THE THIRD SUNDAY OF
ADVENT SERMON

Pastor Rachel Fay Dunn
Scripture: Isaiah 35:1-10, Matthew 11:2-11
December 16, 2001

"Waiting for Joy"

Last Sunday, a baby girl was born. Elizabeth Brian Terrenzi came into the world in the usual way. She is beautiful and healthy, and all the promises of tomorrow lie ahead of her. This, like most births, is an occasion of joy, a celebration of life. And yet, surrounding this birth is the shadow of sorrow. The joy of her birth has been muted by tragedy. Like so many others born in the past few months, Elizabeth will grow up never knowing her daddy. An employee of Cantor Fitzgerald, Elizabeth’s father, Brian Terrenzi, was already at work in his office at the World Trade Center on September 11, when a plane was deliberately crashed into the tower. Along with the two towers and the lives of five thousand individuals, the families who are going on without their loved ones have been shattered. Elizabeth is one of forty babies born to Cantor Fitzgerald widows in the past three months. Rather than celebrate with her husband over the birth of their child, Jane Terrenzi spent her daughter’s birth day crying. "She is beautiful," Terrenzi said, "but this isn’t easy."¹

So many people this year have reported an inability to celebrate the Christmas season. The decorations leave them cold. The carols in the malls sound a bit discordant this year. Spending money, wrapping gifts, receiving presents, all feel hollow and empty, meaningless and insincere, in the face of the tragedy we experienced in September. Some of us are still in shock. Some of us are still numb. For some, it’s been really difficult to find any Christmas spirit at all. It is almost as if we are wandering in the desert, in the wilderness, and nothing is growing or blossoming. We long to celebrate, but we cannot.

Perhaps it is difficult to get on board with the secular Christmas spirit this year. But those of us who really believe in Jesus, those of us who really believe in the God-child born in Bethlehem – we do, I think, have something to celebrate. I think that the season of Advent is an excellent time to meditate on the depth of the joy we celebrate, the joy we anticipate, the joy that may not be fully present in our world right now, but the joy that is coming, the joy that is promised and fulfilled by the birth of Emmanuel – God with us – the one named Jesus, born to Mary and laid in a manger. While we struggle with our sorrow, we believe that God fulfills all God’s promises. Someday – someday – our joy will be fulfilled.

The beautiful words of Isaiah we heard this morning are filled with the promises of God. The beautiful words of Isaiah are filled with the promise of "someday." Out of the wilderness comes new birth, new life, resurrection.

Today’s passage from Isaiah describes a vision that the prophet has – a vision of the world transformed. Like the world we live in, Isaiah’s a fallen world, a world out of tune with God. Humankind is out of harmony with creation. Isaiah’s is a wonderful dream – a vision of how the world will be someday – images of joy and peace – a time for which the prophet longs. The people of God will no longer wear mourning cloths – they will walk toward Zion in joy. Israel will no longer be a captive people. The redeemed will reach Jerusalem at last.

Isaiah makes a direct correlation between the healing of the land and the healing of humankind. Just as the wilderness and desert will rejoice and blossom and see the glory and majesty of God, so shall God strengthen weak hands and feeble knees. God will come and save God’s people: "Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 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...." The fate of all creation is tied in with our fate. Just as the world around us will be transformed, so will our lives – so long alienated from our God, we will come to a time when we are in full fellowship with God. This God will come to us. This God will come to us.

For Christians, pivotal in this transformation of both our lives and the life of creation is the Messiah, so long awaited, so long promised by God. In our gospel lesson from Matthew, Jesus says that he is this promised Messiah whom Isaiah talks about. He says, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me." A promised fulfilled. A Messiah given. A God who comes to us and saves us.

The season of Advent is really about looking for signs of that new life promised by God in Christ Jesus. The world has not been fully transformed yet, as we well know. We must never believe that Jesus is a one-time event, a one-shot deal that is over and done with. The Jesus event happens over and over again, within our lives, and within the life of the world. This is the Messiah – Emmanuel – God with us – the One whom we call into our troubled hearts – the one who comforts and heals and lifts us out of those deserts, the one who offers water to drink, and who plants the seed that allows a single crocus to bloom, even in the deepest, coldest winters of our lives, even in the cold winter following September 11.

Jesus came into our world to plant the seeds of hope and peace and love and joy. Jesus came into the world to begin to transform our lives, and, each time we are wounded and begin to heal, each time we sin and are forgiven, that new life takes root, and we receive a glimmer of that joy God promises. Each time such inner transformation takes place, each time a crocus blossoms in the desert of our despair, each time we expose our parched souls to the healing water of life, we are made new. And each time we are renewed and changed and transformed, we begin to understand our own role in the transformation of the world around us. Our hearts become more fertile. We become life-bearing vessels for the Word of God. And we can begin to feel a burgeoning sense of joy, not complete joy, but anticipatory joy, for what someday will be. In the French novel, The Little Prince, the fox says to the Little Prince, "If you come at four o'clock, I shall begin to be happy at three o'clock."² In the same way, we learn to anticipate the fullness of what is not yet, but what will someday be – the almost, but not yet, that is the Christ event!

