Are you a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of person? It’s a cliché we wheel out to codify people into two camps: those who approach things positively, and those who approach things negatively. If you fall into the glass half empty group, you may find today’s Epistle particularly challenging. But even those who approach life with endless enthusiasm may find Paul’s words tricky to embody daily.

On this third Sunday in Advent we celebrate ‘Gaudete Sunday’, which pauses the reflective waiting for God-made-flesh and invites a moment of celebratory joy. Gaudete itself is Latin for ‘rejoice’, commonly marked by lighting a rose-coloured candle in the Advent wreath. 

And so, we are invited to rejoice. Yet some of you will be exhausted by Christmas already, others bereaved, others quietly afraid of what the new year may bring. ‘Rejoice always’ can sound less like good news and more like an attempt to sweep all that is hard under the proverbial carpet.

Paul wrote these words to a small church under pressure, recently founded and newly turned from their former ways (1 Thessalonians 1:9). They were grieving believers who had died (4:13), uncertain about Christ’s return, being shaped into a community that would have to learn joy in waiting. His imperatives come at them like rapid fire: rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances. Crikey Paul, anything else? Oh yes: do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecies, test everything, hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form of evil.

My gut response to this is: who could possibly do all of that?
Paul, of course, has an answer, coming in verses 23 and 24: 
‘May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and God will do this.’

Those fast-flying imperatives that have soared like arrows are suddenly caught and held in the open hand of an indicative. The work of holiness is not ours to accomplish under our own steam; it is God’s promise, kept by God’s faithfulness. This is the very journey of understanding that Advent brings. It is a season that makes hard demands of us: watch, wait, repent, prepare; but its deepest word is what God will do, not what we must achieve.

We do not summon the dawn; we keep vigil for it. ‘Rejoice always’ rests on ‘He is coming’; that changes everything.
As a good Baptist who was formed for ministry at a Baptist college, all sermons have to have the magic number three in them, and so I have three implications
to share.

First, this releases us from the burden of manufactured joy – the social-media-friendly gloss many feel they must paint across the realness of life. Paul does not command the Thessalonians to feel happy; to rejoice, in his vocabulary, is closer to an orientation than an emotion. It is the act of lifting our gaze towards the God who is faithful, even through the feelings of a glass half empty. Just as the rose candle does not deny the violet around it but stands amidst it, so too are we invited to rejoice amongst the grief.

Second, unceasing prayer is sustained by the unceasing faithfulness of God. ‘Pray without ceasing’ is impossible if prayer is performance, but quite different if it is the simple, breathing awareness that we are held. Simone Weil wrote: ‘Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.’

By attending to the Divine in all things, in conscious dependence on the One who is already attentive to us, we might achieve this seemingly tall order. 

Third, Paul calls the Thessalonians to ‘test everything; hold fast to what is good’ so that, even when the season around us
is loud and overwhelming, we discern together as a form of collective responsibility. The Spirit is not quenched by careful thought, nor are prophecies despised by being weighed. Advent is a fine time to remember that rejoicing, discernment, prayer, and rejecting evil belong together.

Through this text, Paul anchors every imperative in promise. We follow a God who does not scold the grieving into cheerfulness, but who, while we are still on the road of waiting, is already doing the work of sanctifying us, body, soul and spirit, for the coming day. It is our posture towards this faithful God that matters, not our mood or tone.