Welcome to our service for this third Sunday in Advent, traditionally known as Gaudete Sunday – a day of rejoicing. Our online service this week is brought to you as a team effort by Alex, Pauline, and Louise. Today we consider the paradox of joy in a time of challenge.

Call to Worship (from Psalm 30)
I praise you, Lord, because you have saved me
and kept my enemies from gloating over me.

I cried to you for help, O Lord my God,
and you healed me;
Sing praise to the Lord,
all his faithful people!
Remember what the Holy One has done,
and give him thanks!

His anger lasts only a moment,
his goodness for a lifetime.
Tears may flow in the night,
but joy comes in the morning.

Hear us, Lord, and be merciful!
Help us, Lord!”
You have changed my sadness into a joyful dance;
you have taken away my sorrow
and surrounded me with joy.

HYMN 277 Hark the glad sound! The Saviour comes

(from First Plymouth Church, Lincoln, Nebraska)

Prayer:

(Based on The Magnificat, Luke 1: 46-55)
Let us pray:

We gather in Your presence, Lord,
to proclaim Your greatness,
and to rejoice in Your salvation,
for You have looked upon us in grace.

In Your love You have blessed us,
doing great things for and through us.
You have shown Your mercy to us,
bringing us through times of darkness.

In mercy You look upon the humble,
calling them to Your presence,
filling them with good things,
and placing Your seal upon them.

You, Lord, have come to the aid of Your people,
through Your mercy granting us forgiveness.
You keep Your promise to all people,
generation by generation.

Now we come before you in joy,
in hope, and in thanksgiving.
We lift high Your Holy Name,
through Christ, our risen Lord.

Hear us, we pray, as we come to you in His words, saying together:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen.

Scriptures:

Zephaniah 3: 14-20
Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem!

The Lord has taken away the judgements against you,
he has turned away your enemies.
The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;
you shall fear disaster no more.
On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
Do not fear, O Zion;
do not let your hands grow weak.

The Lord, your God, is in your midst,
a warrior who gives victory;
he will rejoice over you with gladness,
he will renew you in his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing
as on a day of festival.
I will remove disaster from you,
so that you will not bear reproach for it.

I will deal with all your oppressors
at that time.
And I will save the lame
and gather the outcast,
and I will change their shame into praise
and renown in all the earth.

At that time I will bring you home,
at the time when I gather you;
for I will make you renowned and praised
among all the peoples of the earth,
when I restore your fortunes
before your eyes, says the Lord.


Philippians 4: 4-7
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 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.
Amen

HYMN 281 People, look East

(from Borodino Methodist Church)

Reflection:

The third Sunday in Advent is traditionally known as Gaudete Sunday. The day takes its name from the Latin, Gaudete, or ‘rejoice’, the first word of the passage we read from Philippians this morning: Rejoice in the Lord always. Perhaps you were not surprised that the theme of our service this morning is joy, or rejoicing. Most people in the secular world in which we live think of December as Christmas, a time for laughter, happiness and celebration. But for Christians, this time is not Christmas. We are in Advent and we are not yet celebrating the birth of Christ. And, amid continuing concern over the spread of Covid 19, and our worries over climate change, are we mad to celebrate and rejoice after the two years we have had and the new threats we are now facing?

The passage from Zephaniah is a shout of joy and you may well have felt that you could not share in that emotion. However, the passage comes at the end of a book that is largely about disaster and distress. It is full of prophecies of judgement and reproach, as the people are warned that God is unhappy with their behaviour and intends to punish them. And yet that period of difficulty and trauma ends with this outburst of joy.

For us too, the world can seem dark. Maybe we too feel cut off from God. Are you cross that ‘everyone else’ is preparing to celebrate Christmas and you don’t feel like it? Rather than feel joyful, do you in fact feel low? Grief-stricken, lonely, confused, fearful? You are not alone. We know from our readings of the Bible that sorrow and grief have been part of the human condition for millennia.

