Rejoice, it’s Gaudete Sunday! I know you have all been chomping at the bit, desperate all week to light the pink candle and to have a much-needed reprieve from the deep, dark, and daily conversations we’ve all been having about sin and misery during this penitential season of Advent. No?

So, way back in the day, we Christians didn’t celebrate Christmas until maybe the fourth century, which is wild if you think about it. Three hundred years or so it took for us to celebrate the birthday of our founder? We were busy doing other things like making the Bible and trying not to die as martyrs I suppose. Funny story, Jesus’ stories are a lot like Superman’s stories. If you look at the stories about Superman, he emerges onto the scene in 1938 basically fully-formed as an adult superhero, and it’s not til 7 years later that you get real stories about his infancy and childhood. The first stories about Jesus are only about his adult ministry and its not til at least 70 or 80 years later that we’ve got some written stories about Jesus’ birth. We just weren’t as concerned about birth narratives in the beginning. Anyway, eventually, we decided to celebrate the light of Christ coming into the world at the darkest time of year and included a season like Lent just before it—40 days of penitence and repentance as we await Jesus’ birth. In the churches of the time, it was common to see the altar and priests draped in black, a sign of mourning for our sinful nature. Festive, am I right?

Sometime in the 9th century, Advent was shortened to four weeks and purple or dark blue were introduced for Advent and Lent, not as a royal color as we assume, but as a mitigation of black. That is, the seasons were still meant for us to mourn our sins, but there was a recognition that there was a little joy as well, so the black was lightened to purple or dark blue. Feeling celebratory yet?

Then, at an undetermined date, we started having one special Sunday during Lent and one during Advent to lighten the mood yet again. Instead of black hangings we have purple or blue, and that one Sunday, we mitigate the purple to rose, a reminder that even in the midst of sadness and death, we are also beloved by God and that there is cause for celebration. It’s not a pink candle for Mary as many of us have assumed for years but rose for Gaudete, the first word of the Latin prayer meaning “rejoice.” So, rejoice, it’s Gaudete Sunday!

Now, I didn’t just bring this up because it’s neat and I love an educational sermon. Though those are both true. This Sunday in particular and Jesus’ incarnation in general are about bringing life and joy and I want to talk about joy. Henri Nouwen says the difference between happiness and joy is that, while happiness is dependent on external conditions, joy is "the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing – sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death - can take that love away.” Similar to Paul’s letter to the Romans that we heard at Doug Jauch’s funeral on Friday, where he says, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is joy—that there is possibility in the midst of hard things, that there is an immutable connection within us to the divine. Sometimes we forget it or assume it doesn’t exist, or we cover it up. But we are already part of the divine life, every one of us was created with the divine breath in our lungs and God saying, “Indeed, it is very good.” Joy doesn’t fix what’s broken, joy doesn’t erase the pain, it’s not a zero-sum game. Joy exists side-by-side with pain. It’s already here and still coming.

Because we live much of our lives in the wilderness, wandering, thirsty and afraid. We hurt ourselves and others and we call that sin. Our sins give us a temporary sense of control or happiness, but it fades. And we are hurt by other people in their attempts to be in control or be happy. Nouwen and Isaiah and Paul and Jesus himself tell us, there’s another way. Imagine a world where we don’t have to only see death and destruction and fear.

Maybe the idea of Advent as penitential feels heavy-handed and ridiculous to you, maybe you need the joyful songs and the smell of cookies and the twinkling lights. Maybe you feel like your whole world is full of negativity and you come here on a Sunday to be uplifted. Fair enough. But maybe you also struggle with people telling you that things will get better or that your grief isn’t necessary. Maybe you look at your social media feed or the news and you ache with despair that this is where we are. Maybe you feel helpless in the face of addiction or under the weight of our inherited racism. The darkness is real. Black hangings might not be so out of place. What this Sunday in particular and Jesus’ incarnation in general are about is possibility. What looks inevitable isn’t. I don’t know if you’re watching the TV show The Good Place—if you’re not, I recommend it whole-heartedly. Without spoiling anything, in a recent episode the character Michael said: “What matters isn't if people are good or bad. What matters is if they're trying to be better today than they were yesterday. You asked me where my hope comes from. That's your answer.” I know this is a dumb sitcom on NBC, I know people have spilled buckets of ink over the centuries to talk about morality and hope and transformation. But this one line brings me hope. And brings me joy. It’s part of something I’ve been noodling that I’m calling a theology of mending. It reminds me of the nugget of belovedness that’s at the center of my being and at the center of yours, at the center of humanity. We are all able to try to be better tomorrow. Even if we fail. Even when we fail. What looks inevitable isn’t.

One of our beloved students at the Edge House graduates this weekend. At our traditional Godspeed Nosh a couple weeks ago, she shared a love letter she’d written to the community. Matthew and I were so moved by it we got her permission to share it, so you’ll be seeing it or parts of it in the near future. She speaks about the overwhelming anxiety she has experienced throughout her life and her dawning awareness that her anxiety has been based in not knowing what to trust, not knowing who to trust. To herself, about the Edge House she wrote, “You belong here. You can trust this.” Isaiah writes, “Here is your God.” What you need is here. Within you. Within this community and the community of all humanity. The joy you need and that you already have within you is also here. It exists despite the pressing dark.

The monks at the Taize Community say, “History will end differently than what the current situation seems to suggest.” The reading from Isaiah is written for a people returning from exile, whose lives have been turned upside down, who have found themselves to be empty and lost and fearful and almost dead. They are literally being liberated from captivity. Isaiah says that your fear will become safety, your emptiness to fullness, lost into found, death into life. The desert blooms around us, the deserted spaces filled with life and beauty. Sometimes we get a hint of what that looks like now, and sometimes the kingdom is so huge and real we crash to our knees. It’s a foretaste of the kingdom. Wherever people are oppressed or struggling, whoever they are, God desires freedom and life. This is the desert blooming. God redeeming and ransoming us—political words in context. On that highway in the desert of Isaiah, God redeems, ransoms, sets free, transforms, mends, restores, and draws near. God rejoices to see us. All of us.

Imagine a desert. Dry as dry can be. Hot. So hot your skin prickles and your throat gets dry thinking about it. Cacti. Tumbleweeds. No water to speak of. Snakes. Scorpions. Scary people who take your clothes and your money and what little water you have and abandon you. Imagine that you are blind in this place. Or you’ve got a broken leg. Or you’re nauseous or have the flu. Something that makes it that much harder to figure out what to do. No roads, no paths to lead you out, only barren, hot, dry, fearful land. It is so hard, and you are so weak. Imagine this.

And now imagine a trickle of cool water bumping against your toes that soon becomes an actual stream. Suddenly you can drink. And while you’re drinking, you feel just the slightest bit cooler, and when you look up there’s a tree you hadn’t seen before, casting a merciful shadow. Imagine that you can see again, that your pain is gone, that your cough and fever are suddenly absent. You are feverish, but not with illness, with the surprised delight of someone who’s been sick and is just now feeling well, eyes wide, disbelieving that things could be so good. Imagine the sudden absence of everything that threatens you. You are loved. Imagine that the barren desert, covered only in sand and scrub has burst into bloom. Imagine.

This is the kingdom. It’s coming and it’s already here.

We are welcome here. We can trust this.

Rejoice!