Advent 4, Year B | Lessons & Carols
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
December 17, 2023
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
Growing up, I remember one of our pastors having us sing “Joy to the World” in the middle of the summer, but it wasn’t because we were celebrating Christmas in July. “That isn’t a Christmas song,” he proclaimed, “that’s a Second Coming song!” And he wasn’t wrong. Looking at the text, the song definitely ends with the Lord “rul[ing] the world” and “prov[ing] the glories of his righteousness”—a Second Coming stanza if ever there was one. Our Hymnal—like most—places “Joy to the World” firmly in the Christmas section, and it certainly fits that context. But I would argue that those first three verses we just sang—all four, really—sit just as well within our Advent tradition. Take a look at them and then think back across our readings this morning—all those songs of the Hebrew prophets. The revived covenant, the remaking of the desert, the joy and heartfelt exultation of “the king of Israel, the Lord,…in your midst,”[1] the removal of disaster and reproach—it’s all in there!
“Joy to the world, the Lord is come”—at the very gates, practically stepping across the threshold to claim the Kingdom! Are we ready to greet him? Are we ready to face the reality of the Heavens’ Reign? Of expecting to see “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David,”[2] but turning to find instead “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered”?[3] Have we swept away and fully dealt with sin—not just the “sin” that dirties my individual soul, but the Bible’s expansive concept of sin, that which arises among us and around us and that even benefits us, the sin from which we struggle to refrain our own hands? Are we ready for a truly good Lord, a God whose love appears in the practical kindness we express and share with one another, one who ends not just a generic sense of evil or negativity but each and every form of oppression?
Tonight, we will celebrate the truth that the Lord is come. May we all be ready to rejoice!
[1] Zephaniah 3:15 | All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Romans 5:5
[3] Romans 5:6