Advent 3A - 2025
Sermon for Advent 3, Year A
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
The Rev. Andrew McLarty
In 2008, I was a part of the Bishop's Mission Corp, a group of 20-somethings living for a summer in a Benedictine-style at Gray Center. There I lived according to the Rule of Benedict, the set of guidelines that St. Benedict wrote 1500 years ago for the monastic communities he founded. The Rule of Benedict caught on, and became the tap root that western religious life and monasticism that we have today.
As well known as it is today, Benedict wasn’t writing for saints or spiritual juggernauts. He was writing for human beings — people who got tired, annoyed, disappointed, and occasionally fed up with one another.
One of the things Benedict warns against is what he calls murmuring. He says "Before all things, let not the evil of murmuring shew itself for any cause whatsoever, by any sign or word whatsoever." He not talking about open disagreement. Not honest conversation. Murmuring is the under-the-breath complaint. The side comment. The private resentment that never quite makes it into the light. Benedict knew how damaging that kind of talk can be — how it slowly erodes trust and joy, how it spreads, how it hardens hearts.
Most of us don’t need monks from the sixth century to tell us this. We know how murmuring works. We know how easily it shows up when we’re tired or stressed or waiting longer than we want to. We know how it can live in our thoughts just as easily as in our words.
It’s the same human condition that prompts James to say in our reading todays: “Be patient, beloved… strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Do not grumble against one another.” James isn’t scolding the church; he’s being realistic. He knows that when people wait together, they can either support one another — or turn on one another.
Into that very human space of waiting and vulnerability, the Church places Gaudete Sunday, Latin for "Rejoice", taken from the Introit to the Latin Mass.
Rejoice, we are told — not because waiting is easy, but because God is faithful.
And I mention Benedict and James because Advent is, at its core, a season of waiting. And waiting tests us. Waiting reveals what’s really going on inside us. Waiting can draw out our best, but it can also draw out our impatience, our irritability, and our murmuring.
Week by week, the Advent wreath grows brighter. One candle becomes two. Two become three. The light doesn’t arrive all at once. It builds gradually, quietly, almost imperceptibly — until suddenly you realize how much brighter it is than it was at the beginning.
That’s where today’s readings gently press us. Benedict warns against murmuring. James urges patience and restraint. And Mary, in the Magnificat, shows us another way entirely.
Mary has every reason to be afraid, confused, and overwhelmed. Her life has just been turned upside down. And yet, what comes out of her is not a complaint or denial, but praise. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” Mary takes what could have turned inward — fear, uncertainty, vulnerability — and turns it outward as trust and joy.
That doesn’t mean she isn’t scared, she likely is. But she makes her choice, trusts in God, and points every action toward that outcome.
What words do we hold in secret? the judgments, the irritations, the quiet criticisms. Do we let those thoughts fester inside or cause bitterness. Or do we, like Mary, turn them outward as something life-giving: encouragement, kindness, words of honesty spoken with care, or love offered freely.
Rejoice, not because the waiting is over, but because the light is growing. Rejoice, and let that joy be heard — in the way we speak, the way we act, and the way we love. Rejoice, because God is already at work among us.
Amen.
