Advent 3

The wilderness will dance and the dry places will sing praises to God.

When we see the glory of the Lord revealed, we will be strengthened and saved.

God's love opens our eyes.

God's gift of hope opens our hearts.

As we trust in God, we are found in love.

In the grace of God, we find our hope.

Let us with joy kindle the light of the Lord.

In one heart of all mankind in the seas and in the king of peace rice rijo.

Show us the creative power of hope.

Prepare our hearts to be transformed by you, that we may walk in the light of Christ.

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

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, 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 worthily 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.

And 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.

To comfort all who mourn, to provide for those who mourn in Zion, to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

They shall build up the ancient ruins.

They shall raise up the former devastations.

They shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

For I, the Lord, love justice.

I hate robbery and wrongdoing.

I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

Their descendants shall be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples.

All who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord.

My whole being shall exalt in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

The word of the Lord.

Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.

Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed.

Pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Do not quench the spirit, do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything.

Hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form of evil.

May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.

The word of the Lord.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.

He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

This is the testimony given by John when the Jewish leaders sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you?

He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, I am not the Messiah.

And they asked him, What then?

Are you Elijah?

He said, I am not.

Are you the prophet?

He answered, No.

Then they said to him, Who are you?

Let us have an answer for those who sent us.

What do you say about yourself?

He said, I'm the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.

Make straight the way of the Lord.

As the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they'd been sent from the Pharisees.

They asked him, Why then are you baptizing if you're neither the Messiah nor Elijah nor the prophet?

John answered them, I baptize with water.

Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me.

I'm not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.

This took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where Jesus, where John was baptizing.

The gospel of the Lord.

Please be seated.

So we're gathered here this third Sunday in Advent.

And we get to have this break of refreshment.

So often this is called refreshment Sunday.

It's sometimes called Godate Sunday.

Here we usually use the word rose Sunday, and you might be thinking that's a pink candle.

And maybe that's the reason we use a church word like rose to remind us that we're not talking about ordinary things like pink.

We're talking about divine things like roses.

This was designed in the middle, consider that electric lights are about 140 years old.

So the world in general at this time was a pretty dark place.

And people are gathered in times of darkness during this season, and it's a reminder that this is going somewhere.

That this Advent journey is for our joy.

I think even though we've got plenty of electric lights, many of us are perceiving a lack of visible light in our nation, some in our homes.

And so I contend to you, electric lights are no, the need for joy is as strong as it's ever been.

Reminder, these Advent virtues of hope, peace, joy, and love may not be things we're supposed to have.

They might be things we're supposed to make.

Hope-making, peacemaking, joy-making.

Joy is one of those words that theologians and poets, and frankly, people who go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings really wrestle with.

How is joy different from happiness?

Actually, I think the people who go to AA might have more to say than the other categories, but because that was not my journey, my journey was to the seminary.

I want to pontificate with you through some a few poems.

Poetry is not my first language, but I want to read a few thoughts on joy.

One comes from Renier Maria Rilke, a German poet.

The reality of any joy in the world is indescribable.

Only in joy does creation happen.

Happiness, on the contrary, is only a promising and interpretable pattern of things already in existence.

Joy, however, is a marvelous increasing of what already exists, a pure addition out of nothingness.

How superficially must happiness engage us after all, if it can leave us time to think and worry about how long it will last?

Joy is a moment unobligated, timeless from the beginning, not to be held, but also not to be truly lost again, since under its impact our being is changed chemically, so to speak, and does not only, as may be the case with happiness, savor and enjoy itself in a new mixture.

I had a professor who reminded us, and I think you can find this in C.S.

Lewis, that happiness is really quite contingent on circumstance.

And when circumstances change, happiness departs.

Joy was quite different, and so this professor suggested that repentance was joyful sorrow.

Happy sorrow is an oxymoron.

Martin Buber.

These moments are immortal and most transitory of all.

No content may be secured from them.

Beams of their power, that is, moments of joy, stream into the ordered world and dissolve it again and again.

