Worship Leader:  Paul Whiteley, LLWL                                                                                                   Music Director: Tim Hallman, B.Mus., B.Ed.

 Third Sunday of Advent
December 14, 2025
“Radical Joy”

 Welcome / Announcement / Celebrations

Land Acknowledgement

Lighting the Christ Candle

Advent 3: Mary and Joseph – Joy (two blue candles are lit)

All: Mary and Joseph, where are you going? Can we go too?
One: We are walking to Bethlehem. We have been asked to be earthly parents to God’s child.
This will be the hardest thing we have ever done. It is scary. It has been hard to believe.
Some of our family and friends still don’t believe us. But that’s ok.
What an amazing, joyful opportunity we have. We get to be the first to welcome God’s son to
the world.
We get to love him and care for him.
Yes, please come with us and help us welcome our son.
All: Thank you, Mary and Joseph, for your faith and your gift of JOY. We will join you on this
Advent adventure.
(third blue candle is lit)

Hymn:   VU 7 “Hope is a Star” verses 1, 2 & 3

Call to Worship:
One: Praise be to God
All: Who has made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them
One: Praise be to God
All: Who is watching over the strangers and upholding the downtrodden
One: Praise be to God
All: Who will transform our deserts to lush lands blooming with joy and singing
One: Praise be to God
All: Praise be to God, oh my soul
- Alydia Smith, United Church of Canada, 2025

Passing of the Peace

Opening Prayer:
God, you called Isaiah to be a prophet,
Mary to be a God-bearer,
Luke to be a witness.
Now you call us each to be holy.
In our own unique way.
Let it Be.
Amen

- adapted from Alydia Smith, United Church of Canada, 2025

Anthem: “Bethlehem”

 Scripture:
Isaiah 35:1-10 “Blooming in Wilderness”
Luke 1:46b–55 “The Song of Mary”

Hymn: MV 134 “Dreaming Mary”

Reflection: “Radical Joy”

 Radical Joy
With all my heart I glorify the Lord!
In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior.
He has looked with favor on the low status of his servant.
Look! From now on, everyone will consider me highly favored because the mighty one has done great things for me.

- Luke 1: 46b-49, Common English Bible

One of the things I love about worship leadership is the new things I learn while preparing each reflection on scripture. Even today’s readings, which include some of the most famous song lyrics of the New Testament, pointed me in the direction of new ideas for this advent season.

One thing I learned about the Song of Mary – also called the “Magnificat” from when it was sung in Latin – is that, like other songs in Luke, it may well be older than the gospel story in which it appears. These words of faith story were included in the Book of Odes, a kind of sequel to the Psalms that was part of the “extended cut” of the Old Testament in Greek. The Odes collects songs from the earliest – the song of Miriam in Exodus – to the latest, from Messianic Judaism at the time of the Maccabees, in the second century before Christ. So this song of joy and faith in God fits well as a musical interlude in Luke’s story of Mary’s pregnancy, though some versions of the gospel have the song sung by Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, when they meet.

The prophecy from Isaiah read today could also have been included in a song book – as some other prophecies were – although this particular one was left out. I’ll read again just the last section:

A good road will be there, and it will be named “God's Sacred Highway.”
It will be for God's people; no one unfit to worship God will walk on that road, and no fools can travel on that highway.
No lions or other wild animals will come near that road; only those the Lord has saved will travel there.
The people the Lord has rescued will come back singing as they enter Zion.
Happiness will be a crown everyone will always wear.
They will celebrate and shout because all sorrows and worries will be gone far away.

- Isaiah 35:1-10, Contemporary English Version

This prophecy comes from the first Isaiah, according to scholars who try to separate out the original version of the scroll from what was added later. This vision of a good road has appealed to Jews and Christians for nearly 2,500 years and has been interpreted in many different ways, both literally and metaphorically. In every version, though, this is one of scripture’s clear “happy endings” – the time when God’s people will travel safely and happily, without stress or care, rescued by God and responding with joy.

Now prophecies, as I’ve been learning through the lectionary this fall, are some of the trickier passages of scripture. Almost all of the prophecies in scripture, including the ones in Isaiah, are making reference to things that had already happened at the time the prophecy is written. Indeed, one main purpose of prophetic texts is to offer consolation – the restoration of moral order where those who are undeserving of their earthly rewards lose them, and those who have unfairly suffered are raised up and rewarded. And another, not totally different purpose is to remind us of our own scope for action and initiative – we have the opportunity to repent, to turn our lives around, own our mistakes and mis-deeds, and to go and sin no more, knowing we are blessed. In Isaiah especially we hear about sins of violence, and injustice, and intolerance, while rewards are promised for how we treat refugees, and seniors, and orphans, and the poor.

And so, in this prophecy, God’s generous abundance is shown by a desert in bloom. I have mentioned here before my modest experience of blooming desert – almost 25 years ago, I visited Namibia with family, only a few months after rainfall well over the 100-year maximum. By the time we were there damaged roads had been restored and most of the water on the salt pans had evaporated, but in some places the moisture had released flowers that bloom less than once per decade, and in others eerie grasses crept over sandy dunes in a way I for one never expected to see. Barren lands do indeed celebrate: even blossom.

So I think it’s important, when we return to the stories of our faith, that we allow the right balance
between scenes that can be literally true along with the signs and symbols of our faith. Advent is a time of waiting, and in its simplest meaning we are waiting for our hope to be born as a child. For many of us, in different ways and at different times of our lives, waiting for the miracle of new life is something we do, quite literally. And whatever the symbolic or literary dimensions of Luke’s gospel, the most important connection the nativity story makes is with our quite literal, embodied experiences of waiting, of waiting for birth, of waiting for that miracle of new life to come to us or for those we love, once again as it came to us, and our parents, and our parents’ parents before.

Nobody would say, I think, that this kind of waiting is easy. It matters too much – there is too much at stake, and anxiety and impatience come very easily when we are waiting for something this important. The word Christian theology eventually found for what we are waiting for is “incarnation” – the miracle of the divine in human form. We wait to be reminded that our God hasn’t finished creating, hasn’t finished being with us, whether we choose to focus on events 2,000 years ago, the miraculous encounters we find in our own life, or mysteries to come.

But another part of our tradition recognizes that while waiting is hard, we don’t have to just grind our way through. The third Sunday of Advent offers a break from the hard waiting, and it reminds us that we aren’t supposed to be simply waiting for a happy ending – in spite of occasional appearances, delayed gratification is not really the message of the gospel. Rather, we are supposed to live our radical joy, here and now: to celebrate God’s presence with us, give thanks for our unexpected blessings, and en-Joy the path we share with our blessed community.

God has performed mighty deeds … has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts … brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.

God has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. The Lord has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as  our ancestors in faith were promised.

The richness of these promises is intended by the prophet to stay with us, reminding us of our firm foundation in times of trouble. We are to wait for God’s coming, to seek to follow the way in our everyday lives, and in doing that, to find Joy in the present, in the texture of our lives day by day. And for this, to God be the praise and thanks, Amen.

Invitation for Offering

Offering Hymn:  VU 541 “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”

Offering Prayer

Prepare our Hearts for Prayers: MV 86 “Da Pacem Cordium”

Prayers of the People / Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from the evil one.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.

Closing Hymn: MV 120 “My Soul Cries Out”

Commissioning / Benediction

Hymn: “Go Now In Peace”

         "A Village Church With A Heart For The World"

Christ United Church

12 Perth St., Lyn, ON, K0E 1M0
(613)498-0281 (Phone)   (613)498-2589 (Fax)

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