Grace
to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Traditionally,
Advent is a penitential season. It is a time for repentance. Sounds strange to
our modern ears, given that the Christmas season now seems to begin shortly
after the 4th of July, but if you think of it, it does make sense.
Advent is a time for repentance because the whole reason that God sent His Son
to be born of Mary is that the world needed saving from sins. The whole reason
Jesus came in the first place is because of our sins. Thus, Jesus’ birth. There
is a linear thought, then, that Advent should be a time to contemplate,
remember, and confess our sins. To help drive this home, the traditional color
for Advent was purple – the same as Lent. And, if you read any of the sermons
of a generation or two ago – I know, not exactly on your wish list for reading
material – you would see that the sermons of that day and age weren’t all that
unlike John the Baptizer, thundering and calling people to repentance.
But
then you arrived at the third Sunday of Advent and suddenly, the gears shifted.
Instead of the heavy message repentance, there was joy. On this Sunday, there
would be a pink candle in the Advent wreath; sometimes the paraments would also
be changed to pink. In fact, the old Latin name for the third Sunday is Gaudate
Sunday – you hear the English “gaudy” there – which means “joy” or “rejoice.” In
the midst of a season of repentance, there was a time for rejoicing.
Joy
is a spiritual fruit; it is a gift of God. A Christian’s joy comes from outside
of us. You’ve heard me say it before; we are beggars with empty sacks – how could
we create joy on our own? So, Jesus fills us up with joy. Christian joy is
different than happiness; isn’t merely a feeling or an emotion. It is a state
of being. Filled with the joy of Christ, what else can we do, what else can we
be other than joyful, for we are joy-filled!
And
there should be rejoicing in Advent. Christ’s advent is nigh – first, in time
as a child in Bethlehem; second, in eternity when He returns in glory to judge
the living and the dead. The day is soon approaching. We are a mere nine days
away from the celebration of His Nativity; we are a day closer to the day of
His return. We, as His people, live in His grace and mercy, trusting that in
Him our sins are forgiven. What great news! This is
what allows Paul to say in this morning’s Epistle, “Rejoice in the Lord always!”
Ah,
there’s the rub – isn’t it? “Always.” How on earth are we supposed to rejoice
always? Turn on the news for thirty minutes; flip through the paper; scan the
internet. How are we supposed to be joyful when there are so many things that
are going on around us that are anything but joy-full? Police arrest six adults
in New Jersey on criminal charges of abuse and endangerment of a child, the story
so disgusting I can’t even read the whole news story. Tensions in Venezuela
continue to rise with Russia sending nuclear-capable bombers on an exercise,
seeming to taunt the United States and our allies. A tire company closes their
Central America plants which, in turn, cause them to close their Tennessee
plant. Workers get ten tires as severance. Suicide rates escalate this time of
year for both senior citizens and teenagers; one can’t take the loneliness, the
other can’t stand the pressure. Farmers got caught with the late season rains
and acres and acres of cotton are left unharvested and ruined. Do we put gifts
under the tree or tires under the car? Mom and Dad are fighting again. We sing
the modern Christmas song, “Four new prescriptions, three medical tests, two new
appointments, and a whopper of a medical bill.”
I
think the Baptizer would have empathized. After all, he had spent his entire ministry
preaching a message of preparation and repentance. But the Jesus that he is
seeing and hearing about isn’t the Jesus he was expecting. It causes John to
question, to wonder, perhaps even a measure of doubt, “Are you the one, or is
there another one coming? Did I misunderstand? Did I miss the signs? John
expected a winnowing fork, a fuller’s fire but what Jesus does is the exact
opposite. But, that’s where Jesus points John: to the signs and wonders, to the
blind receiving sight, the deaf being able to hear, and the lame walking. These
demonstrate that Jesus is God in flesh – who else could do such a miracle? And,
if Jesus is able to do these things, then surely He is able to do even more: to
save His people.
So,
where do you find joy on this third Sunday of Advent, this Joy Sunday, when we
are surrounded by these things that suck the joy right out of our lives?
Someone
very near and dear to my wife and I has been having a very difficult time
lately. Life has been coming a little harder and heavier. Some days are at the
verge of being overwhelming. Friday evening, Laura stopped and picked up a card
to encourage this dear soul. She showed it to me. On the front were four Bible
verses I skimmed through the first three and thought, “This is nice…” But then,
I got to the fourth verse and stopped. I read it; and then I re-read it. Where
have I seen that before, I wondered…and then I looked at the reference. It was
from a seemingly obscure book in the Old Testament. Now, we don’t spend as much
time in the Old Testament, so we are less familiar with it, but that’s even more
true of the so-called minor prophets in the end of the Old Testament. By the
way, they’re called “minor” due to their size, not because of having a less
important message. But what we call the Old Testament is what John, or Peter,
or Mary or Joseph for that matter, it’s what they would have simply known as their
Bible, the Scriptures. The New Testament wasn’t written until a generation
after Jesus’ ascension, remember? So, back to this card… The reference was from
Zephaniah 3:17 – the last verse of this morning’s first reading. “The Lord your
God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with
gladness; he will quiet you by His love; he will exult over you with loud
singing.”
The
prophet is reminding God’s people of old, held captive in the heathen land of
Babylon, that even in that foreign place, even in their seemingly-joyless
circumstance, God is still among His people. He will not abandon them. The
prophet turns the people back to God: His gladness, His love, His rejoicing,
His singing, His saving work for them.
This
is what Zephaniah would do for us as well, God’s 21st century
people. He gently turns us from all of those things that would distract us,
from those things that would drain the joy from our lives, and instead turns us
back towards Jesus, Who came into our midst as a Immanuel, God with us, in
flesh, to be as us in every way, but without sin. The Mighty One, who for the
joy set before Him endured the cross and scored it’s shame does, indeed, save.
This Jesus rejoices with every sinner who repents and trusts in His death and
resurrection. He quiets the troubled conscience with His mercy and grace and
fills them with His joy, His singing, His love.
So,
I told you about the card and Zephaniah 3:17 being there. Friday morning, my
devotion included this reading from something Luther wrote on this verse. He
said: These things signify that their consciences would experience that
fatherly sweetness of the Kingdom of the Lord. The sense is this: You will feel
joy. You will feel in your conscience that the Lord is kindly disposed toward
you, that he surely is a kind father to you in all things. You see, the Lord is
said to rejoice over us when he causes us to sense his favor. He has expressed
the nature of the Kingdom of Christ very aptly and emphatically. For thus it
happens for the righteous that he allows them to be attacked, in various ways,
and to be troubled by many evils, so that they may be comforted to their King. Yet
he adds that feeling of joy, that security of heart, so that all things may
become sweeter, so that nothing is able to separate them from the love of God. (Citation:
Harrison, Matthew. Little Book of Joy,
p. 16; CPH © 2009)
On
this Third Sunday in Advent, if there are things in this life and this world
that are troubling you, weighing your heart and conscience down, follow the
words of Zephaniah who leads you back to Jesus. And on those days when you can’t
rejoice, those days when your heart is too heavy, or your mind is too troubled,
or your soul is almost overwhelmed, then bring your empty sack to Jesus. His
rejoicing is full; His rejoicing is complete; His rejoicing is perfect and He
fills your empty sack for you so that His joy overflows in you.
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