Advent 3 2025

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's kingdom, now and forever.

Amen.

Light of the world in grace and beauty, mirror of God's eternal face, transparent flame of love's free duty, you bring salvation to our human race.

Sacred mystery, we light the third candle of Advent for joy and grace.

We kindle it with joy.

We kindle it with joy.

We recall the times we have struggled to practice your way of love, and yet we continue to joyfully walk on the journey you set before us.

Fill us with your spirit.

Bring your good news to life within us.

Give us courage to walk in the way of the beloved community that you set before us.

Amen.

Salutation again.

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's kingdom, now and forever.

Amen.

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are opened, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and wordfully magnify thy holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us, because we are sorely hindered by our sin.

Let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be honor and glory now and forever.

Amen.

Please be seated for the lesson.

A reading from Isaiah.

You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, Redeeming One.

For though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, then you comforted me.

Behold, God is my salvation.

I will trust and I will not fear, for yea, she who is, God is my strength and my might and has become my salvation.

Then you all shall with joy draw water from the wells of salvation, and you all shall say in that day, give thanks to the God of our salvation.

Call on God's name, acclaim God's deeds among the nations, make known that God's name is exalted.

Sing praises to the mighty God who has done gloriously.

Let this be made known in all the earth.

Shout, daughter, sing, daughter, daughter of you who dwell in Zion, for great in your midst, daughter, is the holy one of Israel, the word of the Lord.

A reading from Isaiah.

A shoot shall come out of the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, in the fear of the Lord.

His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

With righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the make of the earth.

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with a kid, the calf and the lion and the fat lee together, and a little child and a little child shall leave them.

The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the whole of the ass, and the wean child shall put his hand on the adder's den.

They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

The word of the Lord.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from this bondage to the king, and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruit of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

The word of the Lord.

Glory be to thee, Lord Christ.

Mary set out in those days and went to the hill country with haste to a Judean town.

There she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.

Now when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leapt in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.

Elizabeth exclaimed with a loud cry, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

From where does this visit come to me?

That the mother of my sovereign comes to me.

Look, as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting in my ear, the baby in my womb leapt for joy.

Now blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of those things spoken to her by the Holy One.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Amen.

Please be seated.

The third Sunday in Advent is set apart, as is the fourth Sunday in Lent, in a penitential season, right?

Remember, blue and purple actually have this common origin.

We now have the rose candle.

This is called Refreshment Sunday or Galdate Sunday.

It's meant to sort of be a relief from working really hard.

It's meant to remind us, both in Lent and in Advent, where this sort of journey of cultivating virtue is supposed to go, and of course, then light this rose candle for joy.

Now I want to suggest to you, and it's really helpful talking to Jean about this this week.

I think we all understand if you've been to church long enough, you've probably heard a lot of sermons about happiness and joy are not the same thing, even though we tend to confuse them.

And frankly, we often use them interchangeably when we leave the place, right?

Did you enjoy that Christmas party?

It usually meant like the food was good, the company was good, it was short, like one of those things, right?

This is like how we typically use that word enjoyment.

But um, Sean had this great reminder to me that happiness, like happenstance and haphazard, they all share that word hap, which really comes from the word chance.

That is to say, happiness is really insecure.

It comes at the roll of a dice.

You ever done something that was supposed to make you happy and it sure didn't?

Well, I've done that in quite a bit.

And I don't want to like sound really weird here in this season, but I do think we live in unrestrained capitalist culture tells you how to secure happiness, and it usually is by success, money, power, by buying and receiving.

And I just want to put to you have you ever received that promotion that you were sure was going to make you happy and you weren't?

Have you ever graduated summa cum laude and you were sure that's what you were waiting for and it wasn't?

And this I put to you, well, because I've had those experiences, right?

That happiness did not come in the ways I was assured it would culturally, that happiness doesn't work like that.

It really is by chance.

It's by chance.

So how is joy different?

From all the study that I've done, and which is maybe meager, it seems to me that joy is based in something like contentment and integrity.

That is to say, joy is found when at the end of the day I can say, I lived into my values, whether that made me happy or not.

I had a professor at Emory who said, repentance is joyful sorrow.

We just want you to sit on that for just a second.

You could never call repentance happy sorrow because that makes no sense whatsoever.

Happy sorrow.

