Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
Philippians 4:4

The third week of Advent marks a period of joy. Many of us light pink candles in our wreaths, reflecting the old tradition of pink vestments and altar hangings on the third Sunday of Advent, a moment of joy in the midst of a “mildly penitential” season. This week comes in the midst of a season of joy, in many ways and for many people. But it is also a time when it can be hard to find joy.

As a priest, I find myself subscribed to a number of different churches’ email newsletters, and this week of joy seems also to be the week of Blue Christmas services, services designed for those who are mourning or in grief, or those for whom the holidays are simply a difficult time, for one reason or another. The Blue Christmas service is an antidote to a world pushing joy and cheer during the holiday season, to a culture that insists that you have happy holidays, when happiness may be the last thing you feel. I imagine that for some of you reading this, mid-December truly is a season of unadulterated joy, in which case I’m delighted for you! But I know that for many of us, there is a note of pain or grief, anxiety or sorrow that is playing in your heart, still audible beneath the eleven-hundredth repetition of the line: “Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring ting tingling too!”  

This week’s theme of joy is not an insistence that you feel joy, that you be filled with holiday cheer. It’s an invitation to rejoice. Joy is an emotion, and a fickle one. It’s harder to pin down than contentment or satisfaction, or even peace. Joy comes seemingly out of nowhere, in moments ordinary and extraordinary, and overwhelms us, and then departs.

Rejoicing is something different. Rejoicing is something we can choose to do, however we feel. It is a practice of giving thanks and celebrating. Rejoicing is easy when we’re feeling joyful. It’s harder when we aren’t, and it can feel hypocritical or fake. But rejoicing is not about pretending to be cheerful, or faking forced joy. It’s about recognizing that our lives are always mixed: that even in our moments of greatest joy we carry some sorrow, and even when life is hardest there can be things to celebrate. We rejoice during the darkest days of the year because we know that even in the midst of deep darkness, there is some reason to rejoice.

“For from the least to the greatest of them,
everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
and from prophet to priest,
everyone deals falsely.
They have treated the wound of my people carelessly,
saying, ‘Peace, peace,’
when there is no peace.”
(Jeremiah 6:13-14)

When the prophet Jeremiah decries the false prophets who proclaim to the people, “‘Peace, peace,’ where there is no peace,” he’s talking about more than just the absence of war. Like all Hebrew words, shalom, “peace,” doesn’t align exactly with its English equivalent. Shalom does mean “the absence of conflict,” but it means something more: the presence of wellness. This is why shalom makes sense as a greeting and as a goodbye. It doesn’t simply mean “may you not be at war.” It means “be well.”

So Jeremiah’s words are in part a condemnation of self-serving leadership. It’s in the interests of those in positions of power—religious leaders no less than politicians—to keep proclaiming “all’s well, everything’s fine, nothing to see here,” when all is not well at all. They’re the ones for whom the system is already working. But the “false dealing” Jeremiah condemns is the kind of self-serving denialism you can find all over the place, “from the least to the greatest.” It is always easier, in the face of real problems, to say that everything’s all right than it is to deal with them. But this is to “treat the wound,” as Jeremiah says, “carelessly.” You cannot heal a wound that you’re pretending isn’t there.

We all want and hope and pray for peace, for shalom, for wellness. Sometimes we even find it. But often, we say to ourselves “‘Peace, peace!’ when there is no peace.” Sometimes we deny that anything is wrong because the problem (say, climate change or racism) seems too big to do anything about. Sometimes we deny that anything is wrong—especially in our personal lives or relationships—because we’ve convinced ourselves that everyone else has their act together: that their marriages or their kids or their lives are perfect. (They don’t and they aren’t.)

But God invites us into another way: not peace as the absence of conflict, not peace as perfection, not peace as denial, but peace as the result of reconciliation. God invites us into an ancient path of self-examination, forgiveness, and reconciliation. God invites us to consider where we have wronged one another, and where we have been wronged; to ask forgiveness, and to offer it; and to transform the status quo of our lives with one another from the absence of war to the presence of peace. And this way of forgiveness is a way of peace, not only between us, but for us, because it gives us a break from the need to never mess it all up.

