Third Sunday of Advent - December 14, 2025

52:00 Speak to the parched corners of our souls. Bolster our hearts and guide our steps this Advent. This we pray in the name of Jesus the Christ, the light who awaits us, nestled in the straw. Amen. This year on our Advent journey, we are paying close attention to tabletop mangers and nativity scenes. We're asking how did the diverse characters around the creche get there? How did all these folk make their way to Christmas? This morning, as Natalie mentioned, is Gaudete Sunday. Today, Christians all over the world light the candle of joy. And we've been gifted by our boisterous, rascally, and still touchingly reverent children with a joyful creche.

53:06 Part of the joy comes from the fact that Christmas pageants emphasize the presence of animals at the nativity. And it makes sense. Jesus was born in a barn. Barns are homes to all sorts of critters. Animals must have looked down on the newborn king. Not so fast, say biblical scholars. They point out that the Gospels make no mention of animals when describing Christ's birth. The good book doesn't set the scene with a gentle donkey or lowing oxen. There are no camels, no spiders, no dogs and cats, no barn owls, and no smelly sheep. And yet down through history, the world's greatest artists have almost always placed animals around the baby Jesus.

54:11 Personally, I'm casting my vote for those painters and for the poet Thomas Hardy. I think animals bending their knees, bearing witness to the incarnation, makes sense. I say this because there are many occasions when scripture does describe animals offering praise to God. I say this because on a night when all washes over all of creation, surely, surely animals would have praised their maker. It's with this conviction, good people, that I invite us to consider on this third Sunday in Advent a reading from Psalm 148, beginning with the seventh verse. Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all depths, fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling God's command, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, creeping things.

55:38 and flying birds, kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth, young men and women alike, old and young together. This is the word of God for you, the people of God. Thanks be to God. Psalm 148 is deeply, remarkably, thoroughly egalitarian. Everyone and everything praises God. Animals and plants, meteorological phenomenon like snow and frost political leaders and common folk men and women old and young together all creation sings praise to God it makes a body wonder what has drawn the created order together in Psalm 148, what has bridged the world's vast differences?

56:52 What could possibly invite everyone and everything to unite in such a joyful song of praise? This morning, I want to offer you a modern parable as an answer. It comes from author David Foster Wallace. DFW entitled this story, All That. It's a story about magic. It's a story about Christmas. First published in the New Yorker in 2009, the narrative begins as an adult man reflects on a childhood memory. At the tender age of five years old, the man's parents gave him, for Christmas, a toy cement truck.

57:46 It was made of solid wood except for two metal axles. As a boy, he played with that cement mixer more than any other toy. He did this because his parents led him to believe that it was an unusual cement mixer. It was, they told him, magic. According to the boy's parents, the truck's magic worked like this. Whenever someone pulled the truck around on its string, the drum on its back, the portion responsible for mixing cement, would rotate. But the enchantment was such that the drum rotated only when the boy wasn't looking. Hearing this, the boy is thrilled.

58:44 Immediately, he begins to devise all sorts of experiments to catch sight of the rotating drum. He tries whirling around really fast. He takes sidelong peeks in a mirror as he walks by pulling the truck. He asks his parents to pull the cement truck across the living room while he watches from outside peeking through a keyhole. But nothing works. The boy's father is proud. His son's research has uncovered an important fact. there is no magic in the world. But that is not, ironically, what the boy has discovered. As an adult, the man observes, I came to realize the reason I spent so much time trying to catch the drum rotating was that I wanted to verify that I could not spot it.

59:48 The boy never saw it rotate. And here's the thing, that gives him great joy. The boy's experiments lead him to conclude that there are some things in life that you simply cannot see. When the next Christmas rolled around, the man explains he was no longer playing with the truck. Still, the magic cement mixer left impression. It opened in the man a place, a space for reverence. This is how he describes it. The fact that the most powerful and significant connections in our lives are invisible seems to me like a compelling argument for religious reverence. The most powerful and significant connections in our lives are invisible.

1:00:58 In Psalm 148, the sea monsters and the cattle, the snow and the frost, old and young together, praise God. Isn't it fitting that we place donkeys and camels, sheep and spiders, that we tuck all creation in around the manger? Friends, I invite you to stand in body or in spirit and add your voices to our prayer for the day. It can be found printed in your bulletins and on your screen. God who calls all creation to rejoice, we thank you for the joy of children. Joy that counts the days, joy that expects sacred magic, joy that embraces your old story. Telling it afresh, kindling a new light in our hearts, thrilling our steps for the journey of that.