Sermon Notes for May 28th
May 28, 2006
“Make a Joyful Noise to the Lord”
Psalm 98’ Isaiah 40:3-5, 42: 10-12
1. In the Bible, stories, and telling stories were very important. Some stories are factual and true, and others are fictional and also true – but not factually true. Today, people get confused reading the Bible because they expect everything to be factual. After all we live in a factual world, don’t we? If it isn’t factual, it must be false – right?
Or, as Jack Webb used to say in Dragnet – “Just the facts mam!”
But, as I have said, I grew up in a small town where people still tell stories about other people and about themselves. Stories that are both serious and funny and sometimes both. And mostly, they are supposed to be factual, but of course, over time things get added and subtracted. Do you understand? So, at times, that is what happens in the Bible, because, of course, the Bible was all “word of mouth” before it was written down. And, if a story is not interesting – no one is interested – right?
Which is why the DaVinci Code book was so popular, because it was a good story. After all, the guys who wrote the original book in the 1980’s over in France weren’t very interesting – and no one read it because it was boring!
And, so, the truth, as they say is “in the story” – or in the pudding, or in the eating.
So, I want to start out with a story – of sorts. A mostly true story.
2. Recently I read a story about the allied campaign to regain Burma from the Japanese in World War Two. It was called the Burma Road.
I got interested in it because of Wes Winter who, you know, died recently. You see, whenever Wes would come in to see me (once or twice a year) all he ever wanted to talk about was being in World War II.
Wes was in the air force or the army air force as it was called back then. And he was assigned, of all places, to India. And his job was to be a weather forecaster for the cargo planes that flew the Burma Hump. Which was a dangerous flight which carried supplies into China over the Himalayan mountains.
Well, even though I studied a lot about World War II in college, I did not know much about CBI – or the China, Burma, India theater. This was because it didn’t get all the publicity that the bigger fronts did like Normandy, North Africa, and the South Pacific. It was, well, a kind of out of the way place for many people.
Except, of course, for those who were there, of course! – Like Wes!
3. So, I began reading about the heroic struggle of the British, American, Indian, Chinese and native Burmese people to win back their land from the Japanese who had conquered Burma in 1942.
A big part of it, I found out, was about the Burma Road -- the major ground supply line of food and equipment from India to China which was besieged by Japanese forces. It was believed that if the allies could re-open that mountainous road, it would be a big step in turning the tide of the war.
Well, suffice it to say that I learned a lot of interesting things such as the fact that the famous news reporter from Minnesota, Eric Severaid was shot down while flying the hump and had to bale out over a primitive jungle area that was inhabited by native head hunters. Wow! I thought, there’s some excitement for you. He was, fortunately, rescued.
I also learned that the famous movie The Bridge Over the River Kwai was not all that factual. In fact it was mostly fiction except for the bridge that spanned the Kwai River and was built at great loss of life by Japanese war prisoners. The Bridge, however, I discovered, was not blown up (like in the movie), but was destroyed by a single American bomber which, after making three dive bombing runs at it, was hit by anti-aircraft fire and narrowly escaped only to later crash land on a beach. Fortunately, everyone walked out alive.
4. What a story! And then, after it was all done, it turns out that the allies didn’t need the Burma Road after all because they had decided to attack Japan from the sea (rather than through China). Well, whatever the case, a lot of men died fighting in that mountainous jungle leech-infested area under the leadership of the famous General “Vinegar Joe” Stillwell.
In retrospect, 60 years later, of course it all seems very dramatic and even a little romantic (perhaps). But for those who were on the ground it was undoubtedly quite different. As one of my friends (who is a writer and poet and whose own father actually flew the hump in Burma) wrote to me recently about the time he spent as a radar man on an air craft carrier in Hanoi Harbor during the Viet Nam war had this to say about war:
My own experience is surreal .He writes. Standing on the deck of a helicopter carrier just off the coast of Vietnam in the harbor approach to Haiphong where strange rocks resembling giant tombstones jutted out from the sea, I was drenched in the sweat of a humid fog that still makes me dizzy when I think about it and describe it. That is why we love and hate it so. These memories are seared into our souls - the utter banality of it, the humanity of it all - the boring midwatch in the Gulf of Tonkin. Nothing on the radar. Half the watch section is whispering of things to come to a listening shipmate in between the static of several radio speakers carrying warbled vocal messages from ships in the fleet..."
