Fairhaven Sermon 12-14-2025

Well, welcome to Advent week three. This Sunday, this Advent, when we remember joy, that's why we've got a pink candle today instead of the purple ones. This is at the Sunday of Joy. And as we've heard over the past few weeks, Advent is a time of waiting.

And oftentimes it feels like we're waiting in the dark because the days are getting shorter and we have less daylight and the lack of sunlight affects our emotions as well. And then there's the busyness of getting ready for Christmas, which is fun, but it adds some stress to the time. And for myself and for a number of you as well, this holiday season has included illnesses and/or personal losses. And for those of us who have been sidetracked by these life events, I do recommend our Thursday service at Blue Christmas at Spencer.

It's a chance to slow down and reflect a little bit. But having said that, week three of Advent brings a change of pace because this Sunday is the Sunday of joy. This Sunday we light that pink candle reminding us that even in this Advent season of repentance and preparation, there is a joy that's about to arrive. Before I dig into the scripture readings for today, let me just review where we've been the past couple of weeks.

Amen. Week 1, we heard that the word advent means that something's about to happen. And there are actually two advents at this time of year. The first is when Jesus comes on December 25th, and the second is when Jesus comes again.

And nobody but the Father knows when that second coming is going to be. Jesus tells the disciples and through them tells us to prepare for his coming by keeping watch and being ready at all times. Keep watch and be ready. That's the first message of Advent.

Week two, we met John the Baptist as the voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. And through John and through the things that God says and does with John and with his parents, we learn two more things about Advent. First, no matter how dark things may look to us, God has a plan. And secondly, God is on the move.

So, while we wait, God is active. And our part in that activity is to align ourselves with God. Now, in week three, we catch a glimpse of what's coming. We get a bit of anticipatory joy.

And this week I came across a quotation from Henry Nowen. It's always tough to pronounce that name, Henry Nowen. He's a Catholic theologian from the 1900s, and his books are required reading in seminary. He said this about joy.

Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing, sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death, can take that love away. That's joy. And then a couple days after that, after I read that quotation, I received an email from one of the places I visited when I went down to El Paso a couple years ago. The ministry that we visited there has locations on both sides of the border, El Paso and Ciudad And one of the clients that they have there, her name is Anna, shared her story.

And she wrote, I was born in Cidad Juarez and raised in Oklahoma for 33 years. I've been deported for 15 months now. I'm a single mother of seven beautiful children. And by the grace of God, my mother has them back in Oklahoma.

I am a widow of 26 months now, and I have overcome depression. I have learned, and I'm still learning, about letting things go. I have learned that I am a daughter of God. I am praying nonstop because I know our Father in Heaven listens.

A year ago, I thought my life was over, but now I am surrounded by amazing people who believed in me and gave me a second opportunity at life. with nothing but love. God first, sincerely, Anna. That's what Nouwen was talking about.

Joy comes from being able to look tragedy in the eye and see it for what it is, and at the same time being able to see the love of God and the love of God's people. That's joy. Joy is not a light, fluffy thing. Joy is deep down, rooted in the dirt, fed by adversity, reaching for the light of the Lord.

And with these experiences in mind, let's turn to our reading from Isaiah 35. There's a lot of music and singing in this passage in Isaiah. In fact, for those of you who will be listening to Messiah either today or later on, you'll be hearing some of these words in Messiah. Amen.

Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. So I'm not going to sing the whole thing. Anyway, but..

. So this whole passage in Isaiah is part of the Advent story. Isaiah catches a glimpse of what's coming, the gladness and the joy and the glory and the people of God, no longer strangers, no longer exiles, returning to the city of God with singing. Okay.

Isaiah talks about the glory of the Lord, and what does that glory look like? Isaiah says it looks like weak hands being made strong and weak knees being made stable. Those of us who have joint issues can relate to these things. But there's more. Isaiah also talks about people who are afraid being comforted and the blind being able to see and the deaf being able to hear and the lame being able to walk and those who can't speak being able to sing.

Christmas is not an end, it's a beginning. It's a glance into the joy of God's new creation that is on the way. Advent leads to Christmas and the second Advent leads to Revelation, where heaven and earth become one. So, given all this, what does Isaiah advise the people of God to do? He says, Open our hands to receive what God offers.

Just open our hands. The funny thing about receiving is that it can sometimes be more difficult than giving. Because when we give, we give from a position of plenty. But when we receive, our hands are empty.

And this means letting go of everything else, anything that might come between us and God. In order to receive, we need empty hands. That's the message of Isaiah. Open our hands to receive what God offers.

The message of Luke meets us there with our empty hands and fills our hands with God's blessings. These words from Luke chapter 1 are called the Magnificat, the song of Mary, the woman who said yes to God. Mary sings that God has seen the lowliness of his servant and God is not ashamed. Mary, a peasant girl, a teenager from a poor family, unmarried, unemployed, has been chosen to bring the Messiah into the world.

And her words join the words of the great prophets as she sings, God has done great things. God has scattered the proud. God has brought down the powerful. God has lifted up the people of the world that the world calls unimportant.

The hungry are fed while the rich go away with nothing. Unimportant. And God remembers mercy to his people. And God remembers his promises to Abraham and to those of us who come after him.

