Day by day,
the anticipation builds.
Day by day,
people open another door on their Advent calendar,
today, we light another candle on the Advent wreath.
Day by day,
we are given more and more glimpses of the day of rejoicing to come.
While our secular rites of Christmas
have been largely made devoid of their explicitly Christian meaning,
for the initated,
they still resound with the themes of Christ.
The lights in the darkness,
the gifts of the magi,
the star of Bethlehem on the top of the tree,
the simple progress day by day
toward what is to be,
the idea that life itself is gift,
and God himself gives gifts to us,
brings us out of darkness.
And so for the initiated,
the rejoicing on Christmas is not simply a rejoicing in material gifts,
nor is it even a rejoicing for family, for friends,
for health and daily food.
It is a rejoicing in God’s victory.
We hear the prophets Zephaniah and Isaiah
implore us to ‘Rejoice!’
Why, Zephaniah and Isaiah?
Because there will be presents?
Because our family surrounds us?
Because our outward circumstances require it?
Because it’s good for us to rejoice?
No, we rejoice because we hear the good news;
the good news of God’s victory over our enemies.
Sin, death and evil must flee before the coming of God.
They are not the ultimate realities.
In fact, they may well be fantasies,
nightmares from which we eventually will awake,
to shake off the cobwebs and blink our eyes
and see the light of day,
and say, ‘Oh, Thank God!
It was just a nightmare!’
If your heart resonates even a little bit
with what these prophets proclaim,
then perhaps you’ve heard the call to rejoice.
Rejoicing is simply the natural response to good news.
The Third Sunday of Advent is a day to let that good news catch us,
to notice it out of the corner of our eye.
It is as if we are getting up early in the morning,
with the darkness still shrouding the world,
and we are about our normal daily morning routine,
bleary-eyed and brain-fogged,
and suddenly we notice the light streaming in through the window.
Or perhaps on a cloudy afternoon,
when we are looking the wrong way
and suddenly a shaft of sunlight
pierces the room
and pierces our heart.
There’s that involuntary flutter,
that unexpected and inexplicable moment of gladness.
The Third Sunday is a day to notice the good news of God’s victory
out of the corner of our eye,
and then to contemplate it,
to let it deeply soak in,
so that the reality of God’s victory
can permeate our lives
and suffuse them with joy.
Taken on the face of it,
John the Baptist’s clarion call to repentance
would seem to take the edge off our joy this morning.
The joy we feel is tempered by his calling the crowds
‘You brood of vipers!
Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’
But the wrath of God is against all that would keep us
from experiencing the joy of his victory.
Refusal to share his gifts,
taking the gifts that God has given to others,
believing that God’s gifts belong to us by right
or that we can make ourselves good enough to earn them;
such an attitude makes it impossible for us
to hear the good news,
to experience the joy of victory.
And God calls us to repent,
and bear fruits worthy of repentance,
so that we can truly receive the joy he wants to offer us.
And then John says,
‘From these stones God can raise up children of Abraham.’
This may be mere hyperbole John the Baptist uses,
but perhaps we too can find real good news here.
For who among us at one time or another
has not felt their heart a heavy stone,
unmovable, unyielding to even the most wonderful news?
Here John says that we cannot rely on the faith our fathers had,
but only on the faith that God gives.
But those of us who have felt the lack of faith in the past
rejoice that God is able to give faith where it has not been.
Day by day,
the anticipation builds.
Day by day,
people open another door on their Advent calendar,
today, we light another candle on the Advent wreath.
Day by day,
we are given more and more glimpses of the day of rejoicing to come.
Because that day is coming,
because it is unstoppable,
just as unstoppable as the light of the morning piercing the darkness of night,
we may rejoice always.
We let our gentleness be known to all,
we let go of our anxiousness about the future at least for one day,
for we have glimpsed the reality of what God is doing in the world.
We glimpse it in the child in the Manger
who is the man on the cross,
who is the one who will gather the wheat into the granary,
who gathers us in to rejoice together in his victory.
