Making Room For Joy

Philippians 4:4-7    

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Today we are celebrating the third Sunday of Advent (we will actually celebrate it again next week). 

Our Advent theme this year is: Is There Room at the Inn? 

We began by talking about making room for hope, last week I focused on making room for peace -- next week we will make room for the cantata, and then we will look at the fourth theme -- making room for love.

Of course we will then wrap it all up as we seek to make room for Jesus on Christmas Eve.

This morning we are going to talk about Making Room for Joy!

As Christmas draws closer --- Joy seems to be in the air.

          Christmas movies

          Christmas music

          Christmas cookies

          Christmas Parties

         

Each Advent my mind seems to be drawn to a strange song. 

For me this song is what Advent is all about. 

It is an obscure song composed by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim for the 1957 play West Side Story.

Anybody have any idea what song I am talking about?

I am not really sure why --- but playing this song is one of my requirements for the Advent season. 

Along with watching

          Charlie Brown Christmas

          It's A Wonderful Life

          Miracle on 34th Street

          and my girls require that I add The Muppets Christmas Carol

My favorite version of this song from West Side Story is actually from the band Utopia, and I bet you are familiar with the song but probably not that version.  The words go:

Could it be? yes it could.

Something's coming, something good,

If I can wait!

Something's coming, I don't know what it is

But it is

Gonna be great!

Christmas is just a little over two weeks away -- something's coming and it is gonna be great.

And I know it will --- because we will be celebrating with Miss Hattie Mae and the rest of our girls . . .

Joy feels natural this time of year

Our text this morning follows along with this theme.

Paul in his letter to the Philippians is calling on us to:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

It’s easy to see why this is the text that churches read on this third Sunday of Advent.

Who doesn’t like to hear about joy this time of year?

As we light our candles, we can boldly proclaim our joy in

our words,

and in our prayers,

and in our songs.

Christmas is almost here, and we are joyful.

But, what about those times when joy feels hard to find?

What do we say then?

Six years ago I was busy preparing for the third Sunday of Advent. 

The theme was once again joy, but I was having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

One year earlier Nancy and I had left a car at St Luke's UMC as we picked up our daughters who came over from Bloomington and drove together to North Carolina to celebrate Nancy's dad's life.  Six months later we made the trip again, this time to bury her brother.

But something else happened six years ago --- the actual anniversary is on Friday.

20 students and 6 adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut

Over those next two days --- like most of the clergy I know ---- I went back and forth between the TV screen, and a blank computer screen

          How does one talk about JOY in the midst of such pain?

The church, I believe struggles with speaking to the realities of our world.

We love to talk about hope, peace, joy and love.

But when we confront the injustices in our world we struggle --- and the truth is many of you don't want to hear about it from the pulpit.

We want happy stories -- we want to sugar coat our lives and have God bless them.

But when we fail to deal with the hard realities of life --- What are we saying to the people who are caught in the midst of those painful realities?

If we don’t acknowledge the pain and suffering in the world, and instead just say “be joyful”, how can anyone ever feel welcome to tell us their stories?

How can one caught up in the pain of life feel welcome in the church?

How can they find peace when they are mourning?

How can they find hope when they are depressed?

How can they find joy when they have lost their job and are struggling to make ends meet?

To deny what is happening in our world is not a Christian response.

Jesus always confronted the realities of his day.

He didn't gloss over the pain, anger, injustice and just talk about happy things.

Instead, Jesus told us that we are to embrace the hurting.

          To bind their wounds

          To comfort the brokenhearted

          To bring peace and justice to those who suffer

Jesus called on us to tell the truth -- even when it hurts.

So while we are to make room for Joy this advent season, in order to do that we have to acknowledge the things that steal our joy from us.

Christmas can be hard --- and I want to acknowledge that.

But at the same time --- we as a church, we as followers of Jesus can't stop there.

Yes, we must acknowledge the brokenness of the world, but we also need to go one step further and proclaim that it doesn’t have to be that way.

There is another way.

There is a better way.

And it is in Advent that we point to that fact.

We point with hope to the future, and to the ways Christ is coming into this world.

Our passage from Philippians reminds us of that:

Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Scripture doesn’t promise us easy lives, or lives without pain.

But it does promise us that those things do not have the last word.

On this third Sunday of Advent we light a pink candle. 

If you are wondering why pink, you would be like most Christians.

Three of the Advent Candles are blue or purple which are the color of penitence.

They are also a royal color and signify the coming of the prince of peace.

The third Sunday of Advent is also known as “Gaudette Sunday” which means “rejoice”.

Pink is the in-between color of purple and white.

We light the pink candle because just as the white mixes with the purple and transforms it and makes it pink --- we are waiting for Christ’s light to break into our world and bring the joy that feels so elusive.

We stand here in the real world, at the junction of where pain and hope meet, and we look for something better.

          We long for joy.

And we say, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”,

Come God, and be with us.

And we do something more.

We proclaim --- just by being here ---- what real joy means.

We testify that the joy that comes with Christ never really ends.

It’s there in the best of times, but it’s also there when times are hard.

It tells us that we can be a joyful person but at the same time still cry alongside the world when it is hurting.

Being joyful means you know that the pain in the world isn’t the way it is supposed to be.

Being joyful means that you know that there is a better way.

As we gather together in 15 days on Christmas Eve, we will turn out the lights to acknowledge the hurt and pain in our world. 

          To --- in a way --- experience the darkness that so many feel

But we will also be reminded of what the Gospel of John tells us:

          “The light shines in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Jesus is the Light of the World

          Nothing can extinguish it!

Remember what Paul wrote in Romans:

If God is for us, who is against us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angles, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If that light cannot be extinguished, neither can that joy.

We gather here today because somewhere deep inside of us we believe that to be true.

We believe that Jesus is the Light of the World and that the light will always overcome the darkness.

We believe . . .

Our responsibility as followers of Jesus is to spread that light – to share that joy!

Joy is different than just a feeling.

Joy is a way of living as people following the light of Jesus into the world.

Listen carefully ---

Claiming joy is an act of faith,

Living with that joy is a revolutionary act --- especially when we share it with the world that is in desperate need of it.

God’s gift of joy is there for us --- and we are invited to claim it --- not just in the good times, but especially in the bad.

And so, and as we watch and wait this Advent, make room for Joy.

Let the light of Jesus fill your lives and experience the joy it brings.

Live as a people who believe that this joy, and the child who brings it, can change the world.

If you do that, you will have plenty of room at your Inn, for you are halfway to Christmas.  Amen.