These words sounded very radical back in Jesus' day. They still do today. Where it comes to the rich, Jesus remarked later in his ministry how difficult it was for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. And the disciples answered, well, then who can be saved? It's like they were asking, where's the cutoff, Lord? What's the limit? How much is too much? But Jesus answers, what is impossible with human beings is impossible with God.

That insight that we need from Mary's words is that God remembers God's servants. Yeah. And each one of us is in a relationship of service to God. We want to listen to what God teaches us, understand, and do what God asks us to do.

In the end, at the bottom line, the Christian faith is not about believing the right stuff, at least not entirely. Truth is important, but the real focus is on loving God. It's about being in relationship with the Almighty, who calls us to care for others because God cares for us. And Jesus said, whenever we do for whatever we do for the least of these, we do for him.

So our passage from Luke encourages us that having received what God offers, to serve God by doing what God asks. Thanks. So, so far we've got to open our hands to receive and then serve God. Finally, in our reading from Matthew, we find John the Baptist, who we only just met last week, is in jail.

Now, he's there because he dared to stand up to King Herod and tell him that it was unlawful, according to the teachings of Moses, for him to be living as if he was married to his brother's wife. There's another issue here, too, that's not spoken about directly in the Bible, but underlies a lot of what's going on. Back then, the Roman Empire had a thing called Pax Romana, the Roman Peace. It was a sort of a sociopolitical concept, a teaching that promised peace and prosperity to the citizens of the empire, but at the cost of conquest and exploitation of the conquered.

By contrast, John the Baptist called people to repent and be baptized, which is a new beginning, both spiritually and in life. And Jesus, in his ministry, called people to follow him. Both of these calls were personal calls to personal commitments, as opposed to the imperial call to a secular citizenship. But now John is in prison, right? And prison back then was nothing like what we know today.

Today, prisoners have rights, at least in theory, to food, medical treatment, fresh air and exercise, and even education if they're lacking a GED. Today's jails, even though they're not places you'd want to be, for the most part are humane. And I can say that as someone who has volunteered in one. But back in Jesus' day, there was none of that.

The jails back then did not provide food. Okay. Your family was supposed to bring food for you and clothing and anything else that you needed. And if you didn't have family or friends, you were out of love.

Apart from a very short-term holding cell, the Roman jail was basically just an underground pit cut out of stone. You'd go down, we actually did this as tourists, you'd go down the staircase about 12 feet down into a hole that was maybe 15 by 15, and there's nothing there. Except maybe a bucket. That's it.

No bed, no chair, nothing to eat, nothing to drink. And you might be alone in that hole or you might have others in that hole and either way it wasn't pleasant. People went mad in those places sometimes. So John the Baptist, he had his disciples to help take care of him and supply him with what he needed.

And two of those disciples came to Jesus with a question from John. Are you he? Are you the one? Or are we supposed to look for somebody else? Now, John the Baptist already knew the answer to that question. So why was he asking? Most theologians agree that John was not doubting. John knew who Jesus was.

He knew that Jesus was the Messiah. He knew that before he was born. And he had no doubts about that. He might have been wondering why Jesus, his cousin, hadn't visited him yet, maybe, but John was being taken care of by his disciples and there really wasn't anything more that Jesus could have done for him.

King Herod had John right where he wanted him. And most people who have given thought to the situation believe, and I agree with them, that John was using this question as a pretext to get two of his disciples to spend some time with Jesus, to listen to Jesus, to witness Jesus' miracles in hopes that they would come back to John and tell John's other disciples what Jesus was doing. This is John's way of sort of handing off his disciples to Jesus when that time came. Amen.

And that's pretty much what happened. So John knew that he wasn't going to be getting out of prison. John knew in his own words that I must decrease and he, that is Jesus, must increase. John was glad to see Jesus coming into his own, to see God's word be fulfilled, and he And Jesus gives John's disciples this message to take back: The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are healed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them, and blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.

I've been thinking about this this week a lot about this. People from all over, all walks of life, there are so many people who take offense at Jesus. For these folks, as well as for us, Jesus asks, referring to John the Baptist, he says, What did you go out through the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? The crowd would have laughed at that, by the way. Or, Jesus says, or someone in soft robes.

No, you find those in palaces, which would have brought more laughter from the crowd. Jesus says to the crowd, Truly I tell you, among those born of women, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist, but the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. - I don't know. The values of the kingdom of heaven are not the values of human beings.

In fact, the values of the kingdom of heaven are so radically different from everyday human thinking that they basically turn our world upside down. As one pastor put it, God's kingdom and God's deliverance have more to do with restoration than with retribution. That is, more to do with fixing things and setting things right than with handing out punishment. And this is good news.

It brings joy to those who know God. But it causes problems for those who want to see others get their just desserts. So what do we make of all this that we've heard today? The joy of Christmas, the joy of Christmas is coming close. Jesus will be here really soon.

So in this third week of Advent, we want to open our hands to receive what God offers. And then having received what God offers, serve God with what we've been given. And when we run into difficulties like John the Baptist did, bring them to Jesus. Open hands, serve God, and bring it all to Jesus.

The day we're waiting for is closer now than when we started. Amen..