Eleven days until Christmas.  On the surface, this Christmas seems to be similar to all others.  The orderly march of the calendar continues as we count down the days.  We are making our lists and checking them twice and getting our errands and shopping and baking and mailing and holiday performances and social engagements accomplished.

But the full blown joy that is often associated with the season seems a little reserved this year.  We are going about our business with an edge of worry, a hint of caution.

Yesterday, in the Hallmark Store, the collectible ornaments were hanging as always, the Christmas Card selection already quite diminished, and the story was busy with customers.  But in a brief conversation with a clerk, she noted that a competitor card company has recently announced layoffs.  There was a hint of worry in her face and her voice.

Everywhere you go, the music is playing; the decorations are displayed; and people are hustling and bustling.  It is, after all, as one song tells us, the most wonderful time of the year.

But all is not well.  There is a clatter going on…and this time it is not St. Nicholas and his eight tiny reindeer coming to bring us surprises.

No one knows what to call what is plaguing us.  The New York Times, noting that neither World War I nor the Great Depression got their historical nomenclature firmed up until well into the crisis, is sponsoring a contest to name the global financial crisis/recession/depression/credit freeze/massive economic bailout that we are now facing.

The news during these days of Advent has included the following:

Initial jobless claims increased 58,000 to 573,000 in the week ended Dec. 6, the highest level since November 1982 (Bloomberg financial December 11, 2008)

NY times plans to borrow $225 million against its New York Building.

Chicago Tribune parent company declared bankruptcy this week. NASCAR racing cars are in danger of losing their flashy paint jobs as corporate sponsorships are withdrawn, and several sports teams still waiting for a business willing to purchase naming rights to new stadia.

All three major American automobile manufacturers are wavering on the brink of bankruptcy, their CEOs begging to be bailed out.

Small businesses are unable to retain the lines of credit that are their lifeline.

Foreclosures continue unabated.

And in a sure sign that the economy is hurting Christmas as we know it; requests for appearances by Santa Claus at malls are down significantly.  When Santa is visited by children, he is cautious about what toys are available from the North Pole workshop this year.  After hearing two young brothers lists of requests at a Phillipsburg NJ mall, Santa carefully replied, “Well, boys, we’ll look at our list of toys that we make at the North Pole, and if I find some of your toys on the list, I’ll get them for you.  Whatever I don’t find, I’ll try to get you next Christmas.”

It seems as though the world as we have known it is ending.  And it is.  Because time and history march onward, in one sense, the world as we know it is always ending.  In some cycles of history, the ending is more traumatic; the devastation more shocking.  But there are some things that have seemed foundational to our lives that are going to go away and will probably never come back.

It is a particular source of grief to watch what has happened to our cities.  But small towns and rural areas of our country have their own devastations.  And now, what Main Street has known for some time is real on Wall Street, too.

Here is Good News for the Third Sunday of Advent:  Though the world as we know it is always ending, the world that God sees is already waiting to be born.  Perhaps there has never been an Advent when we have been more ready to hear this Good News than we are now…when bad news is everywhere.  There is a future, and God is already in it, and Isaiah describes it.

More than that, through the voice of the prophet, we receive a vocation.  Here is work for us to do to bring into being the future time, when the ancient ruins are built up, when the former devastations are raised up, when the ruined cities are repaired.  We are not powerless before the forces of devastation.  We have a role to play.

There is some question as to whether the church as we know it will survive.  Institutional structure is already seriously eroded, and looks to be on its way out as the organizing principle for the life of the church.  But Isaiah’s text does not announce the revival of institutional structure.  It announces the revival of God’s people, and the characteristics of a restored community.

God’s people are defined by the presence and power of God’s spirit, who gives them vocation – work to do that accomplished God’s purposes.  Proclaim.  Comfort.  Provide.  With this work, faint spirits are strengthened; mourning turns into gladness.

In Miami, Florida, some kind of a spirit has got hold of Max Rameau.  He looked around his city and saw two things.  A rising number of vacant homes and a rising number of homeless persons.

We know that in every city in America, vacant housing units are on the rise, and one statistic puts the number of homeless in America a 744,000; suggesting that 44% of those are unsheltered.

In Miami, Rameau’s organization has begun to move homeless people into vacant homes.  He says he approached banks this year with the idea of legally acquiring some of the homes at a discounted cost and renting them to homeless persons, but once the bailout was announced, banks stopped calling him back.

There is a selection process for families who are moved into the homes.  They are required to pay to turn on the electricity and water, and live in the house until they save enough to move into another home or until the owners show up with police and force them out — whichever comes first.

Marie Pierre, 39, an unemployed researcher who had been bouncing around Miami homeless shelters since 2004 with four children, ages 1 to 11 was forced out of one of the shelters and back on to the streets in October.  Nov. 3, she called Mr. Rameau.  Three days later, he moved her family into a four-bedroom, two-bath home in Miami's Buena Vista neighborhood.

"It's a real miracle," Pierre says.  "Max found for me in three days what the shelter system couldn't in four years.  He has the solution." Marie sounds like someone who has received a garland, and whose mourning has been replaced with joy.

The legal questions can, likely should, and probably will be debated.  But Mr. Rameau has a kind of clarity that suggests that he considers himself a man with a mission.  "It's morally indefensible to have vacant homes sitting there, potentially for years, while you have human beings on the street.”

“They shall be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.”

Max is doing what business and government leaders have been unable to do.  He is housing the homeless.

Isaiah, in fact, suggests, that it is at just the time when established leaders have lost their voice and their authority that God rebuilds the forgotten ones into a community characterized by joy.  God’s creative renewing spirit comes to and through the work of God’s people.

Today, we sit in church on Sunday morning as people who understand perhaps better than ever before in our lives what it means to wait for the celebration of the inbreaking of God into the world; for the incarnation of God’s spirit in Jesus; for the light to pierce the darkness.

But we wait as those who have already seen the great light.  We wait with the confidence that God’s vision is already in the future.  We know that Christ has come and Christ will come again.  We know that every time we proclaim, comfort and provide, we build up in this place a community of joy.

We can prepare to sing “Joy to the World,” even this year, especially this year, because we know that the future is God’s future.  Some may wonder, “what is the source of this joy?”  We dare not just sing it.  We, who call ourselves God’s people, must use this season to inquire about our own faith, our own openness to God’s future, our own capacity to proclaim, comfort and provide the resources that replace mourning with joy, that build up the city around us.

If we do not maintain the life and ministry of the church in such a way that we are available to provide for those who need hope and joy and comfort and strength and real help…well…what does out life say to the world?

So let the Spirit of God come upon us, and anoint us.  Let the commitments that the people of North Broadway make this season become seeds out of which spring righteousness.  Let every one of us find that by walking through these doors today, our faint hearts are strengthened, our spirits are enlivened, our worry and fear are replaced with a quiet confidence that God’s spirit is moving through our lives, and the former devastations are, and shall be, and ever shall be – transformed to light and life and joy.

Here, in our life together, here is our joy.