He went on to say that the only war that is never sentimentalized is the current one. The old wars feel like water under the bridge. The next one feels like glory to those who've never been there, but like recurring nightmares to those who know.
Something to think about today when many of our young men and women are over in Iraq!
5. And of course he is correct because, as I read on about the exploits of General Stillwell and his men and the great sacrifices they made, I was comforted by the obvious knowledge that we won the war! I knew that at the end, despite all the loss of life, there was a happy ending!
But, at the same time I wondered, what about the men who fought and died in the China, Burma, India theater? Did they know that the outcome would be favorable? Or, did the Japanese (who had triumphantly conquered much of southeast Asia in 1942) know at the time that two years later they would be defeated and that hundreds of their sick and starving soldiers would drown trying to cross the rain swollen Sittang river on home made bamboo rafts trying to get back into Thailand (rather than be captured by the allied forces). A dismal ending to what was supposed to be a great adventure.
Did they know? That’s the big question? Did they know? Of course not!
Do any of us know? Do we know when we marry everything will turn out? Do we know when we are lying sick in the hospital that we will get well? Do we know that despite whatever happens our lives will have a happy ending?
And, after all, what is a “happy ending” really supposed to be all about anyway? And what about people whose lives do not end happily? Are they at fault? Or, is anyone at fault? Does it matter to God?
Of course, as I have said, we do know today that World War II did have a victorious or “happy” ending. It was, in the words of Chicago writer Studs Terkel “the Good War.” But, how good was it for the approximately 30,000 prisoners of war from England, Australia, Holland and America and more than 200,000 impressed labourers from India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma and Thailand who worked on the real Bridge over the Kwai? When, of these, more than 16,000 POW's and 100,000 impressed labourers died of many diseases, due to starvation and lack of medical equipment. Was it a good war for them? Probably not…
In short, despite the happy outcome, from an overall human perspective WWII was pretty depressing! To say nothing about how God felt about it!
6. And, yet this morning, we read from Psalm 98 these wonderful words:
1 Sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done marvelous things;
his right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him.
2 The LORD has made his salvation known
and revealed his righteousness to the nations.
3 He has remembered his love
and his faithfulness to the house of Israel;
all the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.
Can this be real? Or is the Psalmist overdoing it a little? We might ask.
So, what on earth, do you suppose could make the Psalmist be all that happy about? How does he know? What does he know that we don’t” That is the question. Where on earth does the Psalmist come up with such jubilation? When we know that life isn’t that great sometimes?
7. Well, as I mentioned last week, contrary to what some people think, the Bible was not written out of thin air. The stories, poems, and sermons in the Bible were and are in response to real events, real people, and we read them today both to understand what was going on at that time, but also to hear God’s word speaking through it to us in our own struggles with life and death right now.
So, first of all, what was going on?
Well, just like us, the Jews did not know what was going to happen in life any more than we do. Read the Bible, if you doubt what I am saying. For the question remains, “did the Jews know when they left Egypt that it would all turn out successfully? Did Moses know for sure that they would make it to the promised land? And, after all, contrary to what most people think, Moses never made it. It’s in the Bible….
And, so, concerning the time during which this Psalm was written the Jews were suffering from a terribly shattering lack of confidence. For their nation, which had stood and prospered for many centuries after Moses had led them to freedom out of Egypt, was totally destroyed. The temple was gone and they were in a foreign country. How bad could it get? And to top it off, it was believed, in those days, that if you were defeated then your God was defeated, too. Dead. Gone. Kaput!
