“Joy”
Isaiah 35: 1–10
Makemie Presbyterian Church
December 12, 2010
5Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened & the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6then the lame shall leap like a deer & the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness & streams in the desert; 7the burning sand shall become a pool & the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds & rushes. 8A highway shall be there & it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. 9No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, & come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy & gladness & sorrow & sighing shall flee away.
This ends our reading.
Do you have things you wonder about? Of course you do. We all do. I long have wondered, for instance, how they get those sailboats inside the wine bottles. I have wondered about how things get their names. Like, I am not the first to wonder why is it that we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway? I found a list this week of things the late comedian George Carlin wondered about, like:
· Really, which one did come first, the chicken or the egg?
Another thing I wonder about when I look at my calendar for this week is why are so many people having parties? Then I remember, its Jesus birthday! Of course there will be celebrations. Beginning this afternoon at 4 p.m. the parties get started. And how wonderful, how filled with joy these celebrations are, we just have to sing! We have to share home cooked treats & visit with each other & listen for the jingle of the reindeer harness. It’s almost Christmas! Then on Monday the Makemieland ministers will meet for our Christmas lunch, on Tuesday the Snow Hill Ministerial Association will meet at Whatcoat to share in their older adults Christmas luncheon party as we did last year. They have a gift exchange at Whatcoat where you may either select a gift from the table piled with presents or you may take a gift someone else has already opened & you admire, then they go back to the table & choose again. Well, last year, Virginia Sturgis had the number in front of me & she opened a gift that I thought, “okay, perfect for my mom’s stocking, I’ll take that from Virginia.” As I approached Miss Virginia, the hissing in the room grew along with a low groaning & I could feel the level of concern & protectiveness rise in the room. It was as though if I took “her present” away the Christmas party crowd would rise up. Not wanting to appear too much of a sissy I still looked at her gift but then veered from my original plan & went back up to the table & choose another gift. It was fun. It was joy.
The word “joy” in Greek, “cara” is used to describe joy as it relates to faith because the word is rooted in God. Joy, “cara” comes from the same word as grace, “caris” a word the Reformers fastened on to describe the very origin of our salvation. It is our word care. God cares for us.
Joy rests in the grace of God to us. Joy recognizes the graciousness & generosity of God. “Then our mouth was filled with laughter & our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”
“Count your blessings” my old granny used to say to me & she was right. For the joy that Christ wants us to have is found right there.
Our text that Jim read a moment ago covers these items: homecoming, healing, joy. These words live in our hearts more than in our minds, because they express our deepest hopes & some things make more sense to our hearts than to our minds. The people of ancient Israel, our ancestors in faith, struggled with exile & wandering & a longing for home that included vindication over the enemies who had destroyed their beautiful city & kept them under the cruel heel of oppression & captivity.
When
things were at their worst, it must have taken a considerable measure of courage
to hope for such wonderful things as homecoming, healing & joy. And yet, this
Third Sunday in Advent is called Rejoice Sunday & is represented in the advent
wreath, I love this, as the rose blush of dawn. It is a day to be joyful even in
the midst of long waiting & keen awareness of suffering.
Isn't it true that prophets have a way of saying exactly what the people need to
hear, whether the people hear it that way or not? When God's people in exile are
steeped in despair, longing for home, the prophet has good news.
And yet, it’s a challenge for the people of Israel to trust, to believe, that the news could actually be good. Because change evokes fear & the OT prophets had a nearly impossible time convincing people that God would punish iniquity, while the NT prophets had an equally difficult time convincing people that God would restore a relationship with God's people.
Remember last week's reading from Isaiah, in which animals would witness to the new age of peace by living together in gentleness, instead of preying on each other, the strong over the weak? This week's reading enlarges that picture to include the parched earth itself & the whole wilderness in the transformation of what we think of as "natural."
Water will flow in the desert & a road; wide & smooth, safe & inviting, will be cut through the formerly tangled, hostile wilderness, so all of God's children, now made holy, can make their way to Zion & "everlasting joy will be upon their heads" (v. 10). This week, not just the animals & the earth itself are transformed, but all of humanity is made whole & healthy, in our renewed relationship with God.
