Monthly Archives: December 2025

Lighting the Candle of Joy

by

A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Third Sunday in Advent – Year A • December 14, 2025

Isaiah 35:1-10 • James 5:7-10• Matthew 11:2-11

Seasons of the church year have a luminous aspect. Easter is all light. There was a time in my life when I’d get up before dawn, preparing to lead a sunrise service. I know some people do sunrise services at a more convenient time, but I’ve never been an easy pastor; I always insisted on literally gathering before sunrise so it would happen during the service. Lent is dark: we start with ashes, we think about suffering culminating on Good Friday and the cross. Christmas is all lights: we put them on Christmas trees, and I’m old enough to remember the annual chore of climbing on ladders, helping my dad put up outdoor lights. 

But Advent, Advent is unique; Advent is both dark and light. It began as a little Lent; when I was first in ministry, we wore the same colors for Advent as for Lent. I was gone for a few years and when I came back, someone had decided we’d wear blue for Mary. But still, Advent has a darkness to it, balanced by the candles of Advent. So there is light as well. Christmas Eve is the best example: the next to the last thing we do on Christmas Eve is darken the worship area, just before we all light candles. I’m looking forward to sharing that moment with you in a couple of weeks. Advent light comes in stages, one candle at a time. A candle for hope, a candle for peace, and next week a candle for love. All these are blue; one candle alone is pink, the candle for joy. The reason for the tradition is that in the Latin mass, the word ‘Caudate’, which means ‘Rejoice’ began the service. So our challenge today is how can we light the candle of joy not only here but everywhere?

Today’s scripture readings have that light and dark in them. We started today with Isaiah’s prophecy that gushes out like a warm soda bottle someone shook up. He starts with all creation rejoicing. We often forget how central creation is to God. But there it is overflowing: desert blooming, “…it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and shouting.” [Isaiah 35:2b]. Wow: my English teacher would never have allowed “rejoice with joy”, it’s too much, it’s over the top. But it doesn’t stop with creation, it’s people too, and not just the healthy ones either.

Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees.

Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.”  [Isaiah 35:3f]

That really feels like I’m being personally addressed because honestly, my hands are not as strong as they were; I have trouble gripping the line on the boat these days, and my knees, well, my running days are over for sure. And the highway taking us home to God is so well-marked, so straight, so perfect that, according to Isaiah, “not even fools, shall go astray.” What Isaiah seems to have in mind is joy coming from heaven like a snowfall or a rain shower. You can’t escape it; it’s going to get on you even if you have bad knees, arthritic hands, even if you’re a fool. God’s light is going to shine so powerfully that every corner is lit up, every person is lifted up, and even creation itself is full of the joy of God’s coming.

Well, that’s the fun part of today’s Word: all God’s children parading together in joy. But there’s a darkness too. Before we get to carried away, we need to listen to the gospel. There, things are not joyful, there things are not light. There we are taken to a prison cell in a dark dungeon. King Herod Antipas was a famously bad actor and among his may sins was having his brother killed so he could marry his brother’s wife. John has been speaking about this and just like today, political violence from leaders was common. So John’s been thrown in prison. I’ve visited in prisons and they are not fun places. They’re noisy and drafty and there is an air of pervading violence. Even if nothing bad is happening right now, you feel like it could at any moment. The only light in that time is from candles or lamps of burning oil and those are expensive; no one’s going to waste them on a prisoner. I imagine John sitting in the dark, hearing the cries of these, wondering if it all is ending, if he was wrong. So he gets a couple of friends to contact Jesus and ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” [Matt. 11:3]

What would you say? How would you answer? Jesus doesn’t do theology, he doesn’t demand faith in him, he simply says, “Go and tell John what you hear and see” and then he points out the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

…the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. [Matt. 11:5]

He’s quoting Isaiah 35:5-6 but surely he also has in mind what we read this morning. Where Jesus goes, the candles of joy are lit and the light of God shines. There’s no demand to come to Jesus; instead, there is this invitation to open your eyes and look around.

Isn’t this our challenge? How do we also light those candles. How do we say to our world, our city, our friends, “Look here if you want to see Jesus? This week I listened to an NPR show with a man who talked about how important his mother was to him. He said that she was 89 and had some medical challenges these days, and he admitted, in all honesty, taking care of her is sometimes a burden. He talked about how he has to wash her, help her use a bedpan, and that she isn’t always nice about the whole process. Then he said this amazing thing, “What I’ve learned, though, in caring for the one who brought me into the world, is that it is a kind of prayer.” He went on to say that too often we think of prayer as asking for something; for him prayer has become this act of service, this care for another. He’s found a new purpose and a new relationship not only with his mother but with God as well. Because he’s lighting a candle of joy in the process of doing something difficult for another.

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a whole novel about a woman who was terribly burned as a child. Taken to a healer, they are only able to save her life, not fix the damage. What the healer says is powerful: “What cannot be healed must be transcended.” So our question is how to we take the dark parts of life, transcend them, make them into prayer, make them a candle of joy to light?