Remember, I'm not a mystic, so I'm quoting these people.

One last thought, not my words.

Barbara Brown Taylor.

In Sunday school, I learned to think of God as a very old white-bearded man on a throne who stood above creation and occasionally stirred it with a stick.

When I'm dreaming quantum dreams, what I see is an infinite web of relationship flung across the vastness of space like a luminous net.

It is made of energy, not thread.

As I look, I can see light moving through it as a pole smooths through veins.

What I see out there is no different from what I feel inside.

There is a living hum that might be coming from my neurons that might just as well be coming from the furnace of the stars.

When I look up at them, there is a small commotion in my bones as the ashes of dead stars that house my marrow rise up like metal filings toward the magnet of their living kin.

What I like about that last reading is really where Lila Anderson has guided me here.

Lila, as many of you know, has her PhD from Rice and Physics.

I'm curious, has anybody ever not been in absolute darkness?

You know, like when you go into a cave and they switch off the lights.

Is that an experience we have in common?

If you've not done it, your retina freaks out.

Because your retina is made to look for visible light.

In fact, your retina will look so hard for visible light, depending on the tour guide, it's somewhere between uh like 12 and 20 days that you'll go blind forever if you don't see light.

Your retina looks for light even, for visible light, even when it's not there.

And I want to suggest to you that that's part of what's before us is considering the nature of joy.

This book I'm reading to you was curated by a poet named Christian Wyman.

He came to clergy conference uh last year.

Clergy conference in Texas is really quite an undertaking because there's like 300 people in the room and there's like really fine speakers.

I came from San Diego where there were like 46 people in the room, and like the speaker was somebody in the room.

Uh, and sometimes we just had table conversations, and that was clergy conference.

Christian Wyman came and he just curated this book and he talked about, I think, this really interesting difference between joy that I have struggled with quite a bit in my own spiritual life.

In putting this book together, Christian Wyman quoted this lady who just won uh uh the Pulitzer Prize, and she'd said that she'd had maybe four or five experiences of joy in her life.

In two of those she'd been on drugs.

And um as great as they were, she wasn't sure she wanted anymore.

Because coming back from joy was just too hard.

That was interesting.

I asked him, well, what about you?

He said, no, no, I'm a joy addict.

I look for it everywhere I can find it.

And you know, honestly, I think one of my own spiritual processes is to do this changeup that Barbara Brown Taylor talks about.

That is changing where it is I look for joy.

So back to Lila.

The retina of my third eye really wants to find joy as visible light.

And it searches for it tirelessly, and quite honestly, I often can't see it, and I've come in danger of becoming blind for that reason at moments in my life.

So, what Lila has taught me that I have to accept on faith because my retina doesn't believe it, is that the darkness of the universe is teeming with invisible light.

Perhaps you've read this other book called All the Light We Do Not See.

Fine book.

It talks about light having this kind of bandwidth, visible light, that is light that our retina can perceive, has that kind of bandwidth.

So the conclusion of the book, of course, is that all the light we do not see.

And I want to suggest that our Advent journey might be about trusting that the darkness of our lives and the darkness of the universe might in fact be teeming with invisible light.

John the Baptist shows up this week.

We saw him last week.

He was dressed in camel hair clothes and eating locusts.

This week he's not even really talking about baptizing, he's talking about witnessing.

And if you've seen him in Renaissance art, he's always doing this.

I don't know why people didn't point like that back then, but I guess they didn't.

He's always underhand pointing.

He's doing what he says today.

I'm not the Messiah, I'm not the prophet.

The lights over there.

Have a look.

I think it's really easy for us to think he's only pointing at Jesus.

And of course he is pointing at Jesus, but I wonder if he isn't also pointing to those dark places in our lives where light is not visible, but that are teeming with the light of God.

And that's why I think Isaiah brings us some really interesting news.

If you know your Bible well, this is Jesus' first sermon, at least part of it is the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, has called me to proclaim good news.

That's where Jesus quits in Luke.

But notice that next phrase to declare the vengeance of our God.

