Sounding Joy

Note: The following is a sermon delivered on December 15, 2024, at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, based on readings from Advent 3, Year C. An audio version is found above.

Today, in this dark season of Advent, the Church calls us to pause and reflect on joy. We mark this day as Gaudete Sunday, named after the Latin word for “rejoice”—which opens our Epistle reading.

Advent, in its ancient form, was a forty-day season, like Lent. It was a penitential time of reflection and preparation. And, just like Lent, there came a Sunday meant to interrupt the heaviness—a moment to rest in joy.

But the joy of Gaudete is distinct. Unlike the joy of Christmas or Easter, which celebrates transcendent, transformative events—birth, resurrection, incarnation—the joy of today is not rooted in what has already happened. Nor is it about what is happening now. It is, instead, joy anchored in what is yet to come.

This is a much trickier and more elusive joy to find. Without the birth of Jesus and without Easter, here we are on a Sunday during the darkest part of our year, being asked to take out joy on credit.

I’ll admit, this is not easy for me. I am wired for anxiety, for stress, for firefighting. My days are often spent hopping from crisis to crisis, extinguishing trouble wherever it flares up. Joy doesn’t tend to show up in the middle of all that.

The sky is falling. Things aren’t going to plan. The headlines aren’t doing us any favors. Work life stinks, maybe. Our personal relationships are going haywire. God doesn’t seem to be listening, and we may even doubt that they are here at all. He gestures at Gaza. At Washington. At Ukraine. At Sudan. At Haiti. Where is God in all this? And why, of all things, would we rejoice?

But no really: like exactly how are we to be joyful? I, who am unmoved by the work of Oprah and Brené Brown and the folks with slogans like “find your bliss” or “choose joy.” If I’m honest, those things feel cheap to me. They ask me to ignore what’s going on. They reduce joy to an easy set of choices that look an awful lot like my own privilege.

For Paul, in our reading from Philippians today, joy isn’t about these trite, unsatisfying outcomes. The opposite of joy, for him, isn’t sorrow—it’s anxiety and worry. A lack of peace about the future. The world going wrong in all the ways we know.

Haven’t we all been there?

We expect to feel God in worship and if we don’t, well… I don’t know.

We expect to see God in people. They just have a look, you know? They’re mostly clean shaven and well-kempt and take holiness seriously. They’ll look like princes and sons of God. In whole, sane, healthy bodies.

We expect to experience God in answered prayers, like prompting our boss to cut us some slack. Or getting us that raise. Or healing our ailments.

We expect God to arrive with the Government Upon His Shoulders.

With so much of our belief in God contingent upon God meeting our expectations, it can be withering to persist in hope, let alone joy.

But the joy of this Sunday is not about what is here. It is about what is to come. It is about foolishly hoping after hope. It is rejoicing in a promise of things that are not yet, that remain to be seen.

It is in this gap between expectation and reality that we hear the voice of John the Baptist.

And John the Baptist is a weird bird. I like his energy, but he is incredibly cranky, a bit like his cousin.

He has news, you brood of vipers. The news is explosive. It is fiery. The ax is at the tree. The chaff is ready for the burn pile. John is preparing for the world to be set on fire.

This does not sound nice. And coming from John, it doesn’t look nice either. This is a dude just emerged from the wilderness on a diet of bugs. He does not appear to be sane. He’s standing in a river throwing water on people. John is not safe in any real sense. And John’s news does not feel like good news.

But the writers of Luke seem to think that it is. And I am inclined, at long last, to agree.

Here in the gap between expectation and reality is a voice that says: Things aren’t going to go the way you think they’re going to go.

Some of you aren’t going to make it.

Bear fruit or burn.

Whew.

John does not look like joy.

And often, neither do we.

Like John, we are built to bear great things: sometimes fruit. And sometimes, like now, weight. Immense, huge, terrifying, anxiety-inducing, fearful, awesome, hopeful weight. Enormous logs for a blazing fire.

We, like John, are built to expect great things. It is the expectation that generates the heat.

Expecting is hard. It is uncomfortable. It is unpredictable. The fire of expectation contains both warmth and risk. We may be consumed. We may be burned up. We may wither. 

If there is no danger, there is no fire. If there is no risk, there is no joy. 

Ours is a God of the unexpected. The Burning Bush. Not safe, but good. The God who burns but does not consume. The God who shows up in the unlikeliest of ways. In weird birds. In wild men. In pregnant teenagers. In brush fires.

In this way, joy is the thing that happens when we are burning with something fiery, but aren’t consumed.

The Orthodox church has a tradition of thinking of Mary as the Burning Bush. Like the Burning Bush, Mary contains the very essence and presence of God, but is not consumed by it. Like John the Baptist, Mary is expecting. Like John, Mary contains within her a fiery future. Like John, Mary models for us a way of bearing fruit worthy of repentance.

John and Mary work in tandem in these weeks of Advent. We might think of Mary as a kind of prophet and John as a kind of pregnant. John burns. Mary bears. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Either way, this is not going the way we thought it was going to go.

Joy sometimes does not look like joy. Sometimes it looks like the people we meet in living water. On dusty roads. Headed down to the local office to pay our taxes. On donkey rides through Gaza on our way to Egypt. The crush of family drama in the house around the holidays. The heartache of a season where loved ones are gone. Or when the promises of God are not yet delivered.

If we’re not careful, the superficial joy peddlers out in the world could have us thinking that joy needs to be well-dressed. Smiling pearly whites. Ironed and steamed and tailored. Joy runs a comb through its hair and does not smell like anything but fine cologne. Drives a car with a license plate that says “#BLESSED.”

John and Mary don’t have time for all that nonsense. The kingdom of God is at hand. And it is upside down.

Rejoice, my friends, in what is not at all apparent.

Hope might look like heartache. 

Joy, like being jaded.

Justice, like injustice.

A baby, not a baron. 

Powerless, not powerful.

Foolish, not wise.

Love, not legislation.

The bush will burn, but not be burnt.

In this season of getting our hopes up – here in this gap between our performances and our selves, between promise and prognosis, between expectation and reality – I wonder if we might take a moment to see the promises of God at work in places we normally would not recognize them:

In the faces of our enemies.

In the bad news swirling around us.

In our exile.

In our grief.

In the places we are most raw and hidden.

John has some advice for us about how we can generate joy when we do not see it. In building connections with others. In sharing what is ours. In waiting expectantly. In building the fires around which we all can gather.

And there’s the ticket. Jesus shows up when we do the work of Jesus.

The wait will be long. Sometimes hot and sweaty. Heavy. Gross. Risky. Unsafe. Sometimes too much to bear. It’ll be long seasons of waiting and hard labor.

And yet, joy shows up in the dark. Blazing.

Rejoice. The wait is worth it.