. I am not sure why Stir Up Sunday has moved to the Third Sunday of Advent, maybe to make room for the relatively recent feast day of Christ the King on the Last Sunday before Advent. The royal family still, of course, eats Christmas pudding at their Christmas dinner. Prince Charles produces his own organic Christmas puddings through his natural food company Duchy Originals. The Queen hands out Christmas puddings from Fortnum & Mason to all the staff. The Fortnum and Mason catalog includes King George Christmas pudding for 25 pounds or $40. It is described like this: This superb pudding starts with the finest ingredients, including Turkish sultanas, Marcona almonds and pruneaux d Agen. It contains real beef suet as well as Fortnum s Cognac and Pusser s Full- Strength Navy Rum, which are neither diluted nor concentrated, as one often finds in other puddings. This excellent pudding is handmade from the first step to the last; from the buttering of the bowls to the construction of the box in which the pudding is presented. It is this attention to detail that produces such an outstanding pudding. To add to the excitement, this year we are putting a royal sovereign worth more than 200 into just one of our 65,000 Christmas puddings. The lucky winner can keep the sovereign and claim a bottle of Fortnum s champagne, ensuring a very memorable Christmas indeed.
Please note, this item is not available for delivery in the USA and Canada. That pretty well covers the Stir Up part of this Sunday, but what about the Gaudete? The word Guadete is Latin for joy. Joy is the theme of this Third Sunday of Advent. From our Old Testament reading: The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the LORD, the majesty of our God Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy And 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.
On this Third Sunday of Advent we are called to take a break from the penitence and introspection and focus on joy. In his Letter to the Philippians St. Paul says: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Pope Francis says this about joy: "There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter. I realize of course that joy is not expressed the same way at all times in life, especially at moments of great difficulty. Joy adapts and changes, but it always endures, even as a flicker of light born of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved..." If joy is the theme today, what in the world is John the Baptist doing in the readings? Did you know that John is the patron saint of spiritual joy? John s brood of vipers sermon doesn t really seem to fit with the theme of joy. From Luke Chapter 1: And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord. And then from John Chapter 3 John the Baptist says: He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease. By way of background from The Gospel of Mark, Chapter 6: For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip s wife, because Herod had married her. For John had been telling
Herod, It is not lawful for you to have your brother s wife. And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. In today s Gospel reading, John the Baptist is in prison. Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee has had enough. The tetrarch was mildly offended when John was preaching against the religious establishment calling them a brood of vipers and warning them to flee from the wrath to come. John the Baptist was not known for his tact, and his preaching got downright personal. Herod Antipas had fallen in love with Herodias, the wife of his brother Herod Philip. Herodias divorced her husband and Herod Antipas divorced his wife and they then married. John publically condemned the tetrarch for his marriage to his sister- in- law saying, It is not lawful for you to have her. Antipas was furious, but his anger was nothing compared to the fury of his wife, Herodias. John was soon to find out the meaning of the saying hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" John realized that he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Things were just not working out the way that he had imagined them. John expected a Messiah who would come in the spirit of Elijah. From II Kings: Then the king sent to him a captain of fifty with his fifty men. He went up to Elijah, who was
sitting on the top of a hill, and said to him, O man of God, the king says, Come down. But Elijah answered the captain of fifty, If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty. Then fire came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty. John was clearly a Type A personality, and, as he sat in prison, he may have been thinking: Jesus ministry is truly impressive, but when will he bring in his Kingdom? He is a wonderful man, but I am beginning to wonder if he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. Why am I sitting here in prison if I am the voice preparing the way of the Lord? Where is the wrath to come? Where is judgment for the religious leaders? Why is he socializing with sinners and tax collectors? Why are the Romans still in control? I want to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Please ask him directly, Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? Jesus answer to John went back to the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah like Isaiah 35: Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. John wants Jesus to bring judgment and he will, but Jesus main mission is that of mercy. Jesus is healing the sick, restoring sight to the blind, and bringing good news to the poor. John has been a little confused about Jesus mission. Even though he was in prison, Jesus next statement must have brought him great joy. Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist.
Joy is an integral part of the Christian life and can be experienced anywhere even in prison. I am not talking about the ho, ho, ho, kind of happiness that comes only in certain situations. True Christian joy is experienced in a right relationship with God. Again from Pope Francis: The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus, Pope Francis writes. The joy of the Gospel is for all people: no one can be excluded. I have personally witnessed the joy that an encounter with Christ can bring during the Kairos program at the Michael Unit in Tennessee Colony. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was another servant of Christ who was imprisoned and eventually executed for his participation in the rescue of Jews from Nazi Germany and in Operation Valkyrie, the plot to assassinate Hitler. From the book Letters from Prison, A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes, does various unessential things, and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent. Bonhoeffer wrote this from prison in 1943. It s not until times as these that we realize what it means to possess a past and a spiritual inheritance independent of changes of time and circumstance. The consciousness of being borne up by a spiritual tradition that goes back for centuries gives one a feeling of confidence and security in the face of all passing strains and stresses. I believe that anyone who is aware of such reserves of strength needn t be ashamed of more tender feelings evoked by the memory of a rich and noble past, for in my opinion they belong to the
better and nobler part of mankind. They will not overwhelm those who hold fast to values that no one can take from them. From the Christian point of view there is no special problem about Christmas in a prison cell. For many people in this building it will probably be a more sincere and genuine occasion than in places where nothing but the name is kept. That misery, suffering, poverty, loneliness, helplessness, and guilt mean something quite different in the eyes of God from what they mean in the judgment of man, that God will approach where men turn away, that Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn these are things that a prisoner can understand better than other people; for him they really are glad tidings, and that faith gives him a part in the communion of saints, a Christian fellowship breaking the bounds of time and space and reducing the months of confinement here to insignificance. These two prisoners, John the Baptist and Dietrich Boenhoffer, separated by nearly 2000 years in time, show us the true spirit of Advent. It is a season of waiting and hoping. Advent is a season of joy. Waiting to celebrate the miraculous birth of our Savior and hoping that he will return soon. These two men show us that nothing, not even prison walls can separate us from the love of God, and that the spirit of the season is Jesus Christ. No matter where we find ourselves in life remember Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Amen.