Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today is the third Sunday in Advent. The old, Latin name for
this Sunday is “Gaudate.” You can hear our English word, “gaudy,” hiding
in “Gaudate.” Think bright, celebratory, joyful and you got it. Today is
Gaudate Sunday – the Sunday of rejoicing.
Traditionally, Advent was a somber season, almost along the
lines of Lent. The Baptist’s preaching, calling the people to repent and
branding them “a brood of vipers,” certainly set the stage for that
understanding. Physically, the northern hemisphere is in the throes of winter
with darkness coming earlier each day. With the somber tone of the season thus
far and the physical darkness pressing in, the third Sunday of Advent provided
a welcome contrast. The Advent wreath, which leads us through the season, gives
us our first clue something is different today. Instead of the traditional
purple or blue color, today’s pink candle stands out. And then, as we get into
the liturgy with the hymns, the Introit and collect, and the readings, we are
surrounded with joy and called to rejoice best summed up in the first verse of
today’s Epistle lesson, “Rejoice in the Lord, always; again I will say,
Rejoice.”
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? Three words are repeated over and over, “it’s the economy,” in many
contexts, to justify pink slips, the price of the Christmas ham, and the volume
of gifts purchased. An airplane literally fell out of the sky, sending unsuspecting
drivers to the hospital. The late-season hay cutting was wonderful, but will it
be enough to get through what could be a dry winter and spring? 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. The budget is screaming, things are so tight. Do we
put gifts under the tree or tires under the car? There’s family pressure: Mom
and Dad are fighting again. Health challenges arise, and 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. Yet, 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?
With Chris in the Navy, I joined a Facebook group that
supports sailors and their families. I can tell you, life has been coming a
little harder and heavier for those folks, too. The other day, someone posted
that a sailor had lost both his parents this year and he needed a little
Christmas cheer. Well, that one kinda got my attention, so I volunteered to
write the sailor. The other day at the grocery store, I looked for a special
Christmas card. I thought about going with something goofy to try to cheer him
up, or something sappy and sentimental, but that seemed like a slippery slope.
No - I needed something that conveys the hope and joy that we have as
Christians. Finally, I found one that had several Bible verses printed across
the front. Good start. As I read through the first three verses, I 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 generally don’t spend much time in the Old Testament, so we are less
familiar with it than the New Testament, and that’s particularly true of the
so-called minor prophets in the end of the Old Testament. By the way, they’re
called “minor” due to their literary 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
and how those words were written roughly 2600 years ago. Now, I want to share something
Luther wrote on this verse 500 years ago. 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. In Christ,
rejoice in the Lord always. 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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