But if joy is to be found in living into our values or gods with integrity, then perhaps I actually can't have joyful sorrow.

This past week, uh, knowing better, I mean, look, we were we had this really fantastic Sunday last week with Bishop Monterroso, and we talked about peacemaking instead of peacekeeping, right?

And that peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice, and it looks creative and bridge building.

I went to Costco.

And I know better than to like go to Costco in a hurry.

And it was a Sunday, and the lot was full.

I mean, this is the time of year, right?

And my kid was in the car.

I mean my young kid.

And I saw somebody pulling out, and I put on my blinker, and you know, I wasn't in a hurry, so I waited like two and a half minutes for that spot.

Which was not a prime spot.

I just want to say, it was on the frenches.

And because of the way traffic flowed, all of a sudden, this man zoomed in front of me and took the spot.

I honked the warning.

I might even have put the car in park and got out of the car to say, maybe you didn't see me waiting there.

Now, why did I do this?

Because my sense of justice was offended.

Right?

And the man, like, God, I like rolled up the magazine and was like, oh, but a long time too.

And I was like, fine, you know, you clearly need the spot more than I do.

And I didn't say that with gentility.

I was really mad.

And I got in the car, and my child was crying.

And she said, Why did you have to escalate that?

And of course, what I said is, because my sense of justice was so offended, I wanted to smooth this out, and then boy, that sure did not appease my kid, who wasn't mad at me or fighting what I did, but was grieved that I would put myself in that position over something as trivial as a parking spot.

Now I've got to tell you, um, I probably wouldn't have thought about it a second time if my kid wasn't in the car.

You ever do something really stupid in front of your kids?

And I have to say, because she met my stupidity with grief.

Not only did I twist the knife of like, boy, that was really, really dumb.

It gave me this resolve that I'm not going to do that again.

And that resolve was joyful.

It was not happy.

In fact, I spent the rest of the day thinking in my reptilian brain, like, how do I make you okay with me?

Like I kept thinking, how do I smooth this out?

And of course that's really silly.

Like, I'm her dad, and the kid loves me.

The way I smooth it out is I repent and I grow.

And I think that advent joy is probably about that.

Now, I've got to say, I do a lot of things, and I've had people say, like, wow, you're so adventurous, you must really enjoy all the things you do.

And I have to tell you, from my own perspective, the adventures that I do are not always very happy.

I do enjoy them because those are my values.

And those are really different things I think we're being called to weigh out.

Not where is happiness to be found.

I mean, the truth is, we can put ourselves in a place where happiness may come.

We can do that.

Doesn't mean it will, right?

And that's a tough way to live.

Or we can put ourselves in a place where we can live our values and God's values with integrity.

And I think that probably is really where joy is to be found.

So I think what I'd encourage us to think about this week is not do you enjoy following, sorry, not whether following Jesus makes you happy, like makes you smile.

It is always light.

I think the real question is does following Jesus result in your enjoying the life you've been given because you're following such a way that you have integrity.

And this is a really tough time of here.

And look, I mean, it's beautiful and it's festive, so here's the tough part, right?

Is that increasingly people, I'm hearing this in political parlance, talk about being a Christian nation or a Christian, this and that, right?

So I think here's the real question.

Christian means little Christ.

So do our politics look a lot like Jesus?

Or do they look a lot like what we want to do?

Right?

Is Christian nomenclature we use for insiders and outsiders, like I'm Christian, you're not?

This is what Christians do, or how Christians vote, or does Christian mean we echo and mirror the integrity of Jesus, especially when it's difficult?

Now, I do want you to know it's a weird bulletin today because we're doing lessons and carols.

And in fact, we've abandoned the readings meant for today.

You want to know what the gospel for today was supposed to be like?

It was supposed to be the genealogy of Jesus according to Matthew.

So-and-so begat so-and-so begat so-and-so.

That's what it was going to be.

14 generations times three.

Everybody going back to Abraham.

And, you know, I'm misfredded anyway because there's something really interesting about the joy of reciting your family ancestry, and four of them are prostitutes.

And only Matthew does that.

Luke does not name the women.

Matthew does.

Matthew goes through this genealogy of.

Do you know who the genealogy is connected to?

It's like where Jesus comes from, but do you know which parents' genealogy it is?

It's Joseph's, who's not even his dad.

Can I be really clear about this?