I know that in my life, one of the most difficult things was when Jacquelyn started working as a flight attendant. I don’t have that reflexive fear of flying many have but I do know that thins happen on airplanes. Somewhere in the background of my mind are the flight attendants on 9/11 and in 2009, not long after she started, an airplane landed in the Hudson River. Planes do crash and even when they don’t, sometimes Flight Attendants get hurt on the plane. Jacquelyn has gotten hurt. So when she started going off to fly every week, it was hard, it was very hard. I didn’t sleep at night; I worried. Every time I said goodbye it felt like it might be the last time I’d see her.

But we’ve been doing this a long time, now. I still have problems some nights when she’s gone, but I’ve learned this important thing: my original thought was right, when she goes off to fly, I might never see her again. But she’s here now. She’s with me now. So it’s up to me to use this time to make a good life with her, and we work at that together. That’s become my prayer: thank god she’s here now.

My friend Jefferson gave me a book of Maya Angelou’s poems last Sunday. One that spoke powerfully to me says,

Thank you, Lord.

I want to thank You, Lord,

For life and all that’s in it

Thank you for the day

And for the hour and for the minute

I know many are gone,

I’m still living on

I want to thank You.

I went to sleep last night

And I arose with the dawn

I know that there are others

Who’re Still sleeping on

They’ve one away.

You’ve let me stay.

I want to thank You.

We don’t know why we’re here, always. Yesterday, I know you heard about the terrible shooting at Brown University in Providence, RI. I can’t imagine what that’s like: to be calmly preparing to take an exam and have violence suddenly burst in. One of them said this,

Spencer Yang, 18, who was shot in the leg in his Brown classroom on Saturday afternoon, described helping a fellow student who was seriously injured as they hid behind seats.

“To keep him conscious, I just started talking to him, so he didn’t close his eyes and fall asleep,” Mr. Yang said in an interview from the hospital, where he was being treated for a wound in his leg. “I handed him my water,” he said. “He wasn’t able to respond that well. He was just there nodding and making noise.” “He’s stable now, thankfully,” Mr. Yang added.

When Mr. Yang got up that morning, he didn’t expect to help save a life. When he went to that classroom, he didn’t expect to lie on the floor. But thank God he was there.

That’s it really: I don’t know if I will be here tomorrow, I don’t know if Jacquelyn will be here tomorrow, but she’s here now, I’m here now. When we realize what a wonderful, miraculous thing that is, it can become in our lives, a kind of prayer. Thank you, Lord. I’m still here: help me let my life light a candle of joy because you give me this life. 

Amen.

Web of Wonder

by

A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ 

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor

Second Sunday in Advent • December 7, 2025

Isaiah 11:1-10 * Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19 * Romans 15:4-13 * Matthew 3:1-12

Sermon begins at 27 minutes

There is a story of a poor family at Christmas who had only enough to get a tree. There were no ornaments, no tinsel, nothing at all to hang on it. Still, they swept and dusted and scrubbed and prepared the house for Christmas just as if a great Christmas ball were to be held there. They moved the sofa; they cleaned behind the cabinets. Even the dog’s water bowl was washed and dried and put back clean. When all was done, they went to bed. But during the night a spider came crawling down from the attic where it had hidden during all the fuss. The house was so clean, there was no place to start a web. Then it saw the tree: branches lifting needles with lots of wonderful spots just waiting for a spider web. The spider began to spin and soon others joined it so that by morning the tree was decorated with a gossamer web. And when the family came downstairs and saw the web the spiders had fashioned, something mysterious happened. Maybe it was the morning light, maybe it was something more, but suddenly as the dawn came through the window, the web shone with silver and gold and the tree was decorated with a web of wonder.

It was Sunday, December 7, 1941,  and people were just leaving the performance of Handel’s Messiah at Duke University. Still full of the soaring inspiration of the music and these great words of hope from the prophet Isaiah, they left the chapel and found people clustered around radios, listening to the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Suddenly, they were thrust from the comfort of Christmas to the wilderness of war. I wonder: did any of those people sit in the jungle wilderness of Guadalcanal a year later and remember that day? Did any of them remember three years later as they shivered in the snows of the Ardennes forest during the Battle of the Bulge? Did they listen in that wilderness for the voice of one crying, “Prepare the way of the Lord?” Those people who left that chapel and heard the news of Pearl Harbor had their world forever changed. 

We live our lives moment to moment as if we were fully in control, as if we were driving a road we’ve driven many times before. But great events can crash into us from nowhere—and we are changed. Some personal crisis, some accident of the spirit, and suddenly just as we thought we were making time, we are sitting by the road. One poet has written about the experience this way.

At the Art Reception

held in a Modern Bank

my daughter ran full speed

into a wall of glass

ricocheted five feet

and, for a second,

lay stunned.

till screams echoed throughà the lobby:

guests sipping wine,

turned with a chorus of eyes.

I picked my wounded butterfly off the floor

her screams turning to sobs

a red welt rising on her forehead

and together we examined that invisible wall

that comes out of nowhere

and knocks us flat

without any interest 

The invisible wall that knocks us flat leaves us reeling in the wilderness. 

