Service for December 14 Third Sunday of Advent

Sermon for  December 14, 2025       Pastor Val Metropoulos          Third Sunday of Advent

At this midpoint of the Advent season, we hear from some of the most influential voices in Scripture. We hear from Isaiah, speaking words of hope to people desperate for God’s help as they live as refugees under the oppressive arm of Babylon. Isaiah describes the complete reversal that God promises those who have lost hope; the reversal that some will not live to see. It will be reality in the fullness of time, when the blind will see, the weak will be strong and everlasting joy will be reality for all those who are now suffering.

Then we heard from John the Baptizer, who asks the question we all ask at some time in our lives, “Who are you, Jesus? Should I commit my life to you or is there another path, another one I should follow?” And Jesus claims that this wild man, dressed in skins and foraging for his food in the desert, is the one who is preparing the way for us to find Jesus; making clear that our Savior is not to be found among the wealthy and socially acceptable. If we want to find the Way to God, we are to look to those on the margins, those who are suffering; those who are rejected by polite society.

And lastly, we hear from Mary, the mother of Jesus, who has learned from the angel that she is pregnant, and the child is God’s own son. In her great amazement, she hurries to visit her cousin Elizabeth to share this news. It’s in that homey setting that Mary proclaims the words of the “Magnificat” that have inspired generations of people facing oppression and hopelessness that God is on their side, raising up the lowly and bringing down the proud and those who think they are wise, from their places of power.

Scholars have seen this scene between Mary and Elizabeth as the first gathering of the church, the community of Jesus followers. Paul Duke says, “(This story) invites us to recall how much we need each other, to draw fresh courage from each other and to celebrate all that we share as bearers of the promise together. If these two women are a prototype of church, they certainly embody both how improbable and how subversive the church can be.

Mary’s Magnificat is that subversive song describing what God is doing in taking on the flesh of humanity, using Mary, an unremarkable, vulnerable woman to birth the divine into her humble world. Mary describes God’s turning the world topsy turvy through that incarnation: scattering the proud, bringing down the powerful, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things, and sending the rich away empty.”

That reversal of all that seems set in stone in our world was the inspiration in medieval Europe, for what was known as The Feast of Fools. It was a tradition that only lasted for a few hundred years until the church decided it was too irreverent and put a stop to it.  

In those times the word “fool” was a synonym for humble. So, the Feast of Fools was an absurd role playing in which the social order was turned upside down.

 Here's a description of the Feast of Fools from the book, The Medieval Stage. “Throughout medieval and early modern Europe, Christmas was a time for festive reversals of status. As early as the ninth century, a mock patriarch (the highest-ranking bishop) was elected in Constantinople” He carried out his duties as bishop by “burlesquing the Eucharist and riding through the city streets on an ass.” “As late as in 1685, (regular people, not priests) [lay brothers] and servants “put on the vestments inside out, held the books upside down, …. Wore spectacles with rounds of orange peel instead of glasses,… blew the ashes from the [censers] (incense burners) on each other’s face and hands, and instead of the proper liturgy, [they] chanted confused and inarticulate gibberish.”

“Cross-dressing, masking as animals, wafting foul-smelling incense, and electing burlesque bishops, popes, and patriarchs mocked conventional human pretensions. So did the introduction of an ass into the church, in commemoration of the holy family’s flight into Egypt, and the braying of the priest, choir, and the congregation during mass.”1

The Festival of Fools sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Chaotic, but fun! Messy, especially with an ass in church, but fun, as the people laughed at themselves. They understood that their attempts at worship, their attempts at understanding God and efforts to please God, were foolish. They understood that God’s ways are not our ways, that for all our certainty and pride and self-importance, God really works not through our wisdom, which is in short supply. God really works through the unlikely and the commonplace, the vulnerable and the foolish to provide safe space, sanctuary for all people, regardless of any distinctions.

What’s really important, what really changes the world is not our ritual or our beautiful music or our fine buildings. What is truly important is the sanctuary we find in God and then find in one another as we live out, even imperfectly, God’s dream for creation. Sanctuary is the gift of welcome and acceptance and belonging and safety. It can be powerful. It can be life changing. Elizabeth provides sanctuary for Mary which enables Mary to become sanctuary for God as Jesus, but also for Elizabeth. They see God in each other.

Sanctuary is an expansive word. We call this room where worship takes place, sanctuary. It’s the word used to describe a place where hurt and rescued animals find care. People find sanctuary in motel rooms and Red Cross shelters after hurricanes, or tornadoes or wildfires wreak havoc in their community. Some churches and synagogues, like Temple Beth Hatfiloh, in Olympia have provided sanctuary for years now, to people at risk of deportation. 

Sanctuary is the gift of welcome and acceptance and belonging and safety.  It is not just a place.  It is also the people who create safe places for others. 

Immanuel has been sanctuary for many people over the years. That sense of sanctuary has happened here and, in your homes, and in your conversations. You have opened your hearts and your space to people who need to know that God’s love accepts them. You offer sanctuary because you have found sanctuary in God’s expansive, all-encompassing love.  

That sense of sanctuary has been named by some people in the LGBTQ community as the reason they return here. They have found sanctuary here, being truly welcomed and included.  

Another group of people who have found sanctuary here are those who feel they have lost their spiritual homes or felt unwelcome in them as their understanding of God and the Bible, and the nature of their faith changed. When they realized that their theology was no longer represented in the communities which had once been sanctuary to them, it was like a foundation was pulled out from under them and they were in a kind of free-fall. But, in some cases, they found a place to stand again here at Immanuel.

The hungry and the lonely have found sanctuary here, receiving a delicious meal, prepared with love and serving with dignity all who arrive.

And, this space inside and out has been sanctuary, however imperfect as people living in cars are welcomed and offered safety in this space. We can count this congregation among the “foolish” recognizing our weakness in our humble attempts at welcoming those whom Jesus identified as his people.

These efforts are never without cost. But, if we continue reaching out with the gifts of welcome, acceptance, belonging and safety, if we continue to offer sanctuary to those who desperately need it, it will probably require even more from us. It will require us to be vulnerable, to be our authentic, messy, broken and brave selves. It will require that we are foolish. That ability to be foolish, in its ancient meaning, “humble”, is a profound gift in this world that glorifies the powerful, celebrates the ostentatious, and honors the accomplished. Being that foolish changes us and our world as we follow the one who took on our foolishness to draw us into God’s love.

Today, in remembering the Mother Emanuel tragedy that happened 10 years ago and as we remember the connections that the Lutheran world has with that tragedy, we embrace the foolish idea that, with God’s help, we can be sanctuary for those who are still living with the trauma of that violent act and take one small action to let them know that we love them, that we stand with them and we will do whatever we can to prevent a tragedy like that from happening again.

At the end of worship today, we’ll take a second offering that will be dedicated and sent to Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina for use as they see fit as they live out their work of providing sanctuary for those who need it.

May God use that small effort and magnify it among all the churches in the Lutheran World so that it is a sign of our humble repentance for our part in the tragedy that, for a time, destroyed that sense of safety and sanctuary at Mother Emanuel Church. May our humble efforts at being sanctuary through this gift, bring hope and healing in whatever small way is possible through God’s help.

Beloved ones, may we like Mary, go to each other and risk. May we like Elizabeth, receive each other and bless.  May we find welcome, belonging, complete acceptance, and safety as we recognize the deep, deep love of Christ present among us. Amen.

1E.K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage