Me:  “Sing aloud, O daughter of St. Paul;

          shout, O American!

 

Member: Would you mind?!  Could you  tone it down a bit?!  With                                  

                all the trouble and misery in the world right now, the last                

                thing I feel like doing is singing and shouting for joy.

 

Me:  “Rejoice and exult with all your

          heart, O people of Cambridge

                     Springs and Edinboro!

 

Member:  Rejoice?!  Exult?!  You’ve got  to be kidding!  With war  

                 in the middle east and who knows  where next, with not

                 knowing when or where some terrorist may blow   

                 himself up and a bunch innocent people with him,

                 with AIDS and cancer and now, some new flu that’s

                 killing people, with prices on everything going through

                 the roof and not knowing when the bottom might drop

                 out of the economy, but knowing that it surely will...

 

Pastor:  Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say Rejoice!

             Do not worry about anything, but in everything by

             Prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your

             Requests be made know to God.

 

Member:  Yeah sure...rejoice, do not worry...when it looks like

                 I’m going to be laid off any day now...with the kids

                 wanting every toy they see on TV and I don’t know

                 where the rent money is coming from...with the doctor

                  saying my wife needs some new test to rule out cancer

                  and our insurance company won’t cover it...

 

                  Is there any joy in rejoice?

 

Me:  “Again I will say, ‘Rejoice’.  And the peace of God, which   

          Surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your  

          minds in Christ Jesus.”

 

                It’s really hard sometimes to find

the joy in rejoice.  We feel overwhelmed by the circumstances of

life and anxiety grows – takes over.  Even burying ourselves in all the activities of getting ready for Xmas can distract us only temporarily.  As soon as we stop for a moment the worries start to creep back in.

 

                But, God offers us a deeper joy and during Advent we are reminded what that is.  God offers us the profound joy of being in relationship with Him.  As the seal of this proferred gift and as the means to it, God sent His Son.  Jesus came, is come and will come again.

 

                Through the testimony of Scripture and the lives of saints (both famous and unknown except to us) we learn that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into the world as the babe in Bethlehem a little over 2000 years ago.  We believe that He came to give His life for sinners and all who believe in Him will live with Him in eternity.

 

                But, this is not just a one-time event.  It is not just something we remember once a year.  By His Spirit, Christ is come and remains with us throughout the year, throughout our lives and throughout the eternity.  Thus, we are never alone, nor are any we love ever alone.  Yes, there will be wars, plague and pestilence.  We will face job loss, the stress of impossible demands, sickness an all kinds of other troubles and tragedies in this life.  But, even in the worst of times we can find joy because joy is not about freedom from pain and struggle.  Joy is about relationship, and particularly it is about our relationship with God.  Joy is knowing that no matter how dark life may be, we do not have to face difficulties alone.  We always have Emmanuel, “God With Us” and this gives us strength.  This gives us joy.

This puts the joy in rejoice no matter what our circumstances.

 

                It is important to remember that Paul’s call to rejoice comes while he is in prison.  He not only commands others to rejoice, but he himself finds joy in rejoicing even as he faces torture and death.  He can do so because he knows that joy doesn’t depend on circumstances – be they world events or personal experiences – but on knowing that Jesus is right in the experience with him.

 

                We have this assurance as well.  Jesus is come to be with us through all the experiences of our lives.  Knowing this can give us strength to make it through any circumstance.

 

                Now frankly, I think it’s cruel to just offer that assurance and leave you there.  I don’t know about all of you, but I know I’m not a saint with the faith of Paul.  I do get overwhelmed by anxiety at times.  Sometimes, I am strengthened by the knowledge that God is near, that He is with me in the struggles and pain of life.  But, at other times my reaction to the assurance of His presence is, “Yeah right, so if He’s present, why doesn’t He do something.  I need more than a God who hold my hand while I suffer; I need a God who does something.”

 

                It is usually about this time that He sends someone who helps me see my need to repent.  Repentance isn’t just a superficial, “I’m sorry.”  Nor is repentance a feeling of guilt or shame for being human enough to whine about my suffering.  Repentance means to “turn around”, to “change one’s thinking”.  Repent brings about transformation.  And in that transformation, repentance becomes another word for possibilities.  Two things happen with that transformation.  First, I realize that Christmas wasn’t mainly about God coming as a baby for us to ooh and ah about.  Christmas, the incarnation of God’s coming into the world as one who is fully human as well as fully divine is about God wanting me to know how much He loves even me, even me in the midst of my doubts and anxieties.  He shows this love by taking on human flesh so that He can suffer just like any other human.  He shows this by dying for me.  Thus even when He allows suffering I can’t understand, I have the assurance that He truly loves me even if He must allow the suffering.

 

                Second, when I allow God to take me to the deeper level of repentance where transformation occurs, I can begin to see the possibilities even in suffering and certainly in what the future will bring.

 

                Notice in our Old Testament lesson all the future tense verbs (ex. Zeph. Lesson)  The people living in Zephaniah’s time lived under terrible conditions – a tyrannical ruler who would make the history books and predictions of more suffering when God defeated not only Israel’s Assyrian oppressors, but also their own apostate leaders.  God promises that the days will come though when the faithful will have reason to sing, shout and rejoice.  This day came for them.  It came for Israel.  It came for the early church and for the people of God through the ages.  And it will come for us.

 

                It is when we see the possibilities brought about by repentance, by a change mind and a life given over to God, that we can appreciate that Jesus didn’t just come in the past, nor is He come just in the present, but He will come again.

 

                We can put out time of struggle into the perspective of eternity.  We can look with hope and anticipation toward the day when He will come again.

 

                Advent reminds us above all else that there will come a day when conflicts will cease, hatred will be overcome by love, disease, deprivation and death will be no more, and we will all live in the limitless joy of a perfect relationship with God for all eternity.  Scripture is relatively vague about what this will be like.  The images of Christ’s return in glory and what it will be like afterward are full of symbolism and metaphor because it will be beyond the experience of any human and so impossibly wonderful that no human can even begin to describe it.  We can only try to imagine all the most joyful moments in our lives.  Almost surely these moments involved people who loved us and made us feel joy just being with them.  Being with God for eternity would be like this but multiplied by an infinite number and continuing without interruption forever.  With such an image in mind and with faith in the promise that Christ has come, is come and will come again, we can affirm that, “Yes, there is joy in rejoice.”  So, rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say reJOYce.