That’s the place where Isaiah said we should listen for the voice of one who cries: “Prepare the way of the Lord.” The wilderness of Judea is dry and rocky and dangerous. The wilderness is a place of desolation. You can die of thirst or, if it rains, you can be killed in a sudden flood in a wadi. The real wilderness has snakes and lions and it’s kill or be killed. The real wilderness doesn’t care that you bought your tent at REI and your sleeping bag at L. L. Bean; the real wilderness simply doesn’t care, it has no interest. The real wilderness is full of invisible walls that leave you weeping with a red welt.

The wilderness is also a spiritual place. The wilderness is where Cain is sent to wander when he kills his brother and where Moses runs to hide from the law. The wilderness is where Israel goes after the Exodus and the wilderness is where Judah ends up when enemies break the gates and overcome the walls of Jerusalem. The wilderness is where you face temptation alone. Even Jesus faced temptation in the wilderness: it’s a place of hard choices. The wilderness is that place which becomes our address when we are knocked flat and left weeping alone. And it’s in the wilderness that John hears God’s call to proclaim the time for preparation. “Prepare the way of the Lord”.

John’s call forces us to choose what we will do about the wilderness. One solution is to call it home. When the Jews were in exile in Babylon, a psalmist asked, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” Many answered by saying we can’t. So they learned the songs of Babylon, they learned the dances and the customs of Babylon. The moral and spiritual wilderness that was Babylon was all they could see and they couldn’t believe in anything else. They made the wilderness home; there was a promised land God intended for them but they missed it because they settled for a home in the wilderness. Even when they returned to Judah, they brought that wilderness with them so that by Malachi’s time, many had stopped singing the Lord’s song even in the promised land.

“Prepare the way of the Lord”,  John says. Just as some of the exiles lost their faith, others remembered God. Have you ever been so far from home you wondered if you’d ever see it again? Have you ever gone so far away you don’t think you can come back? I’m not talking only about geographical distances: I mean really far away, farther than anything measurable in miles. The wilderness is where we live away from others, believing we can’t find the way home. Some Jewish exiles Babylon looked homeward and hoped. They hoped for what Isaiah pictures, for God to come and make a way home. They hoped the mountains would be made low, so they could go home; they hoped the valleys would be filled up, so they could go home; they hoped the crooked roads would be made straight, so they could go home. 

“Prepare the way of the Lord”—there, in the wilderness, that’s what we are told. Get ready, because God is coming and there is no power that can stand in God’s way. There is no mountain high enough to stump God: there is no grief dark enough that God can’t let light in, no loneliness so profound that God cannot overcome it. Every mountain and hill shall be made low. There is no valley so low God cannot find you in that depth. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, fear no evil because God is coming and every valley shall be filled. And all the crooked things of this world—all the crooked paths will be made straight. God is coming to straighten them and to tell the truth, the straight truth: like a refiner, showing what is true inside. God is coming, over and over again—God is coming. Remember that our home is with God and that God is making a way home for us.

Where are you living? You may be in the wilderness but you can choose to live in the Kingdom of God. Your address may be in the wilderness but you have a home with God. That is the gift of Jesus Christ: “..in my father’s house are many places,” he said—I go to prepare one for you. Advent calls us to remember we have a home and demonstrate what this life looks like 

That’s why churches exist. Loren Mead, lists among the ten characteristics of really great churches that they are places where mutual responsibility is shared and mutual aid is possible. That is, churches are places where we can embrace each other and discover that in the midst of the wilderness, we are at home in the Kingdom of God. They are where we practice peace. 

We begin to do that when we understand our lives as a mission. Some years ago I had the good fortune to be the pastor for Arvilla Cline. Arvilla was a slight woman in her 90’s who had been the much loved Latin teacher at a school for girls in Albany. She was a person of amazing intellect ,much loved by her former students. One night a woman appears at the door or our church. It was winter and she had no coat or boots; she made it clear she needed refuge although she spoke very little English. Jacquelyn and I took her home for the night; she stayed with us for a couple weeks and gradually we learned she had been purchased by a man from a refugee camp in Somalia. She herself was from Eritrea; her name was Letamariam. We didn’t have the space to let her permanently live with us so I put out a call in church. Imagine my surprise when Arvilla contacted me and said she’d be glad to take Letamariam. So we moved her there. Now, because Arvilla was a Latin teacher, she was used to overcoming language barriers. Bit by bit, she taught Letamariam English, helped her learn about American culture and think about a new life. Ultimately, we were able to connect Letamariam with some folks in Ohio. She moved there, went to college, married and has a couple of kids now. When all this was over, I sat with Arvilla, thanking her and this was what she said: “I wonder what my next mission will be.”

What is your next mission? We cannot avoid the wilderness no matter how carefully we walk, no matter how well we plan. But we need not live in it permanently, we need not allow it to become our home. We can live in the affirmation that God is coming; we can live in the community of God’s people.  If we will prepare for the coming of God, then we are promised a transforming presence that will come when we least expect it.

This is the promise of God: prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness…because God is coming and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Prepare your life: God is coming to spin a web of wonder. Prepare the way of the Lord—so you can get on to your next mission. 

Amen