“Delight Can’t Wait”

(Is 35:1-10; Lk 1:46b-55) JG White

10:30 am, A3, Sun, Dec 14, 2025, FBC Amherst

A few of us went this past Monday evening to Nappan for a performance of the choir called The Living Christmas Tree, from Port Greville. (I couldn’t believe how a volunteer, outside, crammed all of us parking our cars into the lot - we were simply packed in!) In the performance, I looked in the Tree and the band for people I knew, some of whom were with the Tree twenty-five years ago when I sang with them. I saw Lyda and Sherry and Terry and Shirley; Jim and Rod and Sandy & Garnet. The wide variety of Christmas and holiday songs included a lot that I’d learned back then, with a few new ones thrown in. The Gift; And So This Is Christmas; By the Rivers of Babylon; A Carpenter, a Mother and a King. The perfor-mance was as beautiful, & as well-sung, & as disorganized as ever.

One of you, in the Living Christmas Tree, said this makes Christmas for you. You feel the arrival of Christmas with the three performances of The Tree.

Do any of you have something similar? Some special event you take part in that makes Christmas for you? I know people who were involved in prison ministry who said that their annual Christmas visit at the Chapels of the Springhill Institution and the Dorchester Prison made it for them. Today we pack the boxes for Christmas Cheer; perhaps someone feels that the day we give out these food box gifts is Christmas for you. Others, who help and serve at the community dinner on December 25th might say that is Christmas for them. You may name some other event that is Christmas for you each year. Or that used to be, but is now gone. There is a poignant rejoicing in these special events, whatever day in December they fall upon. 

Today, in Advent, is Joy Sunday, Rejoicing Sunday, Gaudete Sunday, to use the Latin term. Someone came up with a pink candle for this, I really don’t know why. There is a thick icing of joy over so much of the ‘Christmassy’ stuff we have in our culture. Maybe it is happiness, not so much joy. I sense that we have a Joy Sunday in Advent because joy ain’t always easy. It can be as hard to find or to create as Hope in these anxious times, as Peace on Earth, or as Love amid the divisions between peoples. Once in a while we have something that triggers real joy in us, and it comes springing out. Literally springing with tears of joy.

‘Joy is like the rain,’ says a hymn we know from the nineteen sixties. It is. Laughter runs across my pain. Drifts away. And comes again. Joy is like the rain. 

I have really been wondering about joy in people’s lives this month. The folks living in a few nursing homes I have visited lately. One seems satisfied, and despite being rather blind, takes part in everything going on. One who seems quite imobile in her bed, and responds to my talking, but says so very little. One who talks a lot with a low voice about how to get out, how to get control of his bank account, his telephone, and so forth. 

Whence joy? Where can rejoicing come from among such limited people? I spoke at a funeral home generic service to seek comfort for those missing one or more beloved people at Christmastime. Next Sunday evening we downtown Churches offer a similar but more Christian service for what we call ‘the Longest Night’ of the year. When loss has changed things, rejoicing is different. We know that. We acknowledge that. We live thru it. 

The Bible texts I chose for today, among the prescribed lections, were Isaiah again, and the Magnificat in Luke’s Gospel. Isaiah 35 picks up again some visions of hope for the Hebrew people when they had been conquered and were far from home and scattered, in the 6th century, BCE. Once again, we see the images of the dry, barren, wild places of the Middle East becoming lush and watered and safe as can be. A new road is there, for the people to come back to their homeland. The infirm (weak hands and feeble knees) will be strengthened. All the disabled will be healed and renewed. So, (you knew I had to break into song somewhere in this sermon) 

Therefore the redeemed of the LORD shall return, 

and come with singing unto Zion, 

and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. 

They shall obtain gladness and joy,

and sorrow and sighing shall flee away…

What rejoicing! ‘Everlasting joy.’ In this vision - and it is a dream-like, prophetic vision - there is much rejoicing thanks to the return of everyone to their homeland. 

Six hundred years later, pregnant Mary of Nazareth rejoices when she visits her relative. The child is to be the promised One, after hundreds of years of no Leader, no Anointed One. And what does Mary rejoice in? The kindness of God to her in particular, yes, but mainly the goodness of God who makes the wrong things right, in society. We read this. We sang it. 

It is all promise at this point in the story, Luke chapter one. It will be thirty years before the Child in her womb starts traveling the area and showing God is good and is in charge. Even after His death and resurrection, things are not great in their society. The Roman Empire is not overthrown. In fact, their beloved Jerusalem will be ransacked yet again, about forty years after Jesus’ resurrection and departure. 

But the rejoicing lives on; can’t be stopped. Despite all that has happened in world history, Christians keep singing Mary’s song, the Magnificat. Our souls keep magnifying the Lord God. 

Sometimes, rejoicing is a protest. A protest against what is still wrong and the powers that keep doing evil. We delight in the God who actually is the One who has the whole world in ‘His’ hands. 

My best friend back in Digby is a fellow my age named Jonathan. He is a true, athletic, outdoorsman. Happiest in a canoe, in a tent, in the wilderness, trail running, hiking, studying nature, and inspiring other people. About the time he was turning 53 he had been feeling strangely weak. It was not like him. (I remember this so well.) He was diagnosed with a blood cancer. This felt devastating. (A number of people in his family had died of cancer.) He went for repeated treatments down in Yarmouth. He fought hard. 

He is no practitioner of Christianity at all, but he knows how to find a spiritual practice. Along with his daily making a list of things to be thankful for, he started, during his treatments, to write a poem, a haiku, every day. One a day (sometimes more). He aimed to write one hundred: one hundred days in a row. Now, he has written fourteen hundred. 1,411 days! He became wonderfully healthy. Praise God! (I don’t know what he says, but that’s what I say.) One haiku a day - a protest against cancer, a rejoicing in LIFE.

Sometimes, delight is a way to join others who are already rejoicing. Like the dry ground that is glad, in Isaiah 35. The crocus that blossoms abundantly in the desert. Streams that flow in the desert. Do you ever rejoice in a blooming flower? Rejoice with the flower? Think the birds are praising? Just by doing their bird thing? Maybe? 

Or, as Mary rejoiced, we join the poor who get fed when the rich go hungry. The powerless who are lifted up and empowered, when the proud get scattered and confused. Oh, rejoicing is so deep, and so high, but it can be a hard battle. How we still pray and strive for the things Mary praised God for doing!

Sometimes, joy is simply a gift. A grace. A mercy. When we have some faith in God, we receive joy as a blessing in this life from our generous, grateful God. Sometimes, this is all I can do for someone who is troubled: pray for them; pray that joy comes to them, while the pain and anxiety is still there. While the end is still near. While the bad choices still are chosen. Let there be some delight, O God, some joy. 

So delight, rejoicing, joy can’t wait. Sort of like that song that says ‘we need a little Christmas, right this very minute.’ (Listen to that song sometime; it really does express a deep need, a need for joy.) Don’t put off rejoicing in God for some happier day, some less stressful day, some day when things are clearer. Don’t put off seeking some reason for joy. 

Let me end with a proverb I wrote that does not exactly fit with where this sermon went… but here it is:

To find joy requires some purpose in our life. 

Some of the purpose of life is to rejoice!