Have you ever heard the term, “earworm”?  It refers to a song that gets stuck in your head.   Lately I have had the chorus of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” on involuntary repeat in my brain.  “O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy, o tidings of comfort and joy.”  Right after Thanksgiving I was on the phone, waiting on hold, and the phone system was playing Christmas carols in the background.  “Tidings of comfort and joy” seemed like such an odd thing to hear while waiting to reschedule a dental appointment!  For the last few weeks, that song has popped into my head at seemingly random times:  while taking out the trash, while walking my dog, while riding in the car—this Christmas carol has become my 2021 Advent earworm.  It keeps coming to mind.

Which is not a bad thing.  After all, who couldn’t use tidings of comfort and joy?  This is the third Sunday of Advent, when we traditionally light the pink candle, the candle of joy.  Officially, pink is the liturgical color for joy.  I didn’t know that in 1988 when I chose bright pink dresses for my bridesmaids, but I sure chose that pink with joy in mind!  Looking back on it, boy were those dresses bright!  The liturgical pink is a much gentler hue.  We are, after all, still in advent.  It’s not time for “bright light” joy yet.  Today we are celebrating gentle joy.

Gentle joy.  Is that a thing?  It must be.  After all, joy is more than just a feeling of festive gaiety.  It’s that feeling you get when you are with someone you love very much, and you realize, yup, the love is still there, even after many ups and downs.  It’s that feeling you get when you are struck by gratitude and appreciation because, for one or two fleeting seconds, everything seems perfect.  It’s a feeling of being comforted in a special way.  There are times for rowdy joy.  And I am a fan of rowdy joy—like doing the Chicken Dance at a wedding reception!  But most of my experiences with joy have been quiet, private moments where I felt a deep sense of fullness.  And usually that feeling of joy comes as a surprise.

I noticed this on Sunday afternoon, as people gathered in the church parking lot for our tree lighting.  I was standing on the front porch of the church, holding a cup of hot chocolate, singing along to the carols, when suddenly I was struck by gentle joy.  It was a fleeting moment where, all of a sudden I felt deep gratitude for my church family. I felt the fullness of being able to celebrate together. And I felt like God was squeezing my shoulder and comforting me, reminding me that God was with us last year for our first annual tree lighting, and God is still with us this year, for our second annual tree lighting, and in fact, God had been with us all year through.

God with us.  Matthew wrote that the details of Christ’s birth were not an accident.  They happened in a particular way so as to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel—which means, ‘God with us’.”  (Matthew 1:23)  God with us.  This came as very welcome news to Joseph and the other early Christians, because God had been silent for a long time.  There were about four hundred years in between the last recorded prophecy in the Old Testament and the coming of Christ.  That’s a long time.  And that time was marked by political upheaval, religious factions, and great suffering amongst God’s people.  We can understand how they might have wondered if God was indeed with them.

In comparison, one or two years of suffering during a pandemic is nothing.  But when you work at a church and it seems God is silent, well, even one week is a long time!  We have many spiritual disciplines available to us, to help us connect to God’s presence with us.  But, for me personally, that connection doesn’t always feel as vibrant as I’d like.  What a surprise on Sunday, standing on the front porch of the church, holding my hot chocolate, hearing my voice join with those around me, and there it was.  Gentle joy.  A light pink feeling that God is still with me, and it brought me great comfort.

I wonder if Joseph woke up from his dream feeling comforted.  The very first thing the angel said to Joseph was, “Do not be afraid,” but to me, that’s like when you go to the doctor and they tell you to relax.  That never makes my blood pressure go down, that’s for sure!  If the angel in my dream wants me to not be afraid, that better be one calm, gentle angel, bringing tidings of comfort and peace.  Matthew doesn’t tell us what the angel looked like, or if Joseph had no fear as he took Mary to be his wife.  But he certainly gives us the impression that, at the end of the encounter with the angel, Joseph had all the confidence he needed to do as the angel commanded.

