Joy for the Journey
- St. Aidan's
- Dec 14
- 8 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Advent 6 / 3A: Isaiah 35:1-10; Psalm 146:4-9
James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11
The Rev'd Cameron Partridge
December 14, 2025
When Kateri and I were in college a scary number of years ago, there was an odd tradition, a several-days-long descent into absurdity that was meant to welcome the first-year students fully into the embrace of the community. Older students dressed up in peculiar, themed ways for various events. Kateri was a year ahead of me, and this was my sophomore year, her junior year. On this particular evening, I emerged from a meeting with members of my class and came upon Kateri in a hallway. Only I didn’t immediately recognize her. My memory is hazy but what I recall is that her hair was poofed up and spiky, she had wild makeup on, she was wearing significant amounts of hot pink, and most disconcertingly, was not wearing glasses. While dramatically chewing gum, she greeted me with an exaggerated valley girl accent. I stood stunned for some long moment before I could sputter something in reply. As Kateri later shared, it was a moment in which it became readily apparent that I liked her. I can’t quite recall how she responded but it included some version of, “well what are you looking at?!” Or “what did you expect?!” Not this, I could tell you! But there was something about the shock of this ridiculous encounter that jolted me into a different awareness. It was part of a larger process, a sudden thawing of a heart I had tried to lock protectively in cold storage, amid an emotionally difficult year. But joy could not but crack that door open.
Today, the second to last Sunday in the season of Advent, is observed by many churches as Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete means rejoice in Latin. It has a parallel day in Lent, Laetare, that can be translated the same way. Today is a day amid this season of expectation to receive joy in the midst of whatever cold storage you may have needed to lock your heart. I can certainly think of many reasons given the state of our world. The fact that I am carefully timing when I open certain news apps on my phone – not too early in the day lest something terrible set the tone, not too late in the day lest I be unable to sleep – says something about the emotional safeguarding steps I need to take while seeking to remain aware of unfolding events. Our readings invite us into a hope that carries joy with it, a renewed expectation inviting us to embrace the good news of God’s reign: God soon coming and, lo!, present, emerging among us, despite all that is happening in the world, with a transformative, joyful impact. If Advent is a time of already and not yet, already, this joy can come to us where we are, can help sustain our hope amid the not yet that we experience all around us.
Our Psalm and reading from the prophet Isaiah both tell us of this hope-inducing joy right out of the gate. The active agency of the God who created all things is showcased in the verbs of Psalm 146: God gives justice, liberates, heals, lifts up, loves, cares, sustains in the midst of struggle. God frustrates the way of the wicked (Psalm 146:4-8). Happy, the Psalm declares, are those who have this God for their help, who claim God’s presence at our back. God gives us joy for the journey. The prophet Isaiah describes new life springing up along its way: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.” I can remember the grass in front of where we lived in Massachusetts – it wasn’t technically grass, but something that spread somehow too much and not enough, and took forever to go from winter dormant brown to green when spring came. Long before that greening, little lavender crocuses would push up through it, in front of the front door. We did not plant them – previous people had, and what a lovely surprise it was when we first encountered them. Even in February sometimes, more often in March they would appear: tiny signs of hope, little seeds of joy, amid the cranky slush of so many freezes and thaws.
Isaiah’s vision promises not only a renewed creation but also a strengthened people. This is a people who had been in exile, whose return to stability, justice, and peace is promised. “Strengthen the weak hands,” Isaiah says, acknowledging that their experience in that moment was one of struggle. Their knees needed to be made firm because, in fact, they were weak. God through this prophet was telling the people to be strong and not to fear because in fact they were very afraid, and for good reason. They had suffered deeply and anticipated more. Which is why Isaiah speaks to their posture of anticipation, as if to ask, what is the stance that you find yourself in? Note that stance. See that your hearts are fearful. Acknowledge that. And. Nevertheless, open your hearts. Strengthen them, as the letter of James encourages. God is at the very gate. God walks with you on this very highway, mile by mile through desert even as new life springs forth. God names this journey a “Holy Way.” Already you are on the path of return even as you have not yet arrived. Anticipate this emergence, seeking out strengthening joy along the way.