If you keep reading like we did today, you get to hear what God's vengeance looks like.

It does not look like killing enemies, it looks like comforting those who mourn.

Consider how different that image is.

It's like the difference between rose and pink.

God's vengeance looks a lot like forgiveness.

God's vengeance looks a lot like comfort.

God's vengeance is about opening prison doors, not shutting them.

It seems like Isaiah is proclaiming that God's vengeance looks like light in the darkest of places.

And with a conviction like that, I mean that seems to be the only way Paul could dare tell us to rejoice in all things.

Always struggled with that.

Especially when I was a teenager.

Rejoice in all things?

Like in disappointments?

How could you do that?

Unless we suspend the disbelief of our retinas.

Both our eyeballs and our third eyes.

The disbelief that light has to be visible to be present.

And I think that's our promise.

The promise of the third Sunday in Advent.

Now, I hate to do this because I grew up going to sermons where this happened all the time, so please forgive me.

But I have to tell you that my third eye, when it's looking frantically for visible light, it sometimes sees God nowhere.

Honestly, sometimes I think I'd rather find God nowhere than just here and there.

Because when you find God just here and there, living in between the breaks is really pretty darn difficult and disappointing.

A little bit like drip torture.

You get a break for a second, and you know there's gonna be another drip coming.

So you have this moment like that Pulitzer Prize winner wrote, where You get built into something bigger than yourself and you have to go back.

Maybe the difference between whether we find God nowhere and we find that God is now here has to do with the space we make.

The difference is just a space.

And I think the Advent journey is about making space for God.

And I think the whole call about joy isn't about making space so that we can have some more.

I'm pretty sure it's about making more joy.

And making joy, I think, comes down to this riddle that is when we make joy, we make the invisible light of God visible.

How do we do that?

Well, there's a picture on Facebook of a bunch of things that our daughters of the King and our ACW did.

They bought some gifts, like a coffee maker, to girls who had gone through a class, they'd been formerly incarcerated, and now they were moving out on their own.

And the truth is, when prison gives you$50 and you have to pay$25 of it back, and you have to go to something like 90 meetings within the first two weeks of being free from prison, having a coffee maker is kind of a big deal, even if it costs nine bucks.

I'm not convinced that giving a coffee maker made joy visible in those women's lives.

But I am convinced it made joy visible in the lives of the people who gave it.

And I think that's our call in Advent joy.

It is not something that we have.

And I think maybe when I find joy to be a terrifying prospect because I have to go back, the truth is I'm just looking to hold on to it instead of being held by it.

This is all mystical stuff.

To be honest, I'm pretty uncomfortable with it.

But I think there has to be something to this idea that Advent is not about just having more stuff.

I think it has to be about being buoyed more and more by this conviction of our faith that God is more present in me than I'm present in myself.

We use these fancy words.

Maybe you've heard them in church before.

Imminent and transcendent.

Have you heard these words?

Eminent means like alongside, and transcendent means like up and down.

God is more present in me than I am in myself.

And the part of God's presence in me I'm aware of is God's eminence.

And the deepness and richness of God in me that I am not aware of, that is God's transcendence.

It is not that God is somewhere we can never attain, way off in the sky.

It is that God is beckoning us, teeming with light in the middle of our dark places, saying, I am here.

And I'm pretty convinced that's why we come to church.

Because there are parts of invisible light, I guarantee you, that I see that you don't.

And there are parts of invisible light you see that I don't.

And this Advent journey shares the conviction we can do more together.

This Advent journey promises us that those places where we feel the most absent, those darkest of all places, are in fact teeming with God's invisible light.

And together, we might make that light visible in us through us and to the rest of the world.

Please join me as we pray our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed.

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty.

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God, life and life, true God, true God.

We begotten not being with the Father.

For us, for our salvation, we came out with heaven.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, we made our heart of the Virgin Mary and the same hand.

For our sake, each other death was there.

On the third day, we rose again in the course of grace.

He ascended into heaven and seated with the right hand of the Father.

