Love's Joy

Text: Isaiah 35:1-10

Focus: Love and Joy combined

Function: Advent 4

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
    the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus ²it shall blossom abundantly
    and rejoice with joy and shouting.
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.

³Strengthen the weak hands
    and make firm the feeble knees.
⁴Say 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.”

⁵Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
    and the ears of the deaf shall be opened;
⁶then 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;
⁷the burning sand shall become a pool
    and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp;
    the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

⁸A highway shall be there,
    and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not travel on it,
    but it shall be for God’s people;
    no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.
⁹No 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.
¹⁰And 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.

Good morning to the beloved children of God!

May the Spirit of Peace, Love, Joy and Hope from Advent fill your hearts and minds throughout the year.

Today we are continuing with our advent celebration by looking at the themes of Love and Joy.

I hope you don’t think of this as lazy, but during Advent, I like to focus the title of my sermon on the advent theme for the week because those four themes from advent bear reminding.

In 2 Timothy Paul reminds the leaders of the Church to continue to remind the people about the important things.

Advent, or the birth and the meaning of the hope given is one of those important things to keep on remembering.

It has a lot to do with my preaching. I am aware that because of the advertising that is intended to make us unhappy unless we get more more and the news programming that fuels our rage against the other, whether they be left or right, I have a lot of competition in presenting the value system of the Kingdom of God versus the value system of the world that we live in.

The value system of the world is greed, revenge and selfishness.

The value system of the Kingdom of God is the golden rule to treat others as well as we want to be treated. Period. There is no qualifier about what religion they are, what color they are, what nationality they are, what gender they are, and what economic class they are in.

Since everyone we meet is created by Christ, they all bear the image and the likeness of Christ inside of them. Since the atonement of Christ on the cross and the veil of the temple was rent and the Holy Spirit returned after Jesus’ ascension into heaven, every single person has a bit of the Spirit of Christ inside of them to lead and guide them. We are now the family of God, siblings with the entire world.

We are the kingdom of God on earth commissioned to be the light bearers of hope, peace, love and joy.

I mentioned the first week of advent how it is difficult to separate the themes of Advent since they all depend on each other. Faith is the basis for all of them. Love is the basis for our faith. Hope brings us to the point where we are willing to have faith and trust and Joy seems to be the result of what God is doing.

As I mentioned, my competition in preaching is an almost 24/7 bombardment of the idea that everything is about us and we can have it all regardless of how it affects others or the planet.

So, reminding ourselves of these advent themes is spiritually healthy and necessary.

I thought of love and how love is the foundation of the new commandment from Christ to us. And I though of the relationship between the experience of love and the feeling of joy.

Joy is a lot like hope. Hope is something that God gives us but we have control over whether or not we will accept it and let it build our faith.

Joy works the same way. We release it, or we accept it as a result of the way we experience God’s love for us.

Allowing joy to manifest in our lives is an act of worship. The scriptures say that the shepherds rejoiced at what they found when they found Jesus that Christmas night.

We celebrate Christmas to allow Joy to flow and that flowing of Joy is a cycle that reinforces our faith and our hope and that gives us the strength to manifest love for others as a result of our faith in Christ.

I see the expression of joy, or the release of joy, the celebration of the good that God has brought to us as an acceptable act of worship.

And it reminds me of why we give presents. While I am not happy about the consumerist nature of what the incarnation of God into humanity means, I rejoice at the idea of giving because for us, God gave himself at Christmas.

Last week I heard bits of a podcast about the importance of giving because giving brings us to a place of joy. 1 John says that we are to love God, but we cannot see God so we love God by loving others. Giving to others at Christmas is an act of worship that reflects the gift that God gave us.

At Christmas, God bridged the gap between us and Them and Jesus showed us in a very real way the nature of the community, what he called the gathering, what we call the church which is here on earth to continue healing the nations.

God so loved God’s creation so much that God gave of himself for us to bring us back to a place of peace, hope, joy and love.

Let us enjoy, and rejoice at our Christmas celebrations this year as we reflect on the nature of God’s gift to us.