Sermon
Third Sunday of Advent
Sunday, December 14, 2025
The Third Sunday of Advent is traditionally known as the Sunday of joy in Latin gaete Sunday. Sunday of joy. And it’s interesting that our Christian tradition invites us even
during the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent to consider the theme of joy. I remember when I was at the seminary and I started thinking at some point about the importance of joy in the life of a Christian, whether we have joy because I thought we should have joy. And I went to my spiritual director who was a priest who worked at the Vatican at the time and was quite involved in in many of the documents that were being prepared. And I told him about my thinking that you know I’m thinking about the theme of joy and how important it is in our Christian life. And I asked him, “Have there been any official documents written in our Christian tradition about joy?” And he got all excited.
And he said, “Not many, but I agree with you. We should speak more about joy.” I think our liturgical tradition has something very important here that in the midst of the penitential season of Advent and of Lent, one Sunday is always reserved as the Sunday of joy. Lest we forget what this is all about. all the sacrifices and all the faith and all the dogmas and all the rituals and all the hymns and everything we do as Christians
at the end of the day it should be because we are a people of joy because we have something to rejoice about.
If our Christian faith does not bring us to a greater sense of peace and joy,
then we’re not living it properly. I believe I really believe that it’s so easy to look at our Christian life almost like well it’s a life of purgatory and suffering and struggle but
someday if you suffer enough here you’ll make it to heaven and that will
be joy. That used to be the way we thought about things especially in the middle ages.
This was kind of the theology spirituality that was being promoted
within Christendom. Suffer now and then someday you will
have joy. But Jesus in his preaching changes something. If we pay attention, Jesus speaks of the kingdom of God, which is code word for what? For heaven. Jesus says something worth paying attention to. Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is here.
The kingdom of God is among you.” This idea that we can only have a share in the kingdom of God after we die and once we’re in heaven is challenged by the very message of Jesus who says no the kingdom of God is among you.
So what does that mean? That means that heaven at least a portion, a taste, an experience of what we will have in heaven, we can already have now
and we should have now if we are living in a relationship with the Lord Jesus.
If we truly allow our faith to begin to change the way we are,
Jesus says something incredibly important in today’s gospel towards John the Baptist.
Jesus pays him the highest compliment that is possible. Jesus says amongst all who are born of women. So amongst all human beings John is the greatest the greatest human being who ever lived. No one has arisen greater than John the
Baptist. And that’s quite a compliment. That’s quite an endorsement.
You can put it on your business card or on your resume. You know, John the Baptist would have gone far if he lived long enough. If he lived long enough. But then Jesus follows it up with an even greater insight. And here Jesus talks about possibly you
and me. Jesus says, “And yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John.”
The least, the lowest Christian who accepts the gift of forgiveness and faith in Jesus
is greater than John the Baptist. Now if we truly accept that, if we truly feel it, if I truly believe that my sin, as great as it has been, has been forgiven by Jesus,
and I am already living as a member of heaven, a member of God’s church, a member of the family of God, people of God. Doesn’t matter what’s going on around me inside of me, I am already experiencing the gift of God. Then I am already greater than John the
Baptist because I am in the very presence of God. I have everything. Everything. No amount of money, power, or safety here on earth can replace the gift of faith and forgiveness in Jesus. The problem is we don’t fully grasp it yet. We don’t really fully appreciate it. We will someday. But what we already have access to is so incredible that we can’t even in our human limitations fully appreciate the gift of faith and the gift of forgiveness in Jesus. But Jesus says it unequivocally that those even the least, the lowest ones who have accepted the gift of faith, the gift of the kingdom of God are greater than the greatest people here on earth who have not done so. and the greatest human beings who have achieved the greatest things this world has to offer. Joy.
Joy is at the heart should be at the heart of a Christian life. Not the kind of joy this world has to offer where we have securities and all kinds of assurances about our future, our safety, our politics, our housing, all those things. But the kind of joy that comes from knowing who I am, to know who I am. And I can only know truly who I am when I see myself through the eyes of God. When God looks at me, when God looks at you, God sees you and me as his beloved. as the one whose sins have been forgiven,
as the ones whose sins are not even in the memory of God anymore. Because that’s what it means to forgive is to set it aside and say that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are here, that you believe, that you accept me as your savior. I believe that message is so important in solving so many issues we have and we
see all around us. mental health issues, substance abuse issues, family issues, geopolitical economic issues. All of them stem from the same weakness and sin which is the sin of not knowing who I am and trying to make a name for myself. Trying to do something that only God can do which is to be accepted and acceptable before God and to myself. The gift of faith and the example of Jesus and the teaching of Jesus is what can really break down so many barriers that people have when it comes to finding peace and joy and acceptance in our world in our life. and already here and now experiencing a foretaste of what it means to be in heaven, of what it means to be loved, of what it means to be a child of God.
Amen.