Joseph's from the line of David.

We don't know anything about Mary, and Joseph isn't related.

Isn't that weird?

Jesus is the lion of David, but not really.

And in the line of David are these four women who were really weird.

I mean, they're named as virtuous women, but they're they don't follow the rules.

I don't know if you've got black sheep in your family lineage.

I do, and let me tell you, I don't have any joy in being connected with them.

And yet in this story, it's like Matthew takes joy in connecting Jesus with these women who did what it took to survive by coloring outside the lines.

That's an interesting thing to think about in Advent.

Matthew takes joy, not happiness or faith, but takes joy in telling how it is that God works through people who have to do the best they can, even if it means breaking the rules.

Interesting story.

We do get to read, well, because this is lessons and carols, this interesting part that I think admin's really calling out.

We don't get it very long.

And by the way, this is what's on my right arm.

That the wolf will lie with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the kid.

And you know, it's just interesting to think about this as a word, Advent.

In this lifetime, wolves will not lie down with lambs.

Can we be clear about that?

I've heard people say to me, well, you know, before we eve ate the apple, that's what happened.

And that's just sheer and utter nonsense.

Saber-toothed tigers have always been carnivores.

They never ate melons.

So it's not like animals were perfect and lived in harmony.

I mean, God created predator relationships, but what Isaiah is saying is in the end, there will be no predator and prey.

They will lie down together and rest together, which only can happen when you're not afraid you're going to be eaten and when you're not consumed with the idea of eating.

Why is it on my arm?

It's because it reminds me that what I wish for is not what God hopes for.

I know this story all too well within my own family.

I have family members who have been predators to me.

I do not wish to be reconciled with them.

I don't.

I just wish they were dead sometimes.

And what does God hope for?

This is heavy.

God hopes for reconciliation.

And what is our Christian hope?

God will do it when we're dead.

I don't want it now, which is partially why it's not going to happen now, because I don't want it.

God will do it when we're dead.

If I'm honest, I don't even hope for that.

And this is why we'll have advent again next year.

Right?

Put it a different way, this is not between an uncle or an aunt.

This is between Putin and Zelensky.

In the perfect kingdom, Putin and Zelensky will lie down together and take rest.

The Hutu with the Tutsi.

The Nazi with the Jew.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden will lie down together in God's perfect kingdom and will take rest.

I don't wish for that.

Advent said.

As God hopes for that.

Part of what we're building on here is where true joy is to be found.

It is not in our wishes.

Again, I've wished for so many things in which happiness was not to be found.

Because I'd rather believe a lie.

When we can hope, like God hopes, that natural enemies will be reconciled, then we can start, I think, to make peace instead of keeping it.

There's no demilitarized some proposal in God's heavenly kingdom.

I hope we agree on that.

There's no DMZ.

Nor is there tolerance in God's kingdom.

Nope, there's respect, which are different things.

When we can start to make that peace, well, then I think we start to cultivate joy, which looks a lot like Elizabeth in this story.

It actually looks a lot like pregnant women in my head, because what pregnant women do is they make room for another entity within themselves.

This is part of Jewish Kabbalah.

When God created the world, God was everywhere, and God had to withdraw to make room for us.

And not only does God make room, but like a mother, God sends to us nourishment so that we can grow and be who we are, which is different from God.

This is what mothers do.

This is probably what peacemaking looks like, is making room for somebody else who's different and nourishing them.

Right?

Nourishing them to be somebody different from you.

And this is where Elizabeth finds her joy.

I don't want to overdo this, but there was a teacher at the school here, when we had a school, who taught fifth grade.

Somehow we made this deep and interesting connection, which I really, really appreciated.

It was by chance.

And a couple of years in a row, she gave me gifts that really meant something to her, and therefore they really meant something to me, and then they became part of this narrative that you see on my arm.

The first gift was this James Avery anchor.

It was a leather bracelet, right?

And it's shaped like a cross, and it's an anchor.

In case you ever become unmoored.

And then next year she gave me this little compass with my initials on it, and then there was in case you ever lose your way.

In case you ever lose your way, the wolf will lie down with the lamb.

And the leopard with the kid.

In case you ever lose your way, the child will play over the adder's den.

This is God's hope, even if it's not our wish.

And God doesn't just hope that it will happen.

God hopes will enjoy it.