The second is the story of a young girl raised in a musical household, who fell in love with Handel's oratorio, Messiah while still in grade school. She would hurry home from school and put the record of the Messiah's Christmas portion on the hi-fi, stand in front of the speaker, and conduct the music as if she were standing in front of an orchestra. In those moments she experienced what Lewis would call Joy - that elusive sense of longing within the heart.
As she heard the soloist sing "Every Valley shall be exalted, and heard the music itself paint the action of the words, she felt a Joy - a longing - that was greater than any other.
The music spoke the word of God, and she listened.

The third is a sketch out of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young German man who chose to follow the principle's of his faith during the Third Reich.
Bonhoeffer was part of what became known as the Confessing Church;
those pastors and laypersons in Germany who refused to go along with the government's dictates on the church's political and religious agenda.
After an intense moral struggle, Bonhoeffer agreed to take part in a plot to kill Hitler. The plot failed. Bonhoeffer was caught, imprisoned and eventually executed.

These three vignettes are stories of Advent, as sure as is the story of John the Baptist, and as sure as you have your own stories to tell.

For Advent is part of what it means to be human.
Advent is all about the coming of Christ,
but the idea of someone coming implies a certain amount of expectation, anticipation, waiting, and hoping.
These are all part of the prelude to God's magnificent work of redemption.
Advent is the preparation of a canvas before an artist paints his first stroke.
Advent is the mulching of fallow ground as we wait for planting.
Advent is the first few notes of a beloved leit-motif.
For beneath the dreams we hold within our hearts lies a desire that stays with us all our lives -
- an elusive longing - an aching need for something that is unrequited.
- Some have called this longing the desire of Ages.
Lewis called it Joy.
For others
like Bonhoeffer, it takes the form of hope…
If we were to take the time to think about it, we would find in ourselves this same desire - something that can be summed up as the yearning for Something More.

Like the girl who dreamed of conducting the Messiah; like Lewis seeking Joy, like Bonhoeffer hoping for rescue, we find glimpses of this longing when we come face to face with what is beautiful in this world.

Bonhoeffer wrote that waiting during the season of Advent was like being in his prison cell, "In which one waits and hopes and does various unessential things…but is completely dependent on the fact that the door to freedom has to be opened from the outside." And so we wait - wait for the coming of God into this world in a way that will permanently infuse it with that Lewis-esqe "Joy."
We wait for the time when God's kingdom will rule, and justice will not be hit and miss;
When children will no longer go hungry;
and wars will be a thing of the past.
We wait for the realization of Isaiah's prophesies - the days when the mountains and valleys will be leveled in to a garden trek for pilgrims; the days when the lion will lie down with the lamb;
We go through our regular routines each day while looking forward to the coming of God's kingdom,
and all the while we experience the daily violence that the world has suffered since the beginning of time.
Our gospel reading today tells us that
Into this kind of world, in an earlier time, there came came a man called John.
Luke identifies him as a prophet by beginning his story as many prophetic stories began in the Old testament.
Yet Luke makes sure to ground John's life in history - he gives us the names of those who ruled at that time in all the nearby provinces, so that the reader or hearer would understand that this man John lived and breathed as part of history.

And John came to the wilderness, and called Israel to return to the Jordan - to remind themselves of the first time they had crossed those waters - when they went from slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness and finally across the Jordan into the promised Land. John called them to repent - to turn around and remember their roots - and to cross over and look toward their redemption that was at the door. John pointed them, not to the infant Christ, but to the man Jesus - the God-man Christ who will come in power and glory - who is the stuff of legend, but, like John, rooted in history.

Christ: the desire of the ages - Lewis' Joy, Bonhoeffer's rescuer, our deliverer.
The elusive longing within our souls points us to Christ as John the Baptist did.
It forms in us a wilderness and a baptism into Something More.
This desire is a sign that we are alive -
that we belong to God,
and that God yearns with us for that day when Christ will come and restore all things.
- So let us hold on to

• yes, let us even nurture the very ache within us as a sign
• a true sign that Christ, the fulfillment, is on his way.
• Come desire of nations: bind in one
• The hearts of all mankind.
• Bid ye strifes and quarrels cease
• And be to us our Prince of Peace.
• Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee
• O Israei.
• Listen:
• Can you hear the prelude beginning?