So, what causes us to rejoice? There are glimmers of hope in our current situation. The scientists are working flat out to counter the threat of new Covid variants and our vaccination programme has been a success. We have not yet fully returned to ‘normal’ life but we are able to worship together and to meet family and friends. Governments have agreed to tackle climate change and there may be progress. Some of us may indeed have had moments this year when we have felt truly joyful. Not just content, not just happy but downright joyful. Take a moment to think about what that felt like.

Paul, in this extract from his letter to the Philippians, calls his readers to joy and confirms that the peace of God will then be vouchsafed to us. He wrote this when he was a prisoner, suffering and perhaps already expecting death. We can be comforted by this realisation that, for us too, joy can emerge from times of grief and struggle.

Why is this? It is not anything we do ourselves but the presence of God that determines the joy we feel. Like Paul and like the ancient Israelites, we will face challenges in our lives and, like them, we are called, with God’s help, to face them not with weariness, self-pity or even anger, but with songs of joy.

What does that mean for us, on this day, in this year? Don’t misunderstand ‘joy’. This is not the pleasure you may take in turkey and gifts and hugs from your nearest and dearest. Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Catholic priest and theologian, spoke of joy not being the same as simple happiness. It comes from the knowledge “that you are unconditionally loved” by God. It is a deeper emotion – sometimes even co-existing with unhappiness. Our passages today both speak a message of hope to those in difficult situations.

The period of Advent shows us that God was to answer the general lament of humankind in a spectacularly generous way. We know that something special is about to happen. We know that someone is coming, someone important. God answered the prayers of those early Israelites – and our prayers too – by sending Jesus to live among us, and to die for us. The Light transforms the lives of human beings and turns grief to joy.

The period of Advent is – or should be – a time of preparation for us, and not just for a long weekend of family and presents. We need to be ready for Jesus. We cannot enter fully into God’s promise of joy unless we open ourselves to change, to new priorities, renewed relationships with each other and with our neighbours near and far.

Jesus’ birth, his life, his death and his resurrection reveal God’s love for the world – for all of us. His incarnation – his physical presence on earth among ordinary people like Paul, and you, and me – is a source of hope, love, peace and deep, abiding joy. Light is about to break again into our lives, whatever the challenges we face. Be ready. Rejoice! I will say it again; rejoice!
Amen.

HYMN 286 Tell out my soul

(Songs of Praise from St. Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast)

Prayer:

Let us pray.

Marysaid,
My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.

God of Love,
who seeks to fill us with true joy,
teach us to be bearers of your light in times of darkness.
In doing so, may the lonely know friendship,
the grieving, comfort, and the despairing, hope.

Mary said,
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.

God of Grace,
You have blessed us beyond measure.
By the gifts we receive let us give to one another.
May we give our time, talents, and money to
serve those in emotional, spiritual, and physical need.

Mary said,
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.

God of Wonder,
You are compassionate to those who seek you.
May we seek you in the everyday and in time of celebration.
May we learn from your Word, teaching young and old
to love mercy, act justly, and walk humbly with you.

Mary said,
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

God of Justice,
who fights for the oppressed and downtrodden,
correct in us any pride or sense of superiority.
Let us share our food with the hungry, our purse with the poor,
and your strength, comfort, and care with the victimised.

Mary said,
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.

God of Eternity,
You know our past, our present and future.
We pledge ourselves to you, as part of your Church.
Remember us in your mercy,
and walk with us this day and ever more.
Amen.

HYMN 449 Rejoice! The Lord is King

(from Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California)

Sending:

Let us go from this place
with hearts comforted by the promise of God.
Let us go from this place
knowing that the Light will enter our lives.
Let us go from this place,
knowing that love and peace and joy will be ours.

And as we go,
may the blessing of God Almighty,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
go with you all
now and evermore.
Amen.

Sung Amen:

Acknowledgements:
Bible Quotations taken from: New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

English translations of The Lord’s Prayer, © 1998, English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC), and used by permission. www.englishtexts.org

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Welcome & Intimations:
Welcome to our service for this second Sunday in Advent. As Advent is a time not only of thinking back to the birth of Jesus, but a time of looking forward to his return, we will be thinking today about what that second coming means.

