In our faith…in our life in Christ…. In our walk along the deliverance highway together…

Hope is not simply optimism or wishful thinking or longing for a good outcome.  Hope is the confident expectation of good.  Peace is not simply the absence of conflict but mutual assured flourishing.  In Jesus, who has drawn near.  In “God with us.”  Someone has said this about joy: “Joy is not the happiness we feel that grows out of contentment in circumstances. Joy is the confidence, borne out of experience, that we are on the Lord’s highway - and not even we fools can get lost. Joy is that taste of someday that we can have if we pay attention.”

So let us pay attention, sisters and brothers.  Joy is not simply a feeling.  Neither is joy grinning and bearing it, or feigned happiness.  Joy is a gift.  Joy is like water in the desert.  Joy looks like something, and we are called to look, and we are called to take part, regardless of circumstances.  Joy is rooted and grounded in this truth that we are invited to see today and every day.  “Here is your God.”  Here he is.  He’s come near.  He’s drawn near!

We have our nativity scene set up at the front of the church, as we do every year.  Every year, we do not place baby Jesus in the nativity scene until December 24^th.  For the rest of the year, the baby Jesus figurine is in my middle desk drawer.

Now I have to tell you something about my middle desk drawer.  It’s a bit of… I don’t know if I would call it a junk drawer exactly, but it’s where miscellaneous things end up, let’s just say.  The middle drawer tends to contain what I would best call detritus of life.  Half-dead batteries.  A Tide Pen.  Pieces of Blythwood history that people have given me with which I just cannot bear to part.  A microphone.  The nozzle for the air pump that I use to inflate basketballs/volleyballs.  You get the idea.

I leave the baby Jesus figurine in there, and I’ve attached a post-it with these words from Isaiah 35 - “Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God.”  In the middle of my detritus.  In the middle of my wilderness.  The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad.

Two truths about followers of Christ are evident in our readings today.  One is that we have been given a song.  Last week, we talked about praising God in song at every opportunity.  The song might be called “God Is For You” or “God Is With You” to personalize it.  We might use the words from Isaiah for our song title – “Here Is Your God.”  That’s our song.  If you’re saying, “Well, I’m really not that much of a singer,” don’t worry about it.  Shout it.  The word translated “singing” in Isaiah 35 can be translated as “shout.”  The desert shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with singing.  Our God is here!  We’re on the deliverance highway, and the ransomed/delivered/forgiven of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing!  Do you have joy this day?

Here's some good news.  Our song, like our joy, is not something we need to call up from within ourselves.  It is given to us.  All we need to do is accept this gift of a child named “God with us.”  We don’t need to call joy up from within ourselve,s and this is a good thing.  Exile is hard.  The wilderness is hard.  “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land,” said the people of God as they hung up their harps on tree branches by the rivers of a city, a city whose people had carried them away in captivity.  How can we sing?

How can we sing (or shout) this Sunday?  In Latin-influenced church traditions, this is called Gaudete Sunday.  The Sunday of joy.  The Sunday of rejoicing.  The candle is pink today because it was thought that the usual penitent purple (and the sorrow and regret we feel for doing wrong) just didn’t fit on Joy Sunday.  How can we speak of joy given the state of the world/state of our lives/state of the lives of those who are most dear to us?  Might it seem out of place, even with a pink candle?  Might it seem gaudy even – extravagantly bright or showy, given the state of things?  Gaudete Sunday – and it’s interesting that gaudy comes from that same Latin word, gaudere, from which we get Gaudete. It means rejoice.

So let us sing with the Psalmist – “I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.”  Can’t stop, won’t stop.  “Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.”  We see how all these Advent candles are working together and making their truth known together.

So this is the first thing.  We’ve been given a song.  We’ve personalized this “God for/God with you” or “Here is your God,” but we don’t stop there.  Here is the second thing that I’d like us to hold up as truth for ourselves this Joy Sunday.

We’re travelling along a highway together.  You know, one of my favourite images for the church is that of a pilgrim people, a people on a journey together toward the holy city on the holy mountain.  We are called to go together, and we are called to invite others to join us as we go.  Someone has put it like this:  “We are travelling the Lord’s Highway today. We may not yet be all that we can be; we may not yet have reached our destination as the people of God, but we are on the way. We are a pilgrim people, singing our songs of ascent as we go up into the glorious presence of God, even as we are already embraced by our God every step of the way.”

We are realists, and we realize that it can be hard to travel through the wilderness.  Arid, desert land is tough.  This is the kind of land of which Isaiah speaks.  The wilderness around the Dead Sea in southern Israel is rough.  There’s not enough water for crops or trees.  Winter rains bring growth every year, but it’s pretty scraggly growth.  This is the promise made in Isaiah 35, where the wilderness and the desert are rejoicing along with us.  “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus, it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon (and its cedar trees) shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon (the coastal plain where crops grow in abundance.  They shall see the glory of the Lord (the weight of God’s presence), the majesty of our God.”

