Advent week #3 – The Light of JOY
Reading: Luke 2:1-20 Preacher: Rev Phil Swain
We continue our Advent journey as we light the third candle — the Candle of Joy. For some people, joy comes naturally at Christmas but for other the joy is more complicated. What does it mean to speak of “great joy” at Christmas? Our reading from Luke 2:1–20 shares the story of the shepherds who most likely were not initially feeling joyful — overlooked, tired, and sitting in the shadow of their night shift. Yet it was into their darkness that God’s light burst forth and the angels that they brought, “good news of great joy for all people.” Together we’ll explore how the light of Christ brings joy into places that feel joyless, and how God rekindles joy through surprising grace.
Sermon Text
As we move through advent we are exploring the themes of light and dark alongside of the Advent blessings of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.
Last week when we explored peace, I mentioned that in our busy, stressful, non-stop society it sometimes I find it hard to experience peace at Christmas. But for me, joy is different. My experience of Christmas is very much full of joy. Like tonight at the community carols. There is so much stuff to do between now and 5:30 when the carols start … it is going to be draining and slightly stressful … but will there be joy at the carols? Most definitely. Christmas Eve? Joyous. Opening presents with the family. Full of joy.
Am I normal when it comes to this? Would we say that many of us experience joy at Christmas? Maybe … but not all. For some, the joy of Christmas feels distant this year — overshadowed by grief, stress, fear, or simply the weight of life.
I was listening to a sermon during the week from one of my favourite preachers who recently got invited by a missionary organisation to visit the Amazon rainforest with them. He was travelling with a small team and a local guide who took them hours upstream by boat — deep into a remote, off-the-grid part of the jungle. No phone coverage. No electricity. No roads. Just thick rainforest pressing in on every side. They arrived at a small village where a small pit fire was burning but there were no villagers. Greg asked, “where are the people?”. He was told, ‘They are watching you from the tree line.’
The team sat at the fire and eventually the villagers came out and gathered but they kept their distance. Greg said the first thing he noticed was their faces — ‘drained of life,’ he said. No spark. No energy. No joy.
After a while he pulled the interpreter aside and asked, “Why are the people so joyless?” And the interpreter said, “Too many times we have been hurt. Outsiders have come and taken things from them. Stolen from them. Lied to them. They have been used and betrayed and now… they just feel nothing.
The joy had drained from them and now they feel nothing.
I find it hard to preach on this because this is not my experience in life … but I know others who would say that this is true. Life has a way of wearing us down.
Disappointments. Stress. Loss. Broken trust. Uncertainty.
We become drained of life. Drained of joy.
If this is your experience… the question becomes: How do we recapture joy? Not fake cheerfulness, not forced positivity, but deep, soul-renewing JOY? This brings us to the shepherds in Luke’s gospel.
The Shepherds: people sitting in the shadows
I regularly listen to other people’s sermons – to learn and grow (and to borrow any good ides for my sermons). When it comes to Christmas … I still get a thrill when someone teaches me something that I never knew or gives me a perspective that I have never thought about before. I had one of those experiences this week about the shepherds.
I think we often romanticise the shepherds because they’re in our nativity sets with nice clean robes and freshly washed sheep. But as the preacher I was listening to pointed out … these shepherds where unlikely to be joyful people.
Shepherds were at the bottom of the social order.
Unclean. Untrusted. Underpaid. Overlooked. They worked the shift nobody else wanted — awake all night while the rest of the world slept. They were literally sitting in the dark, guarding someone else’s animals, miles from home, doing a job nobody valued. There was little to give them joy.
I imagine they might have looked a bit like those villagers — drained of life, weary, numb from continually being overlooked and mistreated. Nothing good ever happens to them. No one thinks that shepherds matter. Shepherds do not ever get good news … and yet… It is into their darkness that God sends light.
Luke says, “The glory of the Lord shone around them.”
Picture it. These exhausted workers sitting in the blackness of night, staring at the same shadows they see every night…
And suddenly the whole sky erupts with light. A light they didn’t create. A light they weren’t expecting. A light they certainly didn’t earn.
Joy begins not with their effort, not with their mood, and not with their situation — but with God breaking into their shadows. This is the heart of Christmas: joy does not begin with us. It begins with God
And then comes the angel’s message: “I bring you good news of great joy for all people.”
Not just joy. Great joy. And not just for the holy or the sorted or the happy or the successful. For all people.
For the villagers in the Amazon.
For shepherds in the night. For us.
God decided the first people to hear this good news of great joy would be people who were joyless.
So … did this good news bring them joy?
Well, it didn’t change their circumstances. They were still poor. Still working nights. Still living under the Roman Empire. But yes, I think it did bring them joy … we can see that something changed inside them.
The Bible says they “went with haste”. They were energised. They were passionate. They felt hope.
This good news compelled them to run to see this thing which the Lord had told them about. Yes – they seemed to have found joy. And after meeting the baby Jesus, they returned to their fields “glorifying and praising God.”
And then there is Mary.
While the shepherds are running and shouting and telling the world what they’ve seen, Mary’s joy takes a different form. She “treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Hers is a quieter joy — reflective, deep, steady.
Some of us are like the shepherds this Christmas — joyful and loud. And some of us are like Mary — joyful, but in a quieter, gentler way. Joy in family, joy in community, joy in God’s blessings this year. This joy is real and Mary reminds us that it is absolutely right to treasure it, to hold it close, to let it sink deeply into our hearts.
But Mary also reminds us that joy is meant to grow. Joy is not just something we receive — it’s something God invites us to nurture, to shape, to let mature into something that becomes a blessing to others. Mary’s quiet joy becomes, in time, a joy that will ripple outward through Jesus’ life, ministry, and message.
Here is a question for you… How is God inviting you to let your joy deepen this Christmas — and then overflow into the world around you?
Whether it is the shepherds exuberant joy or Mary’s quieter, reflective joy … the message is the same. Joy is not meant to be contained. If we are moved by joy then we also need to allow that joy to spread.
Maybe we are called to be like the Angels! They were messengers of God’s light, bursting into dark places with the clearest, boldest, most hopeful declaration:
“I bring you good news of great joy — which is Jesus!”
In a world that is often apathetic… In a society that sometimes thinks it doesn’t need a Saviour…
In workplaces and neighbourhoods where faith gets tucked quietly in the background, how do we shine like the angels?
How do we bring a joy that is not naïve or shallow, but anchored in the transforming presence of Christ?
Maybe it starts with small things:
• choosing kindness in a harsh world
• listening deeply to someone who feels unseen
• offering forgiveness where bitterness has grown
• giving generously and unexpectedly
• speaking openly about why Jesus still matters, still heals, still brings hope
Joy becomes convincing when people see it in us.
Joy becomes contagious when it moves beyond us.
The light of joy is both a gift and a calling
So this Advent, whether you arrive joyless or joyful, weary or energised, carrying hurt or carrying hope, hear again the angel’s promise:
“I bring you good news of great joy for all people.”
May the light of Christ shine gently into our shadows, rekindling joy where joy has faded.
May our joy deepen, broaden, mature, and overflow.
May we become like the angels:
a bearer of light, a voice of hope, a living proclamation that Jesus has come and the world is forever changed.
And may our joy spread in our lives and communities,
softening hearts, lighting the path, and helping others come and see the One the angels proclaimed.
Amen.