Rejoice!: A Sermon for 3 Advent

I’m guessing that for some of you, the first thing you noticed today was all the pink – on the altar, on the pulpit, on the Advent wreath, and on me. That is a good thing, because as Dani and I reiterate every week at our Tree House chapel service, the Church tells time with color. We always begin our lesson asking the children what time it is – and they enthusiastically say, “Green time, or Violet time, or Pink time.” When they say “pink” time, I then remind them that we actually use the word “rose” instead of pink.

So, today is “Rose time.” Through the incarnational beauty of color, we can see and tell that time has shifted a bit since we were last here. We have lit a 3rd candle – the rose candle – and the darkness of the season is getting a little bit brighter. The light of Christ is beginning to shine through the darkness. As we heard from Paul in his letter to the Church in Philippi this morning, “The Lord is near.”

The official name for this day as “Gaudete Sunday” – gaudete being the Latin word for “rejoice.” So, like the 4th Sunday in Lent, we adorn the church and our clergy with the color rose, the readings err more on the side of hope and joy, and in a nutshell, we lighten things up a bit.

The season of Advent invites us into the tension between already and not yet – we look backwards at the first coming of Christ while we simultaneously look forward to his second coming in glory. We are called to be more intentional about the spiritual practices of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. But we are also called to rejoice in the great Good News that through God’s “bountiful grace and mercy,” Christ is coming to “speedily help and deliver us.”

Lest we forget that the prophets weren’t always announcing “doom and gloom,” the joy-filled, hopeful tenor of both of our readings from the prophets today – Zephaniah and Isaiah – are appropriate choices for Gaudete Sunday. Zephaniah proclaims,

“Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem!

…The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;
you shall fear disaster no more.” 

And in similar fashion, Isaiah proclaims,

“Sing the praises of the Lord,

 for he has done great things, and this is known in all the world.
Cry aloud, inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy,
for the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel.”

To be a faithful, mature Christian is to be able to recognize, admit, and lament the fact that we reside East of Eden, where sin and death abound - while also being able to boldly proclaim the Good News of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, as a solemnly joy-filled, hopeful people. We aren’t called to be puritanically dour, miserable, and pessimistic. But we also aren’t called to be naïve, “pie-in-the-sky” optimists who refuse to enter into and explore the darkness of seasons like Advent and Lent.

There are many ways that we Christians boldly proclaim the Good News that in Christ sin, evil, and death will never have the last word. We hope against all the evidence to the contrary. Not because we are naïve; not because our heads are in the sand. But because in Christ Jesus, we are empowered by a “faith that is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

So, on Gaudete Sunday, our scriptures and our liturgy remind us that as Advent people, we shamelessly look for and expect that in the midst of darkness, God’s light can and will shine. This reminds me of one of the opening lines of the Evening Prayer service is from Psalm 139:

If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me turn to night,” darkness is not dark to thee, O Lord; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to thee are both alike.

A few years ago, when the remarkable British composer, violinist, and pianist Alma Deutscher was only 12 years old, she responded those who were critical of her compositions by saying:

“Some people have told me that I compose in the musical language of the past, and this is not allowed in the 21st century. In the past, it was possible to compose beautiful melodies and beautiful music, but today, they say, I’m not allowed to compose like this anymore because I need to discover the ‘complexity’ of the modern world, and the point of music is to show the ‘complexity’ of the world.

“Well, let me tell you a huge secret. I already know that the world is complex and can be very ugly, but I think these people have gotten a little bit confused. If the world is so ugly, what’s the point in making it even uglier with ugly music? … But I think most people go to concerts because they want to hear beautiful music, music full of melody that you can hum or sing, music that speaks to the heart, music that makes you want to smile or cry or dance. There’s enough ugliness in the world. I want to write beautiful music, music that makes the world a better place.” 

The then-12-year-old Alma Deutscher was wise beyond her years. What she was saying wasn’t that her music needed to be happy music – all in a major key. She was well aware of the “complexity” of the world. We might call it the Advent tension of living between the already and the not yet of the coming of Christ. The tension of the Kingdom of Heaven having been inaugurated but not yet fully realized.

And as we live in that tension, we break out the rose vestments, altar appointments, and candle. We celebrate the Eucharist with a hopeful joy in our hearts. We will have a concert here later today on “Rejoice Sunday” – Bach’s masterful Advent cantata “Sleeper’s Awake” because we believe that beautiful music makes the world a better place - not because we are afraid of the dark; but because we embrace the dark. We faithfully enter into the darkness believing that God’s light will prevail because our scriptures tell us that this is so. And that is good news indeed. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice, and be glad in it!