This sermon was preached for the Third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Wellesley, MA. The texts for this sermon were: Zephaniah 3:14-20 , Philippians 4:4-7 , Luke 3:7-18 . When I first started out preaching seven years ago, I’d get really nervous before each sermon. Let’s be real – I still do. But back then I’d bug my rector at the time so much with my nervousness that one day he got fed up. Instead of asking me to calm down though, he told me to close my eyes and focus on what I was feeling. Had I ever noticed that the experience of nervousness – the bodily, physical sensations – are not actually too much different from the experience of excitement? What if I stopped for a second and decided to be excited instead? It was so simple – and yet a profound shift. Instead of trying to change what I was feeling – the tightness and tingling and butterflies – I changed the story I was telling myself about those emotions. He taught me to shift the nar