Becoming Sacramental Glimpses of Anticipatory Joy

Third Sunday of Advent, Year A

Sermon for December 14, 2025

Grace to you and peace from our Creator God and from Christ Jesus, who enters our Advent longing and waiting in the shadows to offer anticipatory joy. Amen.

Last Sunday, we met John the Baptist in the wilderness, proclaiming repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and that the very kingdom of heaven had come near. His presence, dressed in camel skins and eating locusts, was unsettling. And to the religious authorities, his words were still more unsettling. "You brood of vipers!" he cried out. "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" Those were words spoken to the religious insiders, like us. "You brood of vipers."

John spoke of one who was still coming, one more powerful than he, who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, who would separate the chaff from the wheat and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.

Brood of vipers, unquenchable fire. Truly an unsettling prophecy.

So about ten years ago, I received this Christmas card. On the front, it says, "Rejoice." And it has a nice collage of photos of Randy and Jamie Kunzman, and their daughters, Sarah and Caroline. I turned over the card, and it reads like this: "Merry Christmas, you brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, produce fruit in keeping with repentance. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. With love, the Kunzmans."

I then realized that was a fake back, and you could lift it, and it says, "Merry Christmas, may God bless you and your family this holiday season, et cetera, et cetera." Jamie wrote, "Randy couldn't resist.” They had heard the same text we heard last week, a word that seems harsh, difficult, and in a moment of lightheartedness, decided to include it as part of their Christmas greeting to me.

Back to Rejoice. The Christmas card greeting, the joy of the third week of Advent, Gaudete Sunday. We hear some words from the prophet Isaiah, words of promise this day. "Waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert, 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."

It's Gaudete Sunday when our Advent time of longing and waiting in the shadows for Christ to come is met with a bit of what one might call anticipatory joy. We anticipate his arrival. And our Gospel text this Sunday has that same fiery Jordan River prophet, John, after speaking truth to power, now imprisoned by King Herod for criticizing him publicly.

Imagine that.

And John in his prison cell sends his friends to raise a question to Jesus, a question at the heart of both the Christian faith and the Advent season in particular. The question, "Are you the one? Are you the one we've been waiting for? Jesus, tell us plainly, are you the Messiah?"

And it's striking that Jesus does not answer the question directly. "Tell John, what you hear and see," he says. "The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them."

It's a time of amazement, a time of extraordinary celebration. Jesus describes a clear evocation of Isaiah's promised age to come. It's as if Jesus says, tell John about the joy that you hear and see. It speaks for itself. And by answering in such a manner, Jesus sets his Messiahship in a much larger context. It's as if Jesus says, "First, to understand who I am, you have to look through the ancient lens given to us by the prophet Isaiah. And second, don't focus on me personally. Focus on the signs of revival and abundance that you hear and see, the signs of the new era that I've come to proclaim. The realm of heaven is at hand. Look, the long-promised day of joy is dawning, and joy is breaking out everywhere, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear. Visible signs of joy, the kind of joy that you can hear and see and touch. Tell John that," Jesus replies.

Now, Isaiah, in that first reading today, was writing to those "of a fearful heart," our translation says. The Hebrew translates better to "those whose hearts are racing," which is to say, to the desperate and to the afraid, to the near-panicked. Think of immigrant families, fleeing war, violence, poverty, or deportation. Think of someone wrestling with a grim diagnosis. Think of the soldier in Eastern Europe facing another winter at war, or the prisoner facing execution, or the family facing eviction from their home. To each of these racing hearts people, the prophet says, "Be strong, do not fear. Here is your God.”

And again, I'm pointing to all of us.

And as the Isaiah text goes on, the restoration spills over into a cascade of other signs of joy. It's a wonderful reading for Gaudete Sunday. Take it home. Read it this afternoon. There's your homework.

So to the question, "Are you the one?" Jesus responds this way: "If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, if you can perceive sacramentally, if you can experience the world, even this broken world of prisons and conflict and disappointment and sorrow and political scheming and toxic polarization, if you can see and hear through the ancient poetry of Isaiah, then you'll know that a new day is dawning."

It's not yet fully arrived, of course, but the signs of it are there, glimpses of heaven. And occasions for joy, even now.

St. Augustine defined a sacrament as a visible word, and a visible sign of an invisible grace. And this week's readings push us to see sacramentally, to see that visible word, to see that visible sign of invisible grace, that in whatever particular restorations and joys that we encounter around us, we perceive the sacraments of the great restoration to come, the everlasting joy to come.

And as the church, we are called not to just see and hear such sacramental glimpses of restoration and joy, we are called to become them. We are called to be glimpses of restoration and joy in the world, to become visible, audible, and encouraging signs for this weary, fearful world. Imagine if our lives proclaimed, be strong, do not fear, and above all, rejoice. We can become visible signs of anticipatory joy in the lives of those with whom we sojourn.

So as sacramental glimpses, by how we live, we enter the shadows and we light candles of hope. We take anticipatory joy in Christmas, calling for Jesus to come and celebrating his presence even now, recognizing that in this broken world, we await the future that Isaiah foretold, when sorrows and sighing shall flee away.

But we have a part in that actualization; we're not just onlookers. As the Sufi mystic and poet Rumi put it: "Be the one who, when you walk in, blessing shifts to the one who needs it most. Even if you've not been fed, be bread."

Friends in Christ, called to be sacramental glimpses of anticipatory joy, we light candles to illumine life's shadows. We embrace the joy and gladness that provide an antidote to sorrow and sighing. We offer the blessing that is bread to a hungering world. We can call it anticipatory joy.

In the words of Fred Buechner, "Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope. And that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news is of all the glad things in this world, the gladdest thing of all."

My sisters and brothers in Christ, is it really possible to be joyful in the midst of the shadows of sorrow? Is it possible to be joyful in a time such as this?

Henri Nouwen wrote, "While happiness usually depends on circumstances, joy runs deeper. Joy," he writes, "is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing, sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death, nothing can take that love away. Thus, joy and sorrow can coexist. Joy can even be found in the midst of the most sorrowful of circumstances.”

By all outward appearances, John the Baptist, in prison, and facing execution was in a time of deep crisis and absolute vulnerability, deep sorrow, and foreboding. But Jesus calls on him and Jesus calls on all of us to draw on a wellspring deeper than the surface of things, even in the midst of sorrow and sadness unto death.

Be strong. Do not fear and rejoice. Again, Buechner's words to close:

"Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope. And that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world, the gladdest thing of all."

Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.