So take a word of advice from Jeremiah this Advent:

“Stand at the crossroads, and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way lies; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.”
(Jeremiah 6:16)

You probably know by now that I have a soft spot for language, for an etymology or a translation that reveals a different facet of a common phrase. It’s easy, of course, to be tripped up by what language teachers call “false friends,” words that seem similar to English ones but mean something else entirely. And it’s all too common—especially among preachers—to put too much meaning on the “literal translation” of a phrase. Words, after all, mean more than the sum of the literal meanings of their parts: what they mean is what they mean in context, not what we can extract from a dictionary.

Caveats notwithstanding, I’ve always simply loved the following fact: The day that we call “Thanksgiving” in American English is known to Spanish speakers as El Día de Acción de Gracias, and to French Canadians as l’Action de Grâce, which—to perhaps lean on a “false friend”—you might over-literally translate as “the Day of the Action of Grace.”

Now to be clear, that’s an insight that’s less interesting than it sounds. Acción de gracias and action de grâce are simply how you say “giving thanks” in Romance language, and this has been true for thousands of years. If an ancient Roman wanted to thank you for holding the door, she’d say gratias tibi ago. English is a pirate language: we’ve simply plundered the vocabularies of French and Latin such that “action” and “grace” existing alongside words like “giving” and “thanks.”

But after years of practicing gratitude (grati-tude—there it is again!) in a generic sense around Thanksgiving, I find myself refreshed by this question: Not just “What are you thankful for?” but “What has been the action of grace in your life?”

For me, this flips the question around. If I try to reflect on my own gratitude, I find myself turning inwards. It’s a question about my own feelings about things. It’s a kind of nagging remind that I really ought to feel grateful for all sorts of things, even when I’m tired or frustrated or sad about something else.

But to look for the action of grace—that’s something else entirely. That’s a question that turns me outward. That’s a question that asks me to look for someone else’s action in my life, for God’s action in my life. It has very little to do with what I am feeling, and very much to do with what someone or something else is doing.

So what about you? As we head toward Thanksgiving Day, what are you thankful for? Or maybe—what has been the action of grace in your life this year?

It’s hard for anyone alive today to imagine the sheer senselessness of the war that ended with an armistice on November 11, at “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918, the day once known as Armistice Day and now, in this country, as Veterans Day.

We can celebrate the heroic resistance to Nazi Germany’s aggressive expansion in the Second World War that would follow the First. I disagree profoundly with the reasoning behind the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; but I can at least comprehend the arguments that were made for them. But the meaninglessness of the First World War boggles the mind.

Propaganda aside, there was no high moral purpose to the war. Millions and millions of teenage boys and young men lived, fought, and died in the mud. The nations of Europe virtually bankrupted themselves turning their entire economies into machines of mutual destruction. An entire generation of men and women were permanently traumatized by what they’d seen at the Front. Three of the seven main combatants collapsed into revolution almost immediately; two more disappeared off the map entirely, splintering into five or six new countries and launching even more wars. And… for what?

The First World War is a case study in bad leadership, brittle planning, and over-confidence. (The most baffling tidbit of trivia about the build-up to war, for me, is that German military planning made it literally impossible to begin mobilizing their reserves without actually launching an invasion of France and Belgium, leaving them no flexibility for diplomacy once the mobilization process began.)

Okay, I suppose that’s enough military history to make the point: On Veterans Day, we celebrate all those who have volunteered to serve in the nation’s armed forces, in peacetime or in war, and the express our gratitude for the sacrifices they have made. But we also recognize the horror of war. We commend those thrown into it against their will and for no good reason at all, and honor the many hardships they endured. And above all else we celebrate the Armistice, the end of the war, the beginning of an all-too-brief peace at the end of years of destruction, and we pray for peace for our people and for the world, now and for ever.

25. For those in the Armed Forces of our Country (BCP p. 822)

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and
keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home
and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly
grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give
them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant
them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

4. For Peace (BCP p. 815)

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn
but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the
strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your Spirit, that
all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of
Peace, as children of one Father; to whom be dominion and
glory, now and for ever. Amen.