Our Gospeler Luke begins his nativity story with these words, “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.” You can imagine the outcry that went up when each family received their official notice in the mail. “What sort of harebrained scheme is this?” they asked each other as they gathered in the market place or at the local watering hole or with their neighbors as their kids played together. They groused and complained and raised their fists and cursed. And they knew exactly how they would respond. Each of them would check in with the local officials if they could do so, and if not, they’d make the journey to wherever they were told to go.

Often during the run up to Christmas, I listen to the “Charlie Brown Christmas” Album by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. It’s largely instrumental—it’s the background music as Chuck, Linus, Snoopy, and the gang navigate the Christmas season—so I don’t become too distracted as it plays while I work. There’s the more upbeat “Skating” track that evokes joy as the Peanuts kids go out to their local pond for an afternoon of delight. 

I’ve been ordained for over 17 years now, and I still think that somehow we’ll get a different gospel reading on the Third Sunday of Advent instead of a second dose of John the Baptist. And every year I am wrong. We gather to light the third candle of our Advent wreath—the pink one!—signifying our great joy expressed in our other lessons with the word, “Rejoice!” And then John leaps up from the wilderness and exclaims, “Repent!” It boggles the mind, and feels like a bit of ecclesiastical whiplash. Is it “Rejoice!” or “Repent”? And why is this the message of the third Sunday of Advent, when we’re now less than two weeks from the manger scene?

And so a New Year begins.

The new year of the Church comes in with the beginning of Advent and its four Sundays until Christmas Day. We turn the calendar and start a new set of readings for our worship together. We pull out the purple hangings for the church to remind us that we prepare for the Lord’s Coming. We watch and we wait as best we can as we do all the things we do to make Christmas Christmas. And so it begins.

Jesus and his disciples have journeyed to Jerusalem. What our reading really doesn’t say is that the gospel story takes place during Holy Week. Jesus has come to Jerusalem after healing blind Bartimaeus by the side of the road just outside Jericho, and he won’t be leaving. After driving out of the temple the money changers and the ones selling animals to the pilgrims in town for the Passover, the leaders want to trap him with technical theological and political questions. They want him to slip up. So that’s what they’ve been doing all afternoon, when one of the scribes—a lawyer and scholar—heard Jesus and his adversaries go back and forth. The scribe hears the way Jesus fended off his inquisitors and is impressed. So he asks Jesus a question not to test him, but because he really wants to hear what Jesus has to say: “Which commandment is first of all?”

This isn’t the way it was supposed to be. After nearly 550 days of online church, outdoor church, and masked and physically distanced church, today was to be the day when we were finally able to gather and share hugs and have everything back to normal. With the vaccine coursing through our bodies, we were supposed to be able to get back to the way things were. We’d be having a huge welcome back brunch during coffee hour, and the kids—hopped up on ice cream—would be running down the halls upstairs sounding like dinosaurs to those of us below them. We’d be catching up with friends old and new, and we’d give thanks to God for bringing us through such a difficult time.