The Third Sunday of Advent | By the Rev. Amanda Barker

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

It is a deep joy for me to stand here this morning as the daughter of The Rev. Dr. Jo Ann Barker and to join this community of St. Mary’s in leading worship today. To preach and celebrate where my parents worship, on the day she takes her next step as an Oblate in this community, is a gift I hold with gratitude.

When we hear the poetry of the prophet Isaiah this morning, we meet a people who know what it is to live between what has been lost and what has not yet been restored. Isaiah speaks to those displaced from home, carrying memories of what once was and longing for a future they can scarcely imagine. Their wilderness is not metaphorical. It is the landscape of exile, uncertainty, and waiting.

And right into the heart of that displacement, Isaiah dares to describe a road, a Holy Way, cut through the very wilderness that once threatened to swallow them.

I see this as the theological center of the text. Isaiah’s promise is not simply that flowers will bloom in the desert or that pools will appear in dry places, though those images are beautiful. The deeper miracle is the road itself. “A highway shall be there,” he says, “and it shall be called the Holy Way.” This road is not built by human ingenuity, strength, or strategy. It is God’s doing entirely, a pathway of mercy laid down across terrain that had no path before.

Isaiah wants us to see that salvation is not a destination; it is a way. A way opened by God, a way meant to be walked.

And unlike the roads we build, God’s road does not exist merely to get us somewhere. The Holy Way exists to form us. It transforms the travelers even as it transforms the landscape. The weak are strengthened. The fearful are encouraged. The injured and overlooked are restored. Step by step, those who walk the pilgrim path affirm who they are becoming.

Which brings me back, briefly, to my mother. Her journey of vocation, first as a Roman Catholic nun, then as a mother, then for many years as a priest, and now as she embraces the life of an Oblate within this community, with its rule of life and daily prayer practice. She’s one example among us of how God shapes us over time. Each chapter has invited her to live more fully into who God calls her to be, a small witness to how our lives unfold on the Holy Way: not all at once, but step by step, with each season deepening the one before it.

Isaiah’s vision tells us that God prepares the road, but we learn who we are by walking it.

And then Isaiah adds something astonishing: joy crowns the travelers, “everlasting joy shall be upon their heads.” As a sign of who they are becoming. Joy is not constant, nor is it simplistic. It does not mean the wilderness disappears or the journey becomes easy. Rather, joy is the deep recognition that God is with us and that God’s promised future is drawing near.

That is why the Church pauses on this Third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, to rejoice. The story is only just beginning, and joy can be found even in the midst of the journey. The rose-colored candle and vestments remind us that joy is not confined to the final arrival. It can break into any moment when we glimpse God’s movement toward us.

This helps me hear the Gospel from Matthew in a new way. Commentators rightly imagine and discuss John the Baptist questioning whether Jesus is truly the Messiah. But I am finding another way to hear this moment. John has always known who Jesus is, since before they were born. In the womb of his mother, Elizabeth, he leapt with joy towards Jesus when the two women reunited!

His whole vocation has been to prepare the way. So perhaps, from his prison cell, John is not asking who Jesus is, but when: “Are you the one who is to come, or must we wait for another?” In other words: “Is it now? Have you stepped fully into your identity, the one I’ve waited my whole life to see?”

And Jesus responds in Isaiah’s language:

The blind see.

The lame walk.

The poor receive good news.

These are the unmistakable signs that the Holy Way has begun. Jesus is saying, “Yes, John. The road you prepared has opened. It is unfolding right now.”

The Holy Way is no longer a future promise. It is present in Jesus’ ministry, present in his acts of restoration, present wherever God’s mercy touches the world.

That means the Holy Way is beneath our feet, too.

Gaudete invites us not to manufacture joy or pretend that all is well. Unfortunately, we know how hard this world can be. We pray for Boston and Sydney as they have both experienced deep violence this weekend.

But this Sunday in Advent invites us to recognize the joy that God is already planting along the path. I think that joy is something we learn to see. It often arrives subtly... in moments we might overlook if we are hurrying, anxious, or certain we know what joy should look like.

Joy can show itself in small mercies, in clarity that comes after long waiting, in the

companionship of those who walk with us, in a word of comfort spoken at the right time, in a quiet sense of alignment between who we are and who God is calling us to be.

Joy can even appear in the slow unfolding of vocation, as it has in my mother’s life, and frankly, my own... a reminder that God’s work in us continues across seasons.

These are blossoms of the Holy Way, signs of the future God is forming, signs that we are becoming more fully ourselves in God’s presence.

So on this Gaudete Sunday, hear again Isaiah’s promise:

A highway shall be there.

It shall be called the Holy Way.

And the redeemed shall walk their pilgrimages on it.

And everlasting joy shall be upon their heads.

This joy is not naïve or constant. But it is real. And it grows as we walk, as we learn to recognize the traces of God’s grace woven into our days.

May we have eyes to notice those traces.

May we have hearts open to the quiet invitations of the Holy Way.

And may everlasting joy be upon our heads as a companion along the way God prepares.

Amen.