He will come again glory to judge the living and the dead.

And the kingdom of God.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the given life, through mercy, the Father and the Son.

We believe in one holy God that's all the church.

We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world.

In peace we pray to you, Lord God, for all people in their daily life and work, for our families, friends, and neighbors, and for those who are alone, for this community, the nation, and the world, for all who work for justice, freedom, and peace, for St.

Thomas the Apostle's School, for those who teach and those who learn, that they may rejoice in the knowledge of your truth, for the just and proper use of your creation, for the victims of hunger, fear, injustice, and oppression, for all who are in danger, sorrow, or any kind of trouble, for those who minister to the sick, the friendless, and the needy.

We pray for all who have died that they may have a place in your eternal kingdom.

Lord, let your loving kindness be upon them who put your trust in you.

We pray to you also for the forgiveness of our sins, for the peace and unity of the Church of God, for all who proclaim the gospel, and all who seek the truth, for all bishops, priests, and deacons, for the priests in our community, for Mike, Craig, Bill, Lillian, for Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kai, our bishops, in the diocesan cycle of prayer, St.

Francis Houston, St.

John the Divine Houston, and for Michael, our presiding bishop, for all who serve God and his church, for the special needs and concerns of this congregation, especially Chris, Jerry, John, Jerome, Susie, Joe, Nancy, and those of the congregation wishes your name at this time, silently or aloud.

Hear us, Lord, for your mercy is great.

We thank you, Lord, for all the blessings of this life.

We will exalt you, O God, our King, and praise your name forever and ever.

Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.

Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father.

In your compassion forgive us our sins, known and unknown, things done and left undone, and so uphold us by your Spirit that we may live and serve you in newness of life to the honor and glory of your name through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Almighty and Compassionate Lord grant you absolution and remission of all your sin, true repentance, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

It gives me great joy when things don't always work out in church the way we'd planned, including language in the bulletins and sometimes how we do it, you know?

How normal church is and how joyful it can be.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

I want to call your attention to a couple of um special opportunities.

One is that next Sunday, Advent 4, we are actually going to celebrate the feast of St.

Thomas the Apostle because it will be the last day of our 55th year in ministry.

That is on the 21st.

We'll be turning 56.

And there's one service next week at 10:30.

The sign-up is in the same place as always.

By the way, if you're having trouble with the sign-up, please let me know.

We're gonna have to try to figure that out.

Um and immediately after that service, we're going to have a band out here on the green space that is going to perform some celebratory music, much of which will frankly be probably secular, because we are celebrating not only 55 years of ministry, but also next week at 1030, uh, we'll be burning our mortgage documents because we have paid our mortgage off on Bromley Hall.

That is to say, in two years we've paid$540,000 off of debt.

And so that is a huge cause of joy, I have to be honest, and uh it frees us to move into the next two steps of our capital funds drive.

Uh so you'll see in the signups there's a 1030 service and then there's also a box lunch.

Our holy smokers are going to make for us a hot box lunch at no cost to you, that you can eat comfortably in your lap as we socially distance in lawn chairs you bring with masks on so that our COVID spread level is approximately zero.

Now, if it's raining, we won't have lunch.

I just have to tell you, because we can't do that inside.

So, hoping for great weather, out on the lawn, and the band will play to us from about 11:30 to 1.30.

It's the same band that's played our fall festival, and again, a really great way to celebrate 55 full years of ministry as a parish and what God is doing through our generosity.

You'll find both signups online, and I think this the lunch sign-up goes through Thursday so that we can cook the appropriate uh amount.

Um you'll find signups for Christmas Eve also online already.

So the principal service times remain the same: 3:30, 5 o'clock, and 9.30.

If you come at 4:30 and 9 o'clock, there'll be special music.

Now look, you could come at 3.30 and just stay over.

Uh if it's not raining, we will sing hymns out there.

Feel free to bring a lawn chair if you want, but we do have to do that in a mask.

Threat level approximately zero if we do that.

We've we've checked this carefully.

