THE WONDER OF JOY
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Text: Zephaniah 3:14-20; Isaiah12:2-6
Another Sunday in Advent and we are invited to seek out - in our waiting, watching, wondering - what joy we might find in the depths of our midwinter ruminations. And it is true that we are experiencing winter – at least, as much as we ever do with chilly rain, driving winds and even a dusting of snow on the surrounding hills. In the spite all that a good group joined joyfully to build gingerbread houses from graham crackers, sticky frosting and assorted candies and a full house gathered in the sanctuary last night to hear Peninsula Cantare under Jan’s inspired direction sing songs of the season. It was most enjoyable. It is inevitable this time of year, joy in some form or another confronts us ready or not. Even in the midst of exile and threats of destruction, the prophets sang of joy. We hear it in these beautiful passages from Zephaniah and the end of the first section Isaiah - joy now known, as well as joy implied, in the ways in which God redeems and restores God’s people.
“Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more…Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The Lord, your God, is in your midst…he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing…” In this remarkable text from Zephaniah, note that not only do the people rejoice at the promise of redemption; God also rejoices at the restoration of the covenant relationship. Once again God and people are united in common purpose and joy overflows. This is no distant God, no absentee landlord. This is God who comes close, who even takes on human form in order to restore the well-being of creation.
“Thus says the Lord” the prophet proclaims, “in the day of redemption, ‘I will remove disaster from you…I will deal with all your oppressors…I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you…’ says the Lord.” As they did for Zephaniah’s audience, these promises surely draw forth hope and joy for us that such a day is surely coming, that day for which we wait in wonder.
As with Zephaniah, the first chapters of Isaiah contain a rhythm that fluctuates between dire predictions of destruction and profound promises of salvation. In the first chapter, we hear of a “…sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, children who deal corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord...” (Isaiah 1:4) Going on, there are sections that treat the Assyrian threat to Israel and Judah. There are harsh words about the people’s iniquity, their failure to keep the covenant, their straying after idols and their abandonment of the one true God in favor of the god of the latest fashion.
At the same time, the first part of Isaiah contains magnificent words that proclaim that God will yet provide salvation for God’s wayward and recalcitrant people. The great culmination of these promises comes in the 11th chapter, which we read last week. Here the prophet tells of the “shoot” that “shall come out of the stump of Jesse,” the promised Messiah who will redeem God’s people. Here, too, the prophet offers the wonderful description of the peaceable kingdom over which the Messiah will reign.
With these words of possibility proclaimed, we see that indeed Israel may yet be restored and the people redeemed. They may yet avoid the experience of exile, or, failing that, eventually return rejoicing to the home from which they have been dragged into exile. The day will come when there will be no more struggle to sing God’s songs in strange lands. The new song goes something like the old hymn, “There would I find a settled rest, while others go and come; no more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home” (Isaac Watts, “My Shepherd Shall Supply My Need”.) Such is the promise of redemption Isaiah proclaims to the people in their wearying days of exile. William Herzog, says that “Isaiah 12 celebrates with exultant joy the coming of God’s salvation to a land that had dwelt in the deep darkness of God’s judgment” (William R. Herzog II, New Proclamation, Year C, 2006-2007, Advent through Holy Week, p. 26.) With such promises of redemption ringing in their ears, what is left but to sing a song of hope and joy?
Do we share any common ground with these ancient people? Do we now know anything of being wayward and recalcitrant in our relationship with God? Are there places in which we dwell in darkness and live with the threat of destruction? What might it mean to live in fear? We do know something of that in an age and a world in which whole cultures of fear have been built around threats (real and perceived) of terror, threats from both the privileged and from the dispossessed, terror from those with super power and those with only the power of their passion and the makings of a pipe bomb. We hang onto crumbling national identities coupled with fanatic religious beliefs thereby sustaining a perceived need for enemies. This, in turn, serves to justify the economics of the old military industrial complex in whatever modern garb it may dress itself. We escalate wars abroad while people wander the streets hungry and homeless. We argue over how many people we can afford to leave without health insurance and proper health care while the heroes of Wall Street parlay government bailouts into multimillion dollar bonuses. Hospitality disappears; strangers and foreigners are seen as a threat and not welcomed. Health falters, relationships change, resources shrink, mortality increasingly challenges. Everyone, in his or her own way and time, dwells in the shadow of death. Will God’s great light shine once more? How can we find our way through the morass to sing songs of joy in such night?
As people of privilege, most of us already dwell in relative comfort and security, but we have sisters and brothers who know only too well about poverty, exile, oppression and destruction. On the whole we live in or near the proverbial “lap of luxury” and want for little though, socially and economically, we are aware of others with first-hand knowledge of what it is like to live in fear of economic collapse, of foreclosure or eviction, of neighborhood violence, of undocumented status. These ancient promises of comfort must mean something different to the dispossessed and struggling than they do to the privileged and secure. So, how are we to understand the deep, raw joy of those who celebrate what little they have and relish, with passion, the promises of redemption? Perhaps we have significant lessons to learn from those who have less than we about the reality of joy.
Still, at some level, regardless of our circumstances, we all find the need to hope and to rejoice in the promise of what is to come, but is not yet. We have a responsibility to join our sisters and brothers in speaking truth - gospel truth - to power that ensnares and abuses. As part of the redemption in which we rejoice, we are called to be agents of transformation – individually as well as socially - in the name of Jesus, the Christ, and through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. For all of us, there is a challenge to bridge the gap between haves and have-nots, to bring about some sort of jubilee in which goods and services, resources and hope are distributed more equally, to be peacemakers and bringers of shalom to the whole creation. Then we might find ourselves living together on that holy mountain, in peace and harmony, singing together in deep and abiding joy.
This is the amazing witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in today’s words of preparation. These are words of a man of faith, living in prison and facing imminent death. “Joy abides with God, and it comes down from God and embraces spirit, soul, and body; and where this joy has seized a person, there it spreads, there it carries one away, there it bursts closed doors.” He concedes that “A sort of joy exists that knows nothing at all of the heart’s pain, anguish, and dread” but “it does not last, it can only numb a person for the moment. The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable.” What a witness to the wonder of the joy for which we wait!
Walter Brueggemann says that in Isaiah 12 “The doxology [the hymn of thanksgiving and praise] is an act of confident hope that things in time to come (we don’t know when) will be happily resolved.” It is expressive of “…an act of buoyant and determined hope that refuses to give in to debilitating present circumstance…The doxology is to be one of thanks, of glad acknowledgement of Yahweh’s goodness and generosity.” There is unrestrained corporate joy in deliverance of the people. “Israel restored is called to give thanks, to call upon the name, make known, praise, shout, sing for joy. Israel cannot now restrain itself, for the unexpected, undeserved, inexplicable has happened. It is the sort of thing about which one cannot keep quiet. The news must be shared” (Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39, Westminster Bible Companion, pp. 109-10.)
So, we, too, on this third Sunday of Advent, are called to sing for joy, to celebrate the ways in which God has delivered us, is delivering us, and will deliver us, until there is true peace, shalom, wholeness on earth and good will throughout the entire creation. “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…Shout aloud and sing for joy…” For, in the words of another old hymn, “Since love is Lord of heav’n and earth, how can [we] keep from singing?” (Robert Lowry, “My Life Flows On”.)