Today we light the fourth candle on our Advent wreaths. As we do, we realize that what we have long-expected is at hand. As Christians we are eager for the birth of the Christ child and for the second coming of our savior in great glory. As a church, like a community of expectant mothers, we have eagerly awaited this day. The church has been gestating, mostly unseen, for more than 11 months. Today we celebrate, like new parents, the exciting (re)birth of our church building. We have received this gift from earlier generations and have now prepared and repaired it for future generations.

I am awed by this old and new space. It will be a joy to worship within its walls and under its majestic roof again. The beauty and the grandeur are testament to the love we have for God and how we wish to express and honor that love through the beauty of the space, and the liturgy and music which fill it in worship of God.

I am so grateful for the women and men with the vision to build this beautiful church in the first place, inspired by their love of Christ. I am grateful for those who have worked diligently for many years to bring the renovation of this church to fruition. I am grateful for those who gave their financial resources to fund this project. I am grateful for the leaders, supervisors, managers, and workers who have brought this project to near completion.

But most of all, I am grateful for the God who "so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." No matter how grand our expressions of love and awe for our God, they pale in comparison to all that God has done for us. Not the least of these is sending a little baby to an unworldly, yet faithful, couple who lived over two thousand years ago in an obscure part of a small and seemingly insignificant prefect of the greatest Empire the world had known.

Let us offer our prayers, and our songs, and our love to the God that inspires us, enlivens us, and loves us. Let the rafters, and the walls, and the very foundations ring with our praises. Let it ring from the West End to our friends in the East End, and South of the James to the Northside, to the Dominican Republic and Brazil, and everywhere that people yearn for the wholeness and richness that only God can give. And "let all the world in ev'ry corner sing, my God and King."