Isaiah draws our attention to the question of justice, or, in the eyes of some, the matter of "vengeance" (the "terrible recompense") that the oppressed hunger for, the justice that, Psalm 146 sings, "God executes." If we expand the idea of God's "vengeance" into something that sounds more like justice, when "God will come to right wrong, to order chaos, to heal sickness, to restore life to its rightful order…God's recompense is received as transformative compassion. This compassion will include all those whose lives are overwhelmed by fear, timidity, vulnerability, lack of courage, lack of the capacity to live a full life – anything that prevents living effectively & joyously.
This means that the lame will not just walk but will leap (and perhaps dance with joy) & the speechless will not just find words but music, too, for a song of joy. How else could they respond? People are given back their lives; humanity is restored to full function. What words can the prophet find for such a glorious hope? Isaiah draws on images familiar to his own people, like "the glory of Lebanon" & "the majesty of Carmel &Sharon."
Can you
hear the power of these images: "the glory (kabod) of Lebanon, which
stands as a symbol of the greatest expression of natural beauty, is surpassed by
the 'glory' of Yahweh.
We read this text in the midst of our Advent waiting. Of course, the
world around us has already charged ahead full-steam into the Christmas season &
will have tired of it by December 26, but in the church we’re still in a season
of waiting & anticipation & preparation & parties, too. With one foot in the
world of a waiting church & the other foot in the celebrating (and shopping)
world, we may find it one more challenge to hear these promises without going
into overload. Yes, even good news can be too much to take in when we're too
busy to hear it. However, the good news is good for us too, for it affect God's
special creatures whose hands are feeble & knees unsteady & whose hearts are
'hurried' (a more literal rendering of the Hebrew)." Wouldn't this word
accurately describe the hearts of many of us in these December weeks – hurried,
with hands that are feeble & knees that are unsteady?
As Jim read our text this morning did you hear the promises that are not only mindful of our need for healing & restoration but also mindful of what God is already doing in the life, death & resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are of course celebrating the birth of this sweet baby in the first place. Just as the lame would dance & the blind see & the speechless sing in the promised day of joy that Isaiah describes, so the lame walked & the blind saw & the speechless praised God when Jesus walked the earth & healed them as a sign of God's promises coming to fulfillment.
So we may be busy in this Advent season, but we are certainly hungry, too, for the healing, justice & joy it promises. Do we dare hope for such wonders, that all things will be made right?
Or is it more understandable that most of us try to keep our expectations in check, because to dream too big is to court disappointment. Certainly people who had lived a generation in exile would share such a fear of hope. Yet in response to that fear, Isaiah does not speak gently to them of incremental improvements or baby steps toward home.
No, Isaiah dreams & writes big: the highway is a superhighway, smooth and easy to travel, the healing & justice & joy are for everyone & everything, all of God's creation. When most of us are struggling to find our way, isn’t this like a drink of cool water to our parched hearts.
God does what the world thinks is not possible. Advent is getting ready for that impossibility which will permit us to dance & sing & march & give thanks & drink – and live!
Joy is home….God created us in joy & for joy & in the long run not all the darkness there is in the world & in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy for God's mark is deep within us. We have God's joy in our blood. Can you hear the heartbeat of justice& of healing & of joy?
Advent comes again into the winter of our lives with that warm breeze of hope. It’s the hope kindled by Isaiah’s vision of the blooming desert & the Holy Way over which “all the ransomed of the Lord shall return, & come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy & gladness; & sorrow & sighing shall flee away.
But that sure hope still glimmers out there on the horizon like the first golden blush of dawn. So Isaiah encourages us, “Strengthen the weak hands & make firm the feeble knees. 4Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. Your God come …he will come to save you.”
So once more we are in our yearly pilgrimage to Bethlehem. We peer into that most unlikely stable, to see the baby wrapped in rags & lying in a manager. And we say, “Here is our God, Emmanuel.” Amen.