Call to Worship (from Psalm 134)
Praise the Lord all you servants of the Lord.
Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord.
May the Lord bless you from Zion,
he who is the Maker of heaven and earth.

HYMN 162 The God of Abraham praise

(from Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California)

Prayer:

Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on for ever the beauty of the glory from God.Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God; put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting;for God will show your splendour everywhere under heaven. (Baruch 5: 1-3)

Let us pray.

Living God, in our worship,
we seek to be ready to meet with You.
We prepare ourselves;
we still ourselves;
we organise ourselves;
we get ourselves in the right frame of mind.
And now we come to You in prayer.

We come with thanksgiving,
for the beauty of this day,
for the wonder of life,
for the fellowship of this place,
for the freedom to meet and worship,
and for the Gospel message of this Advent Season.
So we rejoice, with the universal Church,
as we journey through Advent in worship and in faith.
Make us ready for the coming of our Lord.

But are we ready yet?
Are we really prepared to meet You here?
Are we properly ready for the wonder of the Incarnation?

We look at how we are and who we are, and we wonder how we will look to You.
We still wear our garments of sorrow and affliction.
For life may have been tough for us this week,
and the burdens we carry might be hard to bear.

We’re still dressed in the garments of failures, promises made and promises broken,
acts of kindness missed and acts of sinfulness offered.
We are still clothed in unrighteousness.
And we are ashamed.

We’re still dressed in the garments of doubt and uncertainty.
We are not perfect.
We have so many questions.
But mostly, we hide them under our coats of respectability,
our jackets of strength,
our coverings of faithfulness,
our public image of certainty,
while underneath we are shabby and grey.

Are we ready? Are we prepared for You to look on such as us?

But just when we want to turn away in our shame,
Your message comes to us again. “Put on the beauty of the glory from God”,
for you deserve my love, dear children.

“Put on the robe of the righteousness”,
and don’t be fearful of my wrath, for this is the message that comes from God.

“Put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting,”
for you need no longer be ashamed.

Ready? Yes, we can be ready, not through our own purposes,
but by offering ourselves to God;
not through our own efforts,
but by believing that our “God will show your splendour everywhere under heaven”,
even for the likes of each one of us.

So now we can be prepared.
Now we know You can look on us and smile.
Now we can recognise again that You and Your people are one.

Merciful God,
You sent Your messengers the prophets to preach repentance
and prepare the way for our salvation:
give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins,
that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer;
who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Here us, we pray, as we come to you in the words Jesus taught, saying:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen.

Scriptures:

Malachi 3: 1-4
See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

Luke 3: 1-6
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:“Prepare the way of the Lord,make his paths straight.Every valley shall be filled,and every mountain and hill shall be made low,and the crooked shall be made straight,and the rough ways made smooth;and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”’
Amen

HYMN 474 Hail to the Lord’s Anointed

(from the Chet Valley Churches)

Reflection:

What images come to mind when you think of the Christmas season? Do you think of nativity scenes that decorate our homes or churches? Do you think of the evergreen tree, with all its decorations? Do you think of the hectic nature of shopping as the big day gets closer? I wonder, too, how the season makes us feel. Excitement? Joy? Perhaps you look forward to the sense of fun and the catching up of family and friends. I wonder, though, how many of us approach Christmas with a sense of fear or dread!

Many in our city, indeed our land, will approach Christmas with no real sense of joy. For those with children to provide for it may be worse for them than for others. The apparent need to provide the latest gadgets or toys, and to spend beyond our means so as not to make our children feel embarrassed, or so that we may ‘keep up with the Jones’s’ will drive many into unmanageable debt. If you think I am exaggerating a little, then reflect upon this fact: one in four children in Scotland, today, live in poverty!