If it's raining, there'll be uh our harper and a few other musicians in here to play some lovely music.

So either way, there's gonna be a win, right?

Music you can participate in on Christmas Eve.

Again, 4:30 for music, nine o'clock for music.

Services are at 3:30, 5, and 9.30, and you'll find those signups.

There's no service Christmas Day.

Again, you'll see that in the signups.

Um, and it's not, you know, nobody really knows what's gonna happen, but um, signing up is a good idea.

That way you can set your intention and we'll figure it out, and uh, we'll celebrate the incarnation one way or another, raining or dry.

Um the last bit, and you heard me reference this already, uh, is that um we joined St.

Christopher's LN's ECW, right?

Our women's Bible Forum joined another women's Bible forum and again brought some gifts of joy uh to the women who are graduating from the St.

Bridget's program downtown.

And um you'll see pictures of that on Facebook if you'd like.

Um small ways of making invisible light visible still make light visible.

Continue to walk in joy as Christ first enjoyed us and gave himself for us an offering and sacrifice to God.

Rise one to me, all things new, people spot, freely love and hot ring bows, rain, white, journey, like a star, table to stand a jar on son of merry, save your toe.

Jesus comes, Jesus comes, we will make him come.

All things come of you, O Lord.

This is the table not of the church, but of Jesus Christ.

It is made ready for those who love him and those who want to love him more.

So come.

You who have much joy and you who have little, you who have been here often, and you who have not been for a long time or ever before.

You who have tried to follow and you who have failed, come.

Not because the church invites you, it is Christ, and he invites you to meet him here.

The Lord be with you.

Lift up your hearts.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is right in a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere, to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and therefore we praise you, joining our voices with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven who forever say this hymn to proclaim the glory of your name.

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna and the highest.

We give thanks to you, O God, for the goodness and love which you've made known to us in creation, in the calling of Israel to be your people, in your word spoken through the prophets, and above all, in the word made flesh Jesus your Son.

For in these last days you sent him to be incarnate the Virgin Mary, to be the Savior and Redeemer of the world.

In him you have delivered us from evil and made us worthy to stand before you.

In him you have brought us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life.

On the night before he died for us, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, and when he given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, Take, eat.

This is my body which is given for you.

Do this for the remembrance of me.

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, and when he given thanks, he gave it to them and said, Drink this, all of you.

This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins.

Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.

Therefore, according to his command, Father, we remember his death, we proclaim his resurrection, we await his coming in glory, and we offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to you, O Lord of all, presenting to you from your creation this bread and this wine.

We pray you, gracious God, to send your Holy Spirit upon these gifts, that they may be the sacrament of the body of Christ and his blood of the new covenant.

Unite us to your Son and his sacrifice, that we may be acceptable through him, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

In the fullness of time, put all things in subjection under your Christ, and bring us to that heavenly country where with Thomas, John the Baptizer, and all the saints, we may enter the everlasting heritage of your daughters and sons through Jesus Christ our Lord, the firstborn of all creation, the head of the church, and the author of our salvation.

By him and with him and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and forever.

Amen.

And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever and ever.

Amen.

These are the gifts of God for you, the family of God.

Feed on them in your hearts by faith and with thanksgiving.

And I invite you to receive bread or a blessing by coming to the aisle immediately to your right, and receiving bread or a blessing, and then coming around the front back to your seat.

Not as a monarch, but a child of very blameless mother mind.

And your great name on Jesus, all hearts must have all things.

Water with while I love I thought an act of your Lord.

Come in your holy white we pray, break us for eternal day.

Defend us while we dwell from all us.

Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image and nourishing us with spiritual food in the sacrament of Christ's body and blood.

Now send us forth a people, forgiven, healed, renewed, that we may proclaim your love to the world and continue in the risen life of Christ our Savior.

Amen.

May God make new joy in you, that you might rejoice always, pray without seeking ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be upon you this day and remain with you always.

Amen.

Of that time in my life when I was doing Spanish.

And thank you, sir.

For your leadership and your gift and all that.

And thank you for your