This is truly what Advent is about! Advent is about carrying the Christ within us, waiting for the Word of God to be born into this world and transform it into something better. This doesn’t happen over night. This happens slowly, sometimes achingly, even agonizingly slowly, over the course of years, of centuries. But people of faith have clung passionately to the vision promised by Isaiah. People of faith know that, someday, the fulfillment of God’s kingdom will come to pass.

A children’s story, written by Alice McLerran and entitled The Mountain That Loved a Bird, illustrates what I mean. The story is about stone mountain out in the middle of the desert. No life grew on it, so nothing living ever came near it. Then, one day, a small, colorful bird landed on the mountain and nestled close to it for protection. The bird’s name was "Joy," and she was on her way to find a place that had life and green things, where she could find food and drink, build a nest, and raise a family. The mountain loved the sound of her voice and the feel of her soft feathers and asked her to stay. She said she could not, because there was no food or water to sustain her. But she promised to return each year she was alive, and she promised to name one of her daughters "Joy," so that after she died, her daughter and all her daughter’s descendants named Joy would return each year. Joy kept her promise and returned for many years. Each year the mountain begged her to stay, but Joy said that she could not stay, but that she would return.

"Each year the mountain looked forward more and more to Joy’s visit; each year it grew harder and harder to watch her go. Ninety-nine springs came and went in this way. On the hundredth spring, when it was time for Joy to leave, the mountain asked once more, ‘Isn’t there some way you could stay?’ Joy answered, as she always did, ‘No, but I will return next year.’ The mountain watched as she disappeared into the sky, and suddenly its heart broke. The hard stone cracked, and from the deepest part of the mountain tears gushed forth and rolled down the mountainside in a stream."

The next year the mountain was still weeping when Joy returned. She sang as she always did to her friend, and then promised to return the following year. Having noticed the river of tears, when she returned, she carried in her beak a small seed, which she planted near the water. "During the weeks that followed, the seed in the crack of the rock began to send down tiny roots. The roots reached into the hard stone, little by little spreading into yet smaller cracks, breaking through the hardness. As the roots found water in the cracks, and drew food from the softening stone, a shoot rose from the seed into the sunlight and unfolded tiny green leaves. The mountain, however, was still deep in sorrow, blind with tears. It did not notice a plant so small. The next spring Joy brought another seed, and the spring after that another. She placed each one in a protected place near the stream of tears, and sang to the mountain. The mountain still only wept."

As the years passed, new plants grew near the stream of tears. Moss began to grow. Tiny insects carried by the wind began to move around the mountain. "Meanwhile, the roots of the very first seed went deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain. Above the ground, what had started as a tiny shoot was growing into the trunk of a young tree, its branches holding green leaves out to the sun. At last, the mountain felt the roots reaching down like gentle fingers, filling and healing the cracks in its heart. Sorrow faded away, and the mountain began to notice the changes that had been taking place. So varied and wondrous were all these things, the mountain’s tears changed to tears of happiness.

"Each year Joy returned, bringing another seed. Each year, more streams ran laughing down the mountain’s sides and the ground watered by the new streams grew green with trees and other plants.

"Now that the mountain no longer wept with sorrow, it began to ask, once more, ‘Isn’t there some way you could stay?’ But Joy still answered, ‘No, but I will return next year.’

"More years passed, and the streams carried life far out into the plain surrounding the mountain, until finally, as far as the mountain could see, everything was green. From lands beyond the horizon, small animals began to come to the mountain. Watching these living things find food and shelter on its slopes, the mountain suddenly felt a surge of hope. Opening its deepest heart to the roots of the trees, it offered them all its strength. The trees stretched their branches yet higher toward the sky, and hope ran like a song from the heart of the mountain into every tree leaf.

"And sure enough, when the next spring came, Joy flew to the mountain carrying not a seed, but a slender twig. Straight to the tallest tree on the mountain she flew, to the tree that had grown from the very first seed. She placed the twig on the branch in which she would build her nest. ‘I am Joy,’ she sang, ‘and I have come to stay.’"³

Even in our weeping, the God of Joy comes near and sings to us. Each year at Advent, we celebrate that coming. Transformation happens slowly, in God’s time. It is only after many years of sorrow that joy come to stay forever. Joy blossoms from the wells of our tears, from the depth of our despair, from the deepest sorrows of our hearts. Someday, God, promises, babies like Elizabeth Terrenzi will not grow up without their daddies. Someday, God promises, we will live in a just and lush world, where our joy will not only be anticipation of fullness to come, but it will be complete and real and vibrant, and we will all return home to Zion, singing as we go. Someday the anticipation of the joy we know during Advent will become the full joy of new birth, as we celebrate not only the birth of the baby in Bethlehem, but the coming of the cosmic Christ once and for all, to reign forever. God is faithful. God will keep God’s promises. Thanks be to God!

1Elizabeth Cohen, "Widow of Local WTC Victim Gives Birth," Press & Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, NY, December 12, 2001, at www.pressconnects.com.
2Quoted in James H. Bailey, The Happy Hour. Lima, OH: CSS. Publishing, 1985, p. 34; found at www.desperatepreacher.com.
3Quoted and paraphrased from Alice McLerran, The Mountain That Loved A Bird (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985, 2000). 

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