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Luke 3:7-18; Zephaniah 3:14-20; Philippians 4:4-7

My mother died in October of the year I was 12 years old, so when Christmas rolled around two months later, we were still a family desperately searching for some type of healing and some stability in our lives. But, the usual joyous festivities of the Christmas season just served as a stark reminder of the painful loss we had endured.

As Christmas approached, first one and then the other of my sisters returned from college. But their return only seemed to make the incompleteness of our family all the more apparent. At that point, I began to wonder if we were ever going to make it through the holiday season.

And, although I wasn't really aware of it at the time, our miseries were increased by the fact that we were all working hard to take our feelings and bury them down in the grave with my mother. All in all, it wasn't the best recipe for a joyful Christmas.

But the amazing thing was that, with all the traditions of the season and the pleasure of sharing each other's company, we were somehow able to get it through it, perhaps because of the sheer normalcy of following our Christmas traditions served to remind us that life goes on even in the midst of death. And in that realization, we found the beginnings of joy that Christmas.

That isn't the way we normally think of joy. We've somehow convinced ourselves that joy can only be the result of having everything letter perfect and in its place. Unfortunately, that image of joy is nothing more than an illusion.

Sometime ago, I heard a pastor make a distinction between the way the world prepares for Christmas and the way the church prepares. According to this pastor, the world prepares by looking for happiness, which he defined as being dependent on having things just right, getting the correct gifts, and being filled with the "spirit of Christmas," which is that elusive, fleeting, warm feeling one gets when everything is in place and cozy.

That kind of expectation can't be sustained in the sometimes harsh realities of a world filled with such things as terrorism, ethnic cleansing, war, homelessness, and violence in both our streets and our homes, as well as injustices of every kind.

On the other hand, this pastor said that the church prepares for Christmas by looking for joy, which comes from the reality of a Savior who was born in a stable and who comes to us in the midst of our dark, broken and needy lives.

He said that joy is to be found in all the imperfections of life, in having no need to paint fake smiles over our pain, in being aware that Emmanuel - that is, God with us - remains with us no matter what the circumstances of our lives are. Christian joy comes from our certainty about the unwavering love God showed in the stable of Bethlehem and on the cross of Calvary.

Several years ago a magazine for clergy ran an article called "Advent Funeral Prevention." In that article, the author wrote about the sense of weariness that seems to creep into the voices of preachers around this time of year.

He suggested that it's an unusual kind of weariness born of the knowledge that the congregation wants to hear the warm fuzzies of the Christmas story while the lectionary asks us to talk about terrifying signs of the end of the world.

A perfect example may be seen in our gospel lesson today. Listen to the words of John the Baptist: "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee the wrath that is to come?" That's hardly the kind of stuff that gets made into a Christmas carol you can play softly in the background as you hang up your Christmas stockings. Or is it?

What would happen if you changed the stress in that sentence from the word "you" to the word "flee"? That is, if instead of reading it, "...who warned you to flee the wrath that is to come?" you would instead read it "...who warned you to flee the wrath that is to come?"

What's the distinction? It's the same one my family experienced that first Christmas after my mother died. That is, healing can come when, rather than running away from pain, you turn and face it. It's like the passage we read in Malachi last week in which God comes as a fire to refine us by melting away our impurities.

Is that understanding true to what John the Baptist is trying to say? It is if you believe our Old Testament lesson from Zephaniah. That book deals with the corruption of the religious leadership in Jerusalem and the reforms instituted by the king to end that corruption. Tragically, the final chapter deals with the ultimate failure of that reform.

Given that context, it comes as a major surprise that Zephaniah describes God's joy over his people, in spite of their failures. Zephaniah describes that joy in terms of God singing and dancing over his people. The picture is almost as if God were a rabbi at a Jewish wedding being lifted onto the shoulders of the dancing guests.

That image is similar to the picture Jesus gives us of God in the story of the Prodigal Son, when the father throws an elaborate party to celebrate his son's return.

These complex images are hardly the understanding most of us have of how to have a Merry Christmas. But they fit perfectly with the words of Madeleine L'Engle, who writes:

God did not wait till the world was ready,
till...the nations were at peace,
God came when the heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.

God did not wait for the perfect time
God came when the need was deep and great.
God dined with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine. God did not wait

till hearts were pure. In joy God came
to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours of anguished shame
God came, and God's light would not go out.

God came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word Made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.

We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
God came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

There are times when we will sing a long time before the joy comes. But the joy will come. In the midst of our business and bustle; in the middle of our pain and our hurts; in the middle of all the things we have to do, God comes. God comes! And nothing can stop it from happening.

More than 100 years ago, Scottish author George MacDonald wrote a short story called "The Gift of the Child Christ." The main character of the story is a little girl named Sophie. Each Sunday in Advent Sophie hears her Scottish pastor talk about the Chastening of the Lord. He would regularly preach, "The Lord chastens those whom he loves."

And every evening before going to bed Sophie would pray that the Lord would chasten her, so she would know that she was loved. That was vitally important to her because she was sadly neglected by her emotionally distant family.

Sophie believed Christmas was the day that Christ was born and she expected the baby Jesus to be born to her on Christmas morning. Little did she know that her stepmother was pregnant and was having a very difficult time on Christmas Eve. The doctor came and stayed well into the night in a downstairs room in the large house. Sometime during that night the baby was born and died.

Sophie arose expectantly in the next morning, well before anyone else stirred, and she crept downstairs looking for the child Christ. Of course, she entered the room in which the dead baby lay, and she went in and sat down beside it and looked intently into its face.

She remained there still as a mouse so as not to wake the baby Jesus. When her father and step mother finally entered the room, they were shocked at seeing Sophie in such rapture over the dead baby.

The moment in that room, with all the expectations of this small child, awoke in this family the love in which dear Sophie had prayed so intently for, and a transformation took place in the life of her father; from being cold and withdrawn to noticing his daughter for the first time and feeling love for her and his new wife in ways he couldn't explain. Advent had indeed taken place in their house with the reawakening of love in the presence of pain.

Isn't that the very kind of joy that Paul proclaims in the New Testament lesson when he wrote to the Philippians while he sat in a prison cell awaiting his execution? In spite of that setting, he was able to write these powerful words of hope and affirmation:

"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 known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

When you hear something like that - especially hen it comes from a context like that - it makes you think that we may be looking at joy the wrong way. We want to be carried away to a blissful happiness. We want to escape all the pain and anger of this world. But that isn't always going to happen. So we've got to get ready for something else. This world will never be fully sane. But we can still come to the point in our hearts where the way we approach the Christmas season makes a difference. We have a choice. We can live with fear and anger and prejudice and pain, or we can live with hope, understanding and love.

We have to make that choice by acknowledging that God loves us and in that love we can rejoice, come what may. Because, even if we have nothing more than God's love to hold on to, the knowledge of that love is empowering and liberating and the source of our true joy. Amen.