Many of us will ask and/or be asked the question in the coming weeks, “How was your Christmas?”  If we take this question seriously – I mean beyond the “Fine!” or “Great!” that might be expected when this question is posed, the same way in which we so often answer “How are you?” – what will have made Christmas good?  The events we attended?  The concerts, the parties, the dinners.  The people we were with?  The gifts that we gave and received?  Those are all good thing and we should be in no way against them.  At the same time we recognize that they don’t reflect everyone’s experience at Christmas.

What would make Christmas good?  What would make Advent good?  How might we be able to look back on Advent 2023 and say “It was good, thank you Lord.”

“Wake up!”  We have heard.  “Stay awake!  Stay alert!”  Be ready!  “Make a straight path!”  “Make a clear highway,” we have heard.  Today we hear “Rejoice!”  We sang it too.  When we speak about joy in the Christian faith, we are not speaking of mere happiness; particularly happiness that depends on circumstances.  I think for many, the problem with hearing Christmas songs in the malls and the stores and the Christmas specials is not so much the repetition or debates on what date they should begin, but the kind of inherent cheer in them.  In “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, before the dancing, and the reading of Luke 2 and the transformed tree, there is Charlie Brown and Linus talking at a wall.  Charles Schulz did not shy away from existential angst.  Charlie Brown says “Christmas is coming.  I’m not happy.  I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”  We get it. The feeling that there is potentially something wrong with us as we hear about silver bells and children laughing and people passing meeting smile after smil and it’s the most wonderful time of the year and sleigh rides and reindeer and run run Rudolph and obligatory jollity. 

Who has time for that?  We are taking the time though, right now, to consider something more profound; to consider joy not as something that we have to find or that can be taken from us depending on what is going on in our lives.  Lucinda Williams is a singer/songwriter that I like very much.  She has a song called “Joy” about unrequited love (many of her songs are about love that is unrequited or has gone bad).  She sings “I don’t want you anymore/You took my joy/You took my joy/I want it back” and goes on to name a list of towns in which she plans to look for her joy.  We’re not talking about joy in those terms when we talk about joy in the Christian faith.  We are talking about and holding onto joy as a gift from God.  We are talking about joy that is independent of any circumstance in which we find ourselves.

Aside – When we speak of joy we’re not talking about grinning and bearing it or facing every circumstance with cheer.  As followers of Christ we are saddened.  Life can be hard and it can often be unfair.  Sometimes we might even weep.  We mourn.   I attended a funeral once of a sister in the faith’s mother and there was no mention at all of sadness or mourning.  It felt wrong and I would never do that.  The thing about mourning as people of hope is, mourning/sadness/tears do not have the last word (as we heard in our Psalm).  We remember that the joy candle is burning right alongside the candle of hope and we remember how the story ends (which is not really an end at all but a renewal).  End of aside.

Joy not only has the last word but it should have the first word for us.  “Rejoice always” writes Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:16.  The word for rejoice here in Greek was used as a greeting.  Chairete.  Chaire chairete meant “Welcome, good day, I am glad to see you.”  They went a bit further than hello and that’s a good thing I think.  The first word was joyful acknowledgement, and we well every day to begin with joyful acknowledgement.  Of what or whom?  Of Christ.  Last week we sat for a while with “He is our peace.”  We kept that truth in front of us.  Let’s do the same now.

He is our joy.

In Christ, we’re talking about and living out a whole new way of being in the world.  A whole new way of living.  Why?  Because He has saved us, he is saving us, he will save us.  He has rescued us.  He has delivered us. He has freed us.  He has released us.  We long for a new way of living and a new way of being in which we may rejoice; in which we may have joy regardless of our circumstances.  We are found in such joy when we are found in the deliverance of Jesus. 

He is our joy.  Let us not become used to deliverance.  Let us not get blasé about it, take it for granted or ignore it altogether/leave it unacknowledged.  We sing a song here called “Your Mercy.”  The chorus goes “I stand before my king/And I bow my heart to sing/You saved me/You raised me/You died so I could live/No greater love than this/Your mercy”  I love those lines.  So simple yet so incredibly profound.  “You saved me.”  There’s another song that is a prayer that goes “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.”  This is a good prayer – may it be on our hearts.  We want to have a good Advent!  Listen again to the words of the Psalm we heard – “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like people who dream.”  This is a song about those who had been brought back to Jerusalem and the surrounding area after being carried away in captivity to Babylon.  They had been delivered.  They had been saved.  This is what God does. “When the Lord brought back those who returned to Zion, we were like people who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy, then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’  The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.”  We were like people who dream.  I wonder if you remember your dreams.  I dream vividly and I remember my dreams almost every night.  I take after my father in this.  Immigrating from Ireland as my family did, my father had occasion to be reunited with people whom he had not seen in many years – decades even.  I heard him say on more than one occasion, upon being seeing the person whom he had not seen in decades, “It was like a dream.”  I know what he meant.  Something so good and so unlikely you wonder if it’s even real.  Pinch me, am I dreaming?  When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like people who dream.  Joyous wonder at being delivered.  May God restore such joyous wonder to all of us.  We remember Mary going to visit her cousin Elizabeth and Elizabeth exclaiming with a loud cry in joyful wonder, “And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?”  Let us exclaim in joyful wonder, “And why has this happened to me, that my Lord has come to me?”

