“Tidings of Joy” 
                                                Isaiah 12: 2-6 and Philippians 4: 1-13 

 There are many wonderful things characteristic of Advent, among them are -- festively decorated homes and sanctuaries like this one, wonderful gatherings of friends and family, and remarkable music that soars through our hearts and souls. I don’t know about you but even though the traditional music of the season is very familiar -- it never gets old; it always brings a smile and a warm feeling.  And so we all recognize these lyrics: 

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee O Israel, 

Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’r the plains
            and the mountains in reply, echo back their joyous strains, 

Hark! the Herald angels sing, “Glory to the new born king; Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.” Joyful all ye nations rise … 

Joy to the world! the Lord is Come;

            O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,  

            O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy; O tiding of comfort and Joy! 

We can sing these beloved carols without song books -- at least the first verses.
            Notice anything about these lyrics? Each of them contains the word joy or a related word like joyful or rejoice. This is the season of joy for most of us, though unfortunately for some it is not. There is a physical beauty to this season. Snow -- not yet the dreaded icy and inconvenient stuff of February – often dusts our yards, trees and houses in a gentle whiteness that suggests peace and calm. The lights on the trees and houses twinkling in the growing darkness lift our spirits. It is also a time for reconnections. Some of us will get on planes to travel to distant cities to be with family – maybe to see that son or granddaughter back from school or returned from a job miles away. Or perhaps it is just that we make the effort to spend more time together, realizing yet again the joy of family, friendship and fellowship. We get those annual Christmas letters. Sure sometimes we joke about them – did we really need to learn about that trip to the Cayman Islands to swim with the turtles or the winning of the fourth grade geography prize. and yet we like them. We enjoy hearing about those special events but even more we want to know that the son-in-law is back safe from Afghanistan, that the friend has found a new job and that our school roommate is doing OK after surgery. They reconnect us to those we care about. And so it is right to sing for joy in this season.

But even more this is a joyous time because of the birth of Jesus in the manger. Why do I say that – what is so special about that birth? Graham Hardy, an Australian minister tells this story of an encounter he had one evening with an old stockman named Sandy in the outback.

The old stockman leaned against the fence, looking out

over the parched “paddocks.” We chatted till the stars

shone with startling clarity. Sandy spoke of the isolation,

of hard times when nature was cruel and unrelenting,

and of better days when the drought broke for a good

harvest and the stock thrived.

The awesome silence of that evening … prompted 

me to ask a very personal question: Do you believe

in God, Sandy?” He paused and then answered in a

quiet voice: “Yes, I do.” But something in the tone

of his reply [pushed] me to ask a further question:

“But what kind of God do you believe in?” Again he paused,

till words came with what seemed like winsome sadness:

“You asked me what kind of a God I believe in. I’ll tell you.

He’s as far away and as silent as those stars.”[1]   

Throughout history and even today, God for many is distant, far away and seemingly not all that relevant to our ordinary lives just as God was for Sandy. Indeed, imbedded in the words of the Hebrew prophets was the anguished hope that God was truly with the chosen people and that God would someday come directly into their world. And so prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah foretold of the Messiah and the Suffering Servant who would appear, join the world, and change everything.

However, each of us understands the unique nature of Jesus -- two things are true. First, he is real. His life is not fiction.  Though Luke and Matthew have given us wonderful and poignant stories, the details of his birth are uncertain. Yet certainly Jesus did come into the world. The prophets got it right. Second , Jesus was different. You may say to me, “oh really?” But think about his impact on the world. No other figure comes close to the way Jesus changed history and people’s lives. Napoleon defeated and in exile, lamented:

I am a failure. Jesus Christ is a world conqueror. …

Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I founded empires

upon force. Christ founded His empire on love, and at this

hour millions will die for Him.”[2] 

So the first thing to be joyous about in this Advent season is that God came into this world through Jesus.   Emmanuel the hope of humanity and did come in human form -- flesh and blood, sharing all the joys and sorrows we do. Our God is not  a distant, wrathful judge of human conduct. Nor is our God simply an intellectual vehicle for creating meaning in an incoherent world. Our God is not, Sandy, simply out there – silent and disinterested. God sent Jesus to be like us: Jesus cared about others, he worried, he got angry at injustice, and he wept for his friends.  So there is joy because God has broken into our world. Indeed, God loved humanity with such devotion that Jesus was born to share our joys and loved us so much that Jesus died so that we would know for certain that love triumphs over everything including death. 

                        X                     X                     X

But our joy comes not simply from God’s coming into our world but because of the form of God’s incarnation. In Tracy Lett’s Pulitzer Prize winning play “August Osage County”, one of the characters says, “Thank God we can’t know the future or we’d never get out of bed.” It is one of those lines that I admire for its cleverness. It sounds so right. And yet on reflection I think it is utterly wrong. First, what troubles human beings the most is not the  reality of disappointment and defeat but uncertainty. It is the source of anxiety. We fear the unknown. That is the uncertainty of the future that keeps us in bed or causes us to seek for certainty or a  sense of control through the various addictive devices of our culture, including  power, status and drugs. No, I submit that Emmanuel -- God with us -- joyously turns Lett’s phrase inside out. For with the birth of Jesus we can know the future and that permits us -- not only joyously to get out of bed -- but to live fully.

Now of course I don’t mean that Jesus’ birth turns us all into Nostradamus. We don’t know literally what is going to happen next week or even tomorrow any more than the weatherman can tells us for certain what will happen next Wednesday or whether we will have a white Christmas or not. What the coming of Emmanuel does, however, is assure us how the future can come out.

In his speech in Oslo, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama said,  

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.  We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place.  The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached -- their fundamental faith in human progress -- that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.
 For if we lose that faith -- if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace -- then we lose what's best about humanity.  We lose our sense of possibility.      

Though he was talking about a different kind of faith the President unwittingly caught the essence of why we await the coming birth so joyously – that is because in Jesus’ life, teachings and death we have been given the certainty of what is possible in the future. 

Jesus brings forgiveness. Not just for those who cried “crucify him” but for all of us. Tomorrow is a new day our sins are forgiven. Of course we must deal with the consequences of our shortcomings and failings but we can start anew to undo the past and to make today better.  The single most discussed event in America at the moment is not health care, or Afghanistan, its Tiger Woods. Is there a clearer example of self-created tragedy than this story? There are damaged human beings everywhere we look in this story. But even here forgiveness can be present. There are many pieces to be picked up, true acceptance of responsibility to be undertaken, and a fundamental reordering of priorities and values but certainly in God’s eyes there can be forgiveness. Our flaws and transgressions are uniquely our own – but whatever they are  God gives us opportunities to start anew  – to make the possible actual.

Someone once said the best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a human being. Don’t we understand true compassion when we think of Mother Teresa? Don’t we understand justice when we think of Martin Luther King? In Jesus God sent us the idea of true love. The great commandment to love God and our neighbors is made real in Jesus. He showed us in his life that the definition of neighbor is boundless – not limited by religion, status, ethnicity or race. He showed us that we need not live by the principle that if one wins another loses. But rather that we can live by the rule of love that when one wins we all win. Jesus showed us that love can triumph over all powers and principalities. Even Napoleon learned that. And the possibilities that Jesus embodied are evident in our world if we look closely -- think of “Doctors without Borders” or closer to home “FCC Cares”.

Is there anything more joyous than the certainty in this Advent Season of the possibilities open to us through Jesus’ coming into our world! Thanks be to God.