Oh, yes, some of them were still alive, those that made it to Babylon. But, their relgion, their way of life, was about to utterly vanish – or so they believed. In effect, their situation wasn’t much different than it had been back in the days when the Jews were slaves in Egypt. Been there…done that!
In short, they did not know that they were about to be returned to their homeland after 50 – 60 years in exile. They had no idea. The future looked bleak, to say the least!
8. So, how bad can it get? People nowadays somehow rather naively believe that the Bible is full of nice stories about everyone being happy and successful and all the rest.
But, the truth is that the bible is filled with very real people who have real problems. Sometimes the Bible is, in fact, very depressing or troublesome and other times it is funny, and sometimes it is even joyful. In other words, the Bible is a real book about real people. That much is for sure. It’s real. And its about hope and about survival – in spite of all the odds.
9. And, its not just in the Bible … take Mother Theresa, for example, that most saintly person. Since her death it has come that even Mother Teresa experienced dark nights of the soul. Between September 1946 and October 1947, she experienced visions of Jesus instructing her to found the Sisters of Charity, but later she sank into spiritual depression when they stopped. "My smile is a great cloak that hides a multitude of pains," she wrote in 1958.
"[People], she wrote, think that my faith, my hope and my love are overflowing, and that my intimacy with God and union with His will fill my heart. If only they knew." Later she went into more detail: "I feel, at times, that God does not want me, that God is not God, and that God does not exist." The writings appear in the newly published work (Mother Teresa's Secret). Can you believe that?
In other words, Mother Theresa wasn’t some plaster saint. She was a real flesh and blood human being with real doubts, fears, and uncertainty. And yet she did not give up, she kept on going.
And, even the great C. S. Lewis, who wrote many comforting words about God and the Christina faith to millions and whose books still sell in the millions, was overcome with immense grief at the loss of his wife to cancer. Lewis, you see, was a real human being, too! He didn’t give up either.
How, then, we might ask, do we get around all this despair? All this death and war and illness and destruction … how do we do it… we don’t know what is going to happen…next. How can we have hope in the midst of a troubled world? How can we say:
1 Sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done marvelous things;
his right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him.
How, we ask, can the Psalmist, in the midst of the despair and hopelessness of life have the courage to speak word of hope.
10. Well, for the whole story, we have to go back to the Old Testament again and specifically to Isaiah the prophet. Or, as he is now known as Second Isaiah, who prophecied during the time of exile in 600 BC.
Why do we say 2nd Isaiah? Because scholars now know that there are two Isaiah writers. One wrote the first 39 chapters in the time of the Temple around 800 BC and other wrote the rest later after all the trouble started with the Babylonians. Later, it turns out, the Jewish scribes combined the two into one book. What we also know is that there is a strong likelihood that Psalm 98 borrows heavily upon the words of 2nd Isaiah (Chapters 40 and 42).
And, so, who was 2nd Isaiah? Well, we don’t really know. But what we do know is that according to Rabbi Abraham Heschel is that the prophecy of Isaiah is so great and lasting that it goes way beyond his own age and represents a powerful message of comfort to people everywhere and at any time in history -- even now.
After all, who can forget Isaiah’s famous words in Chapter 40 which inspired the great composer Frederick Handel in his powerful musical work The Messiah?
1 Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the LORD's hand
double for all her sins.
3 A voice of one calling:
"In the desert prepare
the way for the LORD [a] ;
make straight in the wilderness
a way for our God. [b]
4 Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
5 And the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
and all mankind together will see it.
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
11. What words of courage, hope, and faith in the midst of devastation, death and distress. All at a time when the Babylonians admonished the Jews to “bow down, that we may pass over.”
And so, even in distress, with the Temple destroyed, Jerusalem in ruins, and freedom lost, Israel remained faithful to God. That is the amazing thing!They didn’t give up because God was with them! That’s why…
How does Isaiah do it? How does Isaiah have such faith? Well, it is because they realized that God has his own ways. And that God’s wisdom often defies our human understanding, and that those who question God do so because expect the Lord to adjust His thought to their thoughts, His design to their conceptions.