The promise is that one day the whole desert will be turned into flourishing.  The promise is for one day when Jesus will come, but we see evidence of it now, the same way a desert traveller sees an oasis or sees flowers after winter rains.  The same way that beaver complexes remain after the desolation of a wildfire… (!)

I used to say that this kind of desert imagery is hard for us to imagine in this part of the world, where wilderness is lush forests and lakes and so on.  Until I heard about beaver dams and wildfires. One may wonder why the beaver is such a symbol of Canada and seen in places like Toronto Police Service badges and the Toronto coat of arms.  Apart from the animals’ role in Canada’s origin story, the beaver is noble and industrious.  Persevering.  Not only this, but I found out that recent studies have shown that beaver dams (or beaver complexes, as they’re called when they’re grouped together) provide a firebreak against wildfires.  Here’s a photo of devasted wilderness except for where the beavers have been at work.  Not only do these dams provide shelter for wildlife, they act as a springboard for new growth after devastation. 

The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus (like the beaver complex after a wildfire), it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing.  Joy is something we can see, and we need to continue to encourage one another to look. 

As we go along, our call is to strengthen the hands that are weak and make firm the knees that are feeble.  Not our own, of course; we’re not up to that on our own (and I’m starting to learn something about feeble knees, let me say).  Let us strengthen one another’s hands and knees.  Why do we come together week by week if not at least in part, to encourage one another?  To remind one another.  To say to one another whose hearts are fearful, “Be strong, do not fear!”  Why?  Here is your God.  He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.  He will come and save you.  If this talk of vengeance sounds harsh to us, remember that it is God’s work and it involves setting right all injustice, relief of suffering and the liberation of all from fear and impoverishment. This is what God does.  When we worship together - when we are reminded of God’s truth together, remind one another of God’s truth together and encourage one another in God’s truth together – we are made more like Him, and we are enabled to go out and do as God would have us do, reflecting God’s ways.

May we be attentive to what God is doing.  Look at what Jesus told John the Baptist when John asked the question, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  John was a serious man who took repentance (turning) and living in the kingdom of heaven seriously.  “Bear fruit worthy of repentance” was his call, and may we keep on hearing it.  John had staked his life on the whole kingdom thing and Jesus as the coming one thing.   “Are you really the one?” is the question he sends from prison.  A wilderness situation if ever there was one.  Jesus can handle our questions.  The life of faith is one that is, at times, paired with doubt.  Doubt is not so much the thing to be avoided as fear is.  It’s been said that the opposite of faith is not doubt but fear.  This is why we repeatedly hear “Fear not” or “Be strong, do not fear.”  Jesus’ answer to John’s question is not “Of course I am” or “How dare you ask such a question?”  Jesus’ answer is “Go tell John what you hear and see; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.  And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me (and we hear the echo of the Psalm – Happy are those whose help is in the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.” 

You may be saying at this point, “David, it’s great to hear that God is with us and not to fear, but what is joy supposed to look like?  What are we looking for?”

To which I say look to the promise.  The promise is in all of our readings today.  The promise will be made known fully one day, but we know it in part now.  “The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.” (Ps. 146: 7b-8a  “The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow.” (Ps. 146-9a)  The promise is heard in Isaiah 35 – “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”

Follower of Christ, fear not.  This faith is not just something we speculate about or look to in order to hold a theory about life and death and everything in between.  This faith looks like something.  From what have you been freed?  How are you being enabled to see in a whole new way?  How have you been lifted up when bowed down under a crushing weight?  How are you coming to hear in a whole new way?  How have you been enabled to leap and given a new song to sing?

Even when doubts arise.  Even when things have not gone the way we wanted to or expected them to.  Promises appear before us like lush growth around a beaver dam surrounded by devastation, so that we can not only talk about joy this day but sing and shout it and live it out.  “Tell John what’s going on,” said Jesus.  May we never let questions or concerns about what’s going to happen or how it will happen blind us to what God is doing among us.  “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” 

Promises that will know completion one day; promises that we know in part now, no matter what is going on.  God is with us no matter what our circumstances.  Joy even in the middle of sorrow.  Christmas is not unmitigated joy for all.  Blue Christmas is real.  Joy is God with us in the middle of loss, in the midst of uncertainty, where we see good news being proclaimed and held onto. 

I think I’ll leave baby Jesus in my desk this year as a reminder of the joy to be found in “God with us.”  Someone has described “God with us” like this -   “See, he’s here! He’s been here all along. Right alongside, through the joys and the heartaches, through the struggles and the accomplishments.” Right there, maybe out of sight for a time, but close by. Within reach. Even in the desert. Even in a place of exile. Of uncertainty. Right there, all the time. Emmanuel.

God with us.  Our hope.  Our peace.  Our joy.  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift.

Amen