And I think, ultimately, this is the purpose of joy:  to give us confidence.  The word confidence is a marriage of two Latin words:  con, meaning with, and fidelity, meaning faith.  Confidence.  With faith.  What better way to bolster our faith than to experience joy?  Joy is God’s way of saying, I am still here!  I am still with you!  You are still my beloved.  Joy is God’s way of giving us a little foretaste of glory divine, a little snippet of beauty and perfection to savor now, while we await the day when beauty and glory and justice and peace will be the whole story, not just occasional experiences.  Whether it’s from seeing a pretty sunset, or hearing a favorite song, or being with loved ones, moments of joy bolster our faith, that someday our joy will be complete.  As the prophet Isaiah wrote, someday the desert and the dry land will be glad.  They will rejoice greatly and shout for joy, because salvation is coming.  The eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame will leap like deer.  “Bright light” joy is on its way.  Our moments of light pink joy, gentle joy, bolster our confidence, to trust God’s promises even if it seems like it will be years and year, or centuries and centuries, before they will be fully realized.

Tidings of comfort and joy bolster our ability to be faithful.  But it is also true that being faithful brings us tidings of comfort and joy.  Our key verse today is Psalm 16:11, “You show me the path of life.  In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”  We will experience more joy if we walk in the path God shows us.  Recently at our charge conference, Rev. Ethel Guy from Linwood Heights UMC said, “We don’t know where we are going, but we know who is leading us!”  Since joy comes from realizing, God is still with us, it makes sense that as we follow Jesus, we will have more joy.

This week I read a leadership article by Rev. Rich Wilkerson, who pastors a church in Miami.  You might have heard his name because he presided over the wedding of Kim Kardashian and Kayne West back in 2014.  He’s a much hipper pastor than me!  He says joy and progress are basically the same thing.  “You don’t have to grow overnight, but if you choose to grow over time, you’re going to find yourself walking in a deeper joy.”  God doesn’t demand perfection.  But if we make progress on following God more faithfully, we will experience more joy.

That gave me a lot to think about.  I don’t disagree that progress is often a catalyst for joy.  But what I have noticed lately is, the tidings of comfort and joy that are speaking to me, singing to me involuntarily in my head, the message that is most meaningful to me has nothing to do with my progress.  It is simply grace upon grace.  It is God coming to me, leading me, reassuring me, blessing me—completely at God’s initiative.  To tell you the truth, these days the tidings of comfort and joy are not coming from the go-to spiritual disciplines that I found so helpful in the past.  They are coming from doing new things, even doing painful things.  But the tidings of comfort and joy are indeed coming.  And I am so thankful to the teachers who have shown me how to look for them, hear them, see them, and receive them.  Including Joseph, who emerged from his encounter with the angel with enough confidence to walk the path of life shown to him, and discovered that even on that difficult path, Emmanuel, God is with us.

So I bid you “tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy.” And I hope that refrain sticks in your head like an earworm!  I have loved that Christmas carol since 1978, when I was in sixth grade, and my church got a new pastor, Rev. Lynde.  That first Christmas, he announced to the congregation that we were going to sing, “God Rest You Merry, Friends in Christ”, not “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”.  You can imagine what a stir that caused in my little dairy farming community some forty years ago.  We had not heard of inclusive language, and I’m sure some folks were upset.

But I thought it was wonderful.  Because after all, the tidings of comfort and joy weren’t for a particular class of people in England when the carol was written sometime before the mid 1800’s.  The tidings of comfort and joy are for ALL people, in all times and places.  As Matthew reminds us, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel—which means, “God with us”.  God with all of us.

Another potentially controversial issue with the carol “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen” is where to put the comma.  Should it be, “God Rest You, Merry Gentlemen” (or friends in Christ)?  Or “God Rest Your Merry, then the comma, Gentlemen”?  We assume the word merry is meant as an adjective to the gentlemen or friends in Christ.  But it turns out, “God Rest You Merry” was an expression in old English.  It was a way of saying, “God bless you”, or, “God grant you peace and happiness”.  That is why I entitled this sermon, “God rest you merry, Lima.” I could have also called it, “God Rest You Merry, Whole World!”  God sent Jesus to bless all of creation with peace.

If you’re going to get a song stuck in your head, why not have it be a Christmas carol?  My prayer is that the tidings of comfort and joy will get stuck in our heads like an earworm, reminding us that God is STILL with us.  That God is STILL at work in the world, and in you.  That you are STILL God’s beloved.  And if the earworm isn’t enough of a reminder, let our light pink advent candle of gentle, comforting joy be like the angel who visited Joseph, giving you the message that these things are all true, even if it doesn’t always feel like it.

We started advent with a little flicker of hope, and last week we added a little flicker of peace.  Remember, it only takes a spark to get a fire going!  May the little flicker of joy that we celebrate today give us confidence to walk on the path God has set for us, the path of Immanuel, God with us, the path that leads to everlasting and abundant life.  Amen.