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Dec. 13, 2009
Isaiah 12: 2-6; Philippians 4: 4-7

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, who sent your word to live among us. Amen.

If your week was anything like mine, there was snow to shovel, more snow to shovel, streets to rumble around on, maybe a few gifts to be bought.

Depending on the rhythm of your preparations for Christmas, there might have been cards to write, cookies to bake, trees to trim.

And then maybe there were family emergencies that caught you unaware in the midst of all of this.

So we come here this morning feeling a bit out of breath. The journey to Christmas may feel like it has turned into a sprint – with unexpected obstacles appearing along the way.

And so what do we tell you to do when you come to church today?

Rejoice!  Be joyful!  Again, I say rejoice!

To which you might say, “Get real.”

Well, it’s worth noting that the song from Isaiah that served as our first reading was written at a time when the Jewish people were not feeling all that joyful.  They were in exile in Babylon, away from their homeland, lost, displaced. Yet these words that seem to have been incorporated into their worship services even before they were inserted into the Book of Isaiah are words of joyful anticipation.

And Paul’s letter to the people of Philippi sounds very upbeat: “Do not worry about anything,” Paul tells the early Christians. Yet Paul was writing this letter from prison. He did not know whether he would live or die from this imprisonment.

He had ample reason to worry.  What sustains him and what he offers as sustenance for his friends in Philippi is a sense of confidence in God’s presence in the midst of hardships.

Advent is one of those seasons within a church setting where we anticipate God’s vision for the world even as we live with the uncertainties and troubles and anxieties of the present moment.

We don’t know where these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will take our nation or our world.

We don’t know whether the nations of the world will find a way to slow down the climate changes that are affecting our lives and even more, the lives of future generations

We don’t know whether the economy will right itself in such a way that people will feel a little more economically secure in the year ahead.

We don’t know if that diagnosis for ourselves or for a loved one will be for something treatable or for something that will make life much more perilous.

Those who sung the hymn in the book of Isaiah, those people in Philippi who read Paul’s words written while he was in chains, knew all about anxiety and uncertainty. Yet they found within themselves the resources to imagine a different kind of future.

Victor Turner was a Scottish anthropologist who wrote about those difficult times of transitions in life and in society, those places where the old configurations of social reality are crumbling but it is not yet clear what will replace them. He called this a time of liminality.

Turner suggested that what we need in times like this is a safe place to live with ambiguity, to be aware of the tension and all the unresolved things in life, not with the pressure to do something about them but with freedom to test out alternative ways of being.

At its best, a community of followers of Jesus can be such a place. And Advent is the time designed precisely for such a liminal state, such an in-between reality.  

The word “liminal” also gets used with special places where the boundaries between this earth and another life seem particular pourous. “Thin places” they are sometimes called.

You might think of Advent as a liminal time or a thin time. And a gathering of worship has the potential to be a liminal place.

When we gather here on these Sundays of Advent, perhaps you can find a way to live with the ambiguity and anxiety of the present and imagine ways life could be lived closer to God’s vision of what it can be.

“Surely God is my salvation,” it says in Isaiah. “I will trust and not be afraid for the Lord God is my strength and my might.”

Paul writes: “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

And so we gather here this Sunday when the theme for the day is joy. It’s not a joy that comes because everything in our lives or in our world is just fine and dandy. It’s a joy that comes with confidence that God’s love is with us.  

The story of Christmas, after all, is that God’s love appeared in the form of Jesus.

The miracle of Christmas is how that sense of God’s love among us has inspired people across the century to treat others in ways that acknowledge we are all made in God’s image, that we are all surrounded by God’s love
and that we act as God’s agents when we treat one another with care and compassion.

That’s why we can rejoice this day. Not because everything is perfect, but because love had broken through the imperfections of life and offers us the hope of a way of living that fulfills God’s dreams for humanity.

As our service ends today, the choir will come in and sing the first section of the Gloria by Vivaldi. “Glory to God in the highest,” are the words in English.

Just like the hymn in Isaiah reflects the great hopes of the Israelites in exile, just as Paul’s letter contains the great hopes of one in chains, the Gloria contains within it the exuberant joy of a people who find their hope in a God who chose to enter our lives.

That’s a reason for joy.

So rejoice, again I say, rejoice. The Lord is near.