Our gospel passage dramatizes the interplay of this anticipation – the testing out of the expected and unexpected. Last week John the Baptist came onto our scene in all his wilderness finery, embodying the voice of the prophet Isaiah crying out to prepare the way. This week we hear that John, whom Roman imperial forces had since imprisoned, reached out to Jesus, sending his disciples to ask Jesus to clarify who he was. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” they asked. His response echoes the language of Isaiah describing the in-breaking of the divine reign. Tell them what you see, he responds, evoking imagery of healing and liberation, of new life, of good news. It is as if is saying, this is what our community has been called from ancient days to anticipate. Behold, it is happening. Then as John’s disciples take his message back, Jesus turns and presses the point to those are around him through pointed questions about what they had anticipated from John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? What then did you go out to see?” Whatever it was that they may have expected to encounter in the wilderness, Jesus was clear: John was a prophet in the most deeply rooted sense of that term in their tradition, and he was also more than what they could possibly have anticipated. He pointed the way to more anticipation, to their continued and increasing need to open their eyes and hearts, to the promise of God’s kingdom embodied in Jesus, a reign, a dream, in which the least are greater than their imaginations can yet envision.[1]
We might extend Jesus’ questions to our own lives and contexts. What do we go out expecting to see? Who and what do we anticipate as we make our way in the world? How might we envision or imagine the kingdom of God breaking into our world? How might our readiness be shaped and sharpened for that? How might joy widen a wedge in our hearts to welcome in the transformative seed of God’s kingdom?
This past week in the final session of our Advent formation series on spiritualities, theologies and practices of nonviolence, “People of Peace,” we spent time talking about the vision of Rev. Howard Thurman, a minister and mystic, philosopher, spiritual writer and leader who was a professor of Christian theology and dean of chapel first at Howard University and then at Boston University. He mentored a generation of civil rights leaders including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.[2] In his 1979 autobiography, With Head and Heart, Thurman wrote of a 1935 “Delegation of Friendship” in which he led Black American leaders to India as an opportunity for shared learning and exchange as each context continued to struggle for liberation in contexts of racism and imperial oppression. As his delegation’s time was drawing toward its conclusion, he was able to spend some time with Mohandas Gandhi. This had been a long, eagerly anticipated opportunity for learning and encounter. One day Thurman decided he needed to send Gandhi a message to plan for a meeting time before Thurman and his group returned to the United States.
It was during the second day of my lectures at the University of Bombay that I said to Sue, “I think I will go down to the post office and send a telegram to Mahatma Gandhi at his ashram to see if we can see him. We can't go home without visiting him.” The next morning I left for the post office to send the telegram. I passed an Indian in kadhi cloth wearing a Gandhi cap. Our eyes met as we passed, though we said nothing. When I had gone about fifty feet something made me turn around and look back at him just as he turned around to look back at me. He smiled; I smiled. We turned and came toward each other and when we met he said, “Are you, you?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “Well, I have a letter for you from Gandhiji.” I said, “That’s wonderful because I am on my way to the post office now to send a telegram to him to see whether or not it is possible for us to see each other.”[3]
What did Thurman go out expecting to see? Someone seeking him? Someone who would ask him such a holy question: Are you, you? What an invitation even in just this encounter, before the actual encounter he would have with Ghandi, which itself was momentous, deeply relational, and connected. It was a time in which Gandhi would pepper him with questions about what was happening in the United States particularly regarding racism and classism, the injustices the Black community was facing – Gandhi wanted to hear all about that. Toward the end of their time, he suddenly realized he’d barely given Thurman time to ask him questions, so he made space for that and their exchange continued. When it came to a close, Gandhi asked if they would be willing to sing the spiritual “Were You There?” And so they took time to sing together.[4] It was a profound connection whose reverberations unfolded through the rest of Thurman’s life. From those reverberations he was able to share and influence civil rights leaders who were a generation after him, including but not limited to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.[5]
What do we go out expecting to see? How might our hearts be cracked open for the possibilities of encounter, possibilities that our minds likely cannot imagine? How might we leave room for joy in the midst of suffering, of oppression, of difficulty, of a horizon whose uplifting we cannot quite see but that we are invited to cast our hearts forward to help dream? This is part of our sharing in God’s kingdom, manifested, brought into being through Jesus, inviting our participation here and now in this world. Planting seeds of small croci, bursting up through dry grass. Opening our hearts for love that is expansive and profound, that can help create reality in ways we cannot yet perceive. And so this morning on Gaudete Sunday, in the midst of Advent, as we lean forward in anticipation, may we be willing to reach for the already in the midst of the not yet. May that reaching be an anticipation of joy.
[1] Vera Dozier, The Dream of God: A Call to Return (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1991)
[3] Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 130-131.
[4] Thurman, Ch. 4 “Crossing the Great Divide – India” in With Head and Heart, 101-136
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