Let us begin with joyful acknowledgement that in God there is comfort.  In God there is restoration.  In God there is building up even in the middle of devastation.  Circumstances in life can be hard.  Life was hard for those who had come back to Jerusalem.  They had returned to ruins.  Things were not as they once were.  The rich preyed on the poor.  In the middle of this situation comes the promises – good news to the oppressed, binding up for the brokenhearted, liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners. 

The promise of a new set of clothes.  Mourning does not have the last word with God.  Look at v3.  “… to provide for those who mourn in Zion – to give them a garland instead of ashes (a wreath of leaves or flowers worn on the head rather than ashes of mourning), the oil of gladness (good for your skin and hair) instead of morning, the mantle of praise (mantle like a cloak or overcoat or parka) instead of a faint spirit.”  New clothes.

Someone might say “This all sounds very nice but new clothes don’t really do anything.  For that matter, decorations don’t really do anything to change anything do they?”  What is the point of a voice calling in the wilderness if there’s no one to hear?  Aren’t we just shouting into the wind with all this stuff? We’re shouting alright, and let us keep shouting.  I wouldn’t say we’re shouting into the wind, but perhaps we’re shouting into the darkness.  Let us shout and let us light candles in the darkness in holy defiance – the candles of hope, peace and joy now burning, waiting for the Christ candle in the middle of them all.  Someone has put it like this:  “…shouting in the darkness is a noble profession. It is a calling. When we shout, when we decorate our homes and our churches, we are not saying that we are unaware of difficulties, that we are oblivious to bad news. We are saying that we choose to live by good news. We are saying that we choose to live by hope and not despair.”

The prophet picks up this clothing imagery again at the end of our passage, speaking of rejoicing as a choice; rejoicing as an acknowledgement of deliverance: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” Then this promise and the imagery switches from clothes to plants, “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 nations.”  Don’t despise the words of the prophets said Paul, and we won’t.  We rejoice in hope of the one who has arrived, has arrived, and will arrive.  We trust in the One who’s promises are sure as the buds that will appear in spring, no matter how unlikely that looks now.  I know that evergreens get a lot of attention at this time of year, and they have their own significance, but let’s not forget the deciduous trees.  Maple, oak, my favourite birch.  They look bare now but there are winter buds on their branches.  This is from northerwoodlands.org – “These buds formed last summer and are designed to withstand snow, ice, and subzero temperatures. By withdrawing water from them before winter, deciduous trees protect their buds from frost damage.  If you slice open a bud and use a magnifier, you can see tiny green leaves and flowers folded up inside.”  In other words, signs of new life are all around us, even in the winter (of our discontent or otherwise).  May God give us eyes to see them.   

Joy in our faith is more than a feeling.  It is an action.  We joyfully acknowledge the one who brings deliverance and who has given us a new set of clothes.  We also remember how Jesus described his mission on the day he returned to his hometown (not Bethlehem but the town in which he was raised).  In the synagogue in Nazareth Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah and the gathering heard him say, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18-19).  When he finished he said to them “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21)

Our joy in Christ, our rejoicing in Christ, is not just for us and our benefit.  Last week we talked about being the embracing arms of Christ.  People of tender hearts and humanity in Christ.  This is Christ’s work.  We share the Holy Spirit of Christ.  We are called to be living letters of Christ, ambassadors of Christ.  Bringing and being good news, release, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, binding up wounds, bringing comfort and consoling as we have been consoled.  

So let us go from here with this question before us.  To whom are we being called to be the joy of Christ?  As we acknowledge and rejoice together in the wonder of our deliverance, to whom are we being called to bring good news of great joy which is for all people.  The joy of the Lord is our strength, after all.  Let us be people who hold onto that joy fiercely, and together.  May this be true for all of us this Advent season.