If we turn to the days of the early church, or even to the hopes and aspirations of the people of God in the time leading up to the coming of Jesus we will find a very different set of thoughts and feelings in place. The people were expecting a Messiah, someone anointed of God to come and set the people free; he would lead them not only out of captivity in a human sense, bit also out of whatever it was that was holding people back from encountering God. The Messiah would be a liberator. However, this liberator would also be a revolutionary of sorts! He would bring judgement to bear upon the people as he prepared them for the coming ‘Day of the Lord’. This would be a day of rejoicing, that much is true, but it would lead to much soul searching and heartache as well. Look at the language we heard read earlier; it speaks of refining, and fire, and purification. It asks who can stand, who may endure that day. Those are not images that conjure up the idea of an inoffensive crib scene or Christmas party; rather these are scenes of terror and dread.

It is into moods such as these that Jesus was born. Our Gospel reading skips ahead to the time when Jesus was about to begin his ministry, but the mood is just the same, the images remain. John the Baptizer comes proclaiming the coming of the Lord. He comes, calling the people to judgement yet calling them also to repent, to turn back to God and know His mercy. He prepares the way for the coming of Jesus. Yet note, there remains no sign of this ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’, the strange infant who ‘no crying he makes’. It is this Jesus that John is calling us to watch out for, and to follow. It is this Jesus that would be horrified at the way we spend Christmas while so many of our neighbours are lacking the basic things of life. If we stand back and do nothing then we, too, will know the judgement of the ‘Day of the Lord.’

So what are we to do? What may we do? We may begin by turning and focussing on what it is that is meant by the kingdom, and of what sort of people who may populate it. The kingdom is the rule of God, and it is eternal. It is not bound by politics, or geography, or history. It predates these things and will be long after they are gone. It is a kingdom whose population will be defined by their righteousness, not their ethnicity, or theology, nor having right beliefs. The righteous citizens of that kingdom are those who do works of justice, for that is what righteousness means. We can use our voice to bring justice to bear. With one in four of our children in poverty we can resource the various agencies who work with such as these. We can vote and argue and petition to change the structures that imprison them. With a new variant of COVID circulating around the world we can demand to know why the wealthy west allows the poorer south to go without sufficient vaccines to give them a fighting chance to beat the pandemic. Perhaps this pandemic will remind us that we are all one, for it is not fussy who it infects or whom it kills. Wouldn’t it be a most wonderful Christmas if we even made a start on such things?

The kingdom began in eternity and will end in it. On the way prophets came and went. So too did monarchs and dictators, kingdoms and empires. Into this kingdom Christ was born. This was not to save the spiritually elite nor the theologically correct but to bring justice. This justice demands a reorientation of the heart and mind, to think beyond the self and self-interest. It is to see God in the eyes of the other. This is what Christmas enables us to do, but only if we see beyond the trappings and the jolliness. Christmas enables us to transform the world, to bring in the kingdom of God. So what are we waiting for … let’s prepare.
Amen.

HYMN 472 Come, thou long expected Jesus

(from Songs of Praise, St. John’s College Choir, Cambridge)

Prayer:

Let us pray.

Let us pray that God will transform us,
that this world would become more just.

We pray that the Church would be empowered
to raise our voices like those of the prophets
that we may proclaim the way of salvation.
Fill your people with your spirit that we may fulfil our callings.

We pray that the rulers of this world would live in humility,
that they may discern the truth
and that their power may be exercised for the good of all.
Make straight the crooked ways of the world.

We pray that we may be reborn this Advent.
May we hear the call to repent of our selfishness
and turn to your path of redemption.
Lead us into the paths of peace.

We pray for the sick and the injured,
for those who ache in body or in mind.
We pray for the grieving and the struggling,
may the whole world know your healing.

We give thanks for the great saints
of this and every age
who walked the paths of justice
yet gave glory to you alone.

May our prayers be acceptable in your sight,
our Lord and our God.
Amen.

HYMN 290 The race that long in darkness pined

(from Grimsby Minster)

Benediction:

May the Blessing of God who made us,
Christ who redeems us,
and the Spirit who renews us,
rest upon us all
through today,
through Advent,
and the time to come.
Amen.

Sung Amen:

Acknowledgements:
Bible Quotations taken from: New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

English translations of The Lord’s Prayer, © 1998, English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC), and used by permission. www.englishtexts.org

Opening prayer by Rev. Tom Gordon. Taken from Church of Scotland, Weekly Worship.

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