Isaiah 35:1-10

35 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus 2 it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
the majesty of our God.

3 Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
“Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
He will come with vengeance,
with terrible recompense.
He will come and save you.”

5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
6 then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
7 the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp,[a]
the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

8 A highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not travel on it,[b]
but it shall be for God’s people;[c]
no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.
9 No lion shall be there,
nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
they shall not be found there,
but the redeemed shall walk there.
10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Every year it seems to get worse…this build up to Christmas. I know that I was most annoyed when I walked into a store just before Halloween and found CHIRSTMAS trees up for sale! Christmas! We had not even experienced trick or treating, or Thanksgiving and the retail world was trying to shove me into Christmas. It gets frenetic and out of hand, more stressful and certainly more expensive with each passing year. The idea of Advent, even the word Advent gets lost in our massive outbursts of consumerism and our crazed push to Christmas. The idea of a holly, jolly Christmas gets stuffed in my face so much that I am over it before it even begins

And please understand I am not some Scrooge, some kill-joy out to ruin everyone’s Christmas by making us feel a collective guilt over our celebrations and spending. I like Christmas, I really do. I am just trying to keep us from getting to December 25th before we are ready. I just want us to step back from the stable and figure out why we are going there. It is in the midst of this frantic pace that I want to offer an oasis of calm. A place where we can remember the hope and the peace and now the joy of the Advent Season. Advent, that time in our church year where we can step away from Christmas …even if it is just for this hour and prepare our hearts and wait for the Christmas that is beyond the tree and the presents and the parties.

Will you pray with me please? May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts and minds be acceptable in your sight O Lord. Our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

I love the writings of Isaiah, he is a great prophet, I admit it is kind of difficult to spend time with him this time of year. Just as the outside world is rushing into Christmas, we get caught up in the same headlong rush to hear the familiar stories, the ones with the Shepherds and sheep and angel choruses…we want to participate in the joyful preparation of the coming of the baby Jesus…we want to go right to the fun stuff. We want to get out of Isaiah’s desolate wilderness, march into Bethlehem and take our place at the stable ready to ohh and ahh over the tiny baby that we know will be the Savior of the world.

The problem is…if we do that we miss out on some important stuff. I feel that unless we go back to the desert, back to some of the desolation, we gloss over and lose sight of why we even celebrate Christmas in the first place. We know WHAT happened, but we forget WHY it happened, today more than ever we NEED to hear the words, the promises that Isaiah is sharing. They are words of Homecoming, of Restoration, of healing, of JOY!

This third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday, a day to be joyful during the season of waiting. Gaudete is a Latin word and it means Rejoice! We rejoice over the peace and hope of the season, we rejoice for the love that is and the Christ that is yet to come…but…but can we truly rejoice and truly be joyful in this moment, this day, this time of long waiting, is there good news for the world to rejoice in today?

Our ancestors in faith, the people of ancient Israel struggled with exile and wandering and longing for a home, they wanted vindication against their enemies who had destroyed the holy city of Jerusalem; they wanted to be released from oppression. Not so different from us today as we struggle with our longing for wholeness in our lives. In our own way, we each wander in some sort of exile, we harbor thoughts of vindication in our hearts; we hurt from broken relationships or lost loved ones. We struggle under the crush of financial debt. And even if none of those things inhabit our world right at this minute you know, and I know that in one way or another we have all struggled with something. When things are at their worst we long for the uncomfortable things in our lives to be made right and that is probably why we are in such a rush to get to that stable, because we understand that is where our wholeness that we have waited so long for is.

We hear Isaiah’s words today smack in the middle of our Advent. The world charges head-on to Christmas , but here at church we are still in a season of preparation, waiting and anticipating…it feels like we have one foot in this world and one foot in the celebrating world and it is often a challenge to walk in both worlds without going into overload, without losing our balance, but unless we figure it out we will be too busy to hear the good news…the good news is not that a baby is born in Bethlehem…THAT is the old news, we know that news…the good news for us is that baby grew up and offered us the chance to restore our relationship with God. God was always here, but Jesus gave us the path back…if we want to hurry someplace this season, lets hurry on that holy way that Isaiah talks about.

We know that we need healing, we know that we need to be restored, and we know that we seek joy. But have you stopped to think about what God is already doing for us in the birth, the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus Christ? That is why we are celebrating the birth of this baby in the first place…not for what he will do but for what he has done…just as the lame would dance, the blind would see and the speechless sing in the promised day of joy that Isaiah describes, so the lame walked and the blind saw and the speechless praised God when Jesus walked the earth and healed them as a sign of God’s promises coming to fulfillment. And if you think that fulfillment and that joy, that singing and that dancing was only for a time and a people 2000 years ago than why are you sitting here today?

You are sitting here today because you believe or you hope, or you seek that same promise again. Christmas may be swirling all around us, but in this season of Advent our hunger for restoration, healing, peace, hope, joy can be filled. The wonders that the people of Israel longed for are our wonders too but I suspect we fear to hope that all those promises could possibly be for us…somehow, in our minds we cut ourselves out from that goodness because we have been declared by others, or even declared by ourselves as not good enough, not righteous enough, not something enough…our sins are bigger than the sins of anyone else. Isaiah heard the same thing from the Israelites and his response then and my response now is HOGWASH! Isaiah did not pander to the fear of his people, bringing them along in easy little steps. Nope, Isaiah dared to dream big and he pushed the people out into the street…a highway, a holy way to be exact, one whose paths were straight and smooth and easy to travel, a way that lead straight to justice and peace and joy for everyone and everything. Isaiah pushed them into the oncoming path of Emmanuel, God is with us!

Advent opens the understanding that God does what the world thinks is not possible. Advent is about preparing and waiting and anticipating all of these God possibilities of Christmas, and it is those possibilities that will be with us and last far beyond December 25th after all of the boxes have been opened and the discarded wrapping paper has been hauled out to the trash.

Advent is preparing and waiting and anticipating the wonderful, scandalous love of Christ that gives us strength and moves us into the world to practice, mercy and justice and surprises us with uncompromising love and fills us with joy.

And so, this week of joy has us standing on the edge of the holy way, lets jump together into oncoming path of Emmanuel, God is with us!

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