In other words, our will is not always God’s will and to know that is the beginning of true spiritual wisdom.
Or as an American Indian United Methodist woman from Texas said in the workshop I attended workshop on Native American ministry last week in St. Louis, “If you want to be wise, you must first understand that you don’t know everything.”
Which is also what Abraham Heschel also reminds us of when he says the sobering words that “God’s thoughts are higher than human thoughts.
And, so, in the midst of their suffering, through the witness of Isaiah, the Jews came to understand that Israel’s misfortune was not a penalty, but a privilege and a sacrifice because God had chosen them to be the servant to the nations. In other words, they are still God’s chosen people. And no matter what, God loves them!
12. Now it takes a lot of soul searching to come to that kind of conclusion, doesn’t it? No - this is not some shallow religious sentimentality. This is real.
And this is the real crux of the matter – to understand that God is not just a “fair weather” God who always produces happy endings. For if God is just about “happy endings” then, as soon as things go wrong, this God disappears and so do the people who believe in him. Just as many civilizations and their gods have disappeared. But, no the Jews, for their God did not disappear just because things were not going well. The God of Israel stuck it out through thick and thin.
But there is more, for according to Isaiah, this is not some distant uncaring God who inflicts pain willy-nilly or who lacks compassion for the human race which He created. No, Isaiah, calls his people to understand that God suffers, as well. And so, we too, share in the thoughts of God was they are revealed to us through witness of Isaiah, the prophet.
As we hear in this great passage:
In all their affliction He was afflicted… In His love and in His pity He redeemed them, He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
And that is the way is with God, isn’t it. And, we must also realize that it is also that way with those we love most and even with our dear friends.
Think about it what is it that we really find most important in our closest friends?
Well, the other day I ran across this quote from Henri Nouwen, the Catholic priest which describes it best. Here is what he wrote:
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.
13. And here, of course, in this powerful statement, we also have the humanity of Jesus who, like Isaiah before him, and more than any other person, brought us face to face with the presence and caring of God in this world.
As it says in the Scriptures: It was He who was wounded for our transgressions and who bore our sins.
And, in terms of our religious spirituality, it is ultimately, because of Isaiah, and now Jesus, that we may proclaim the message of Psalm 98 today -- even though we are in a different place with different hurts and pains … and because we are all still God’s people we can say:
1 We sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done marvelous things;
his right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him. .
3 He has remembered his love
and his faithfulness to the house of Israel;
all the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.
14. And, today, regardless of our situation, we know that even though we don’t know what the future holds and in spite of our misfortune, trouble, and even war … we can trust in God’s word … and this is what will heal us and make us stronger.
So, today, we can see how, with the Psalmist, that every day is a day for rejoicing. Not superficially, in some sentimential “feel good” way. But, deep down in the heart and soul.
For we know, in our hearts, that God cares for each and every one of us as Jesus reminds us when he says that “not even a sparrow falls to earth” that God does not notice.
This, then is the faith we proclaim and sing and shout the words of Psalm 98:
4 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth,
burst into jubilant song with music;
5 make music to the LORD with the harp,
with the harp and the sound of singing,
6 with trumpets and the blast of the ram's horn—
shout for joy before the LORD, the King.
7 Let the sea resound, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it.
8 Let the rivers clap their hands,
Let the mountains sing together for joy; 9 let them sing before the LORD,
for he comes to judge the earth.
For that is indeed a happy ending. Let us all say, Amen!
“Make a Joyful Noise to the Lord”
Psalm 98’ Isaiah 40:3-5, 42: 10-12
1. In the Bible, stories, and telling stories were very important. Some stories are factual and true, and others are fictional and also true – but not factually true. Today, people get confused reading the Bible because they expect everything to be factual. After all we live in a factual world, don’t we? If it isn’t factual, it must be false – right?
Or, as Jack Webb used to say in Dragnet – “Just the facts mam!”
But, as I have said, I grew up in a small town where people still tell stories about other people and about themselves. Stories that are both serious and funny and sometimes both. And mostly, they are supposed to be factual, but of course, over time things get added and subtracted. Do you understand? So, at times, that is what happens in the Bible, because, of course, the Bible was all “word of mouth” before it was written down. And, if a story is not interesting – no one is interested – right?
Which is why the DaVinci Code book was so popular, because it was a good story. After all, the guys who wrote the original book in the 1980’s over in France weren’t very interesting – and no one read it because it was boring!
And, so, the truth, as they say is “in the story” – or in the pudding, or in the eating.
So, I want to start out with a story – of sorts. A mostly true story.
2. Recently I read a story about the allied campaign to regain Burma from the Japanese in World War Two. It was called the Burma Road.
I got interested in it because of Wes Winter who, you know, died recently. You see, whenever Wes would come in to see me (once or twice a year) all he ever wanted to talk about was being in World War II.
Wes was in the air force or the army air force as it was called back then. And he was assigned, of all places, to India. And his job was to be a weather forecaster for the cargo planes that flew the Burma Hump. Which was a dangerous flight which carried supplies into China over the Himalayan mountains.
Well, even though I studied a lot about World War II in college, I did not know much about CBI – or the China, Burma, India theater. This was because it didn’t get all the publicity that the bigger fronts did like Normandy, North Africa, and the South Pacific. It was, well, a kind of out of the way place for many people.
Except, of course, for those who were there, of course! – Like Wes!
3. So, I began reading about the heroic struggle of the British, American, Indian, Chinese and native Burmese people to win back their land from the Japanese who had conquered Burma in 1942.
A big part of it, I found out, was about the Burma Road -- the major ground supply line of food and equipment from India to China which was besieged by Japanese forces. It was believed that if the allies could re-open that mountainous road, it would be a big step in turning the tide of the war.
Well, suffice it to say that I learned a lot of interesting things such as the fact that the famous news reporter from Minnesota, Eric Severaid was shot down while flying the hump and had to bale out over a primitive jungle area that was inhabited by native head hunters. Wow! I thought, there’s some excitement for you. He was, fortunately, rescued.
I also learned that the famous movie The Bridge Over the River Kwai was not all that factual. In fact it was mostly fiction except for the bridge that spanned the Kwai River and was built at great loss of life by Japanese war prisoners. The Bridge, however, I discovered, was not blown up (like in the movie), but was destroyed by a single American bomber which, after making three dive bombing runs at it, was hit by anti-aircraft fire and narrowly escaped only to later crash land on a beach. Fortunately, everyone walked out alive.
4. What a story! And then, after it was all done, it turns out that the allies didn’t need the Burma Road after all because they had decided to attack Japan from the sea (rather than through China). Well, whatever the case, a lot of men died fighting in that mountainous jungle leech-infested area under the leadership of the famous General “Vinegar Joe” Stillwell.
In retrospect, 60 years later, of course it all seems very dramatic and even a little romantic (perhaps). But for those who were on the ground it was undoubtedly quite different. As one of my friends (who is a writer and poet and whose own father actually flew the hump in Burma) wrote to me recently about the time he spent as a radar man on an air craft carrier in Hanoi Harbor during the Viet Nam war had this to say about war:
My own experience is surreal .He writes. Standing on the deck of a helicopter carrier just off the coast of Vietnam in the harbor approach to Haiphong where strange rocks resembling giant tombstones jutted out from the sea, I was drenched in the sweat of a humid fog that still makes me dizzy when I think about it and describe it. That is why we love and hate it so. These memories are seared into our souls - the utter banality of it, the humanity of it all - the boring midwatch in the Gulf of Tonkin. Nothing on the radar. Half the watch section is whispering of things to come to a listening shipmate in between the static of several radio speakers carrying warbled vocal messages from ships in the fleet..."
He went on to say that the only war that is never sentimentalized is the current one. The old wars feel like water under the bridge. The next one feels like glory to those who've never been there, but like recurring nightmares to those who know.
Something to think about today when many of our young men and women are over in Iraq!
5. And of course he is correct because, as I read on about the exploits of General Stillwell and his men and the great sacrifices they made, I was comforted by the obvious knowledge that we won the war! I knew that at the end, despite all the loss of life, there was a happy ending!
But, at the same time I wondered, what about the men who fought and died in the China, Burma, India theater? Did they know that the outcome would be favorable? Or, did the Japanese (who had triumphantly conquered much of southeast Asia in 1942) know at the time that two years later they would be defeated and that hundreds of their sick and starving soldiers would drown trying to cross the rain swollen Sittang river on home made bamboo rafts trying to get back into Thailand (rather than be captured by the allied forces). A dismal ending to what was supposed to be a great adventure.
Did they know? That’s the big question? Did they know? Of course not!
Do any of us know? Do we know when we marry everything will turn out? Do we know when we are lying sick in the hospital that we will get well? Do we know that despite whatever happens our lives will have a happy ending?
And, after all, what is a “happy ending” really supposed to be all about anyway? And what about people whose lives do not end happily? Are they at fault? Or, is anyone at fault? Does it matter to God?
Of course, as I have said, we do know today that World War II did have a victorious or “happy” ending. It was, in the words of Chicago writer Studs Terkel “the Good War.” But, how good was it for the approximately 30,000 prisoners of war from England, Australia, Holland and America and more than 200,000 impressed labourers from India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma and Thailand who worked on the real Bridge over the Kwai? When, of these, more than 16,000 POW's and 100,000 impressed labourers died of many diseases, due to starvation and lack of medical equipment. Was it a good war for them? Probably not…
In short, despite the happy outcome, from an overall human perspective WWII was pretty depressing! To say nothing about how God felt about it!
6. And, yet this morning, we read from Psalm 98 these wonderful words:
1 Sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done marvelous things;
his right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him.
2 The LORD has made his salvation known
and revealed his righteousness to the nations.
3 He has remembered his love
and his faithfulness to the house of Israel;
all the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.
Can this be real? Or is the Psalmist overdoing it a little? We might ask.
So, what on earth, do you suppose could make the Psalmist be all that happy about? How does he know? What does he know that we don’t” That is the question. Where on earth does the Psalmist come up with such jubilation? When we know that life isn’t that great sometimes?
7. Well, as I mentioned last week, contrary to what some people think, the Bible was not written out of thin air. The stories, poems, and sermons in the Bible were and are in response to real events, real people, and we read them today both to understand what was going on at that time, but also to hear God’s word speaking through it to us in our own struggles with life and death right now.
So, first of all, what was going on?
Well, just like us, the Jews did not know what was going to happen in life any more than we do. Read the Bible, if you doubt what I am saying. For the question remains, “did the Jews know when they left Egypt that it would all turn out successfully? Did Moses know for sure that they would make it to the promised land? And, after all, contrary to what most people think, Moses never made it. It’s in the Bible….
And, so, concerning the time during which this Psalm was written the Jews were suffering from a terribly shattering lack of confidence. For their nation, which had stood and prospered for many centuries after Moses had led them to freedom out of Egypt, was totally destroyed. The temple was gone and they were in a foreign country. How bad could it get? And to top it off, it was believed, in those days, that if you were defeated then your God was defeated, too. Dead. Gone. Kaput!
Oh, yes, some of them were still alive, those that made it to Babylon. But, their relgion, their way of life, was about to utterly vanish – or so they believed. In effect, their situation wasn’t much different than it had been back in the days when the Jews were slaves in Egypt. Been there…done that!
In short, they did not know that they were about to be returned to their homeland after 50 – 60 years in exile. They had no idea. The future looked bleak, to say the least!
8. So, how bad can it get? People nowadays somehow rather naively believe that the Bible is full of nice stories about everyone being happy and successful and all the rest.
But, the truth is that the bible is filled with very real people who have real problems. Sometimes the Bible is, in fact, very depressing or troublesome and other times it is funny, and sometimes it is even joyful. In other words, the Bible is a real book about real people. That much is for sure. It’s real. And its about hope and about survival – in spite of all the odds.
9. And, its not just in the Bible … take Mother Theresa, for example, that most saintly person. Since her death it has come that even Mother Teresa experienced dark nights of the soul. Between September 1946 and October 1947, she experienced visions of Jesus instructing her to found the Sisters of Charity, but later she sank into spiritual depression when they stopped. "My smile is a great cloak that hides a multitude of pains," she wrote in 1958.
"[People], she wrote, think that my faith, my hope and my love are overflowing, and that my intimacy with God and union with His will fill my heart. If only they knew." Later she went into more detail: "I feel, at times, that God does not want me, that God is not God, and that God does not exist." The writings appear in the newly published work (Mother Teresa's Secret). Can you believe that?
In other words, Mother Theresa wasn’t some plaster saint. She was a real flesh and blood human being with real doubts, fears, and uncertainty. And yet she did not give up, she kept on going.
And, even the great C. S. Lewis, who wrote many comforting words about God and the Christina faith to millions and whose books still sell in the millions, was overcome with immense grief at the loss of his wife to cancer. Lewis, you see, was a real human being, too! He didn’t give up either.
How, then, we might ask, do we get around all this despair? All this death and war and illness and destruction … how do we do it… we don’t know what is going to happen…next. How can we have hope in the midst of a troubled world? How can we say:
1 Sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done marvelous things;
his right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him.
How, we ask, can the Psalmist, in the midst of the despair and hopelessness of life have the courage to speak word of hope.
10. Well, for the whole story, we have to go back to the Old Testament again and specifically to Isaiah the prophet. Or, as he is now known as Second Isaiah, who prophecied during the time of exile in 600 BC.
Why do we say 2nd Isaiah? Because scholars now know that there are two Isaiah writers. One wrote the first 39 chapters in the time of the Temple around 800 BC and other wrote the rest later after all the trouble started with the Babylonians. Later, it turns out, the Jewish scribes combined the two into one book. What we also know is that there is a strong likelihood that Psalm 98 borrows heavily upon the words of 2nd Isaiah (Chapters 40 and 42).
And, so, who was 2nd Isaiah? Well, we don’t really know. But what we do know is that according to Rabbi Abraham Heschel is that the prophecy of Isaiah is so great and lasting that it goes way beyond his own age and represents a powerful message of comfort to people everywhere and at any time in history -- even now.
After all, who can forget Isaiah’s famous words in Chapter 40 which inspired the great composer Frederick Handel in his powerful musical work The Messiah?
1 Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the LORD's hand
double for all her sins.
3 A voice of one calling:
"In the desert prepare
the way for the LORD [a] ;
make straight in the wilderness
a way for our God. [b]
4 Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
5 And the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
and all mankind together will see it.
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
11. What words of courage, hope, and faith in the midst of devastation, death and distress. All at a time when the Babylonians admonished the Jews to “bow down, that we may pass over.”
And so, even in distress, with the Temple destroyed, Jerusalem in ruins, and freedom lost, Israel remained faithful to God. That is the amazing thing!They didn’t give up because God was with them! That’s why…
How does Isaiah do it? How does Isaiah have such faith? Well, it is because they realized that God has his own ways. And that God’s wisdom often defies our human understanding, and that those who question God do so because expect the Lord to adjust His thought to their thoughts, His design to their conceptions.
In other words, our will is not always God’s will and to know that is the beginning of true spiritual wisdom.
Or as an American Indian United Methodist woman from Texas said in the workshop I attended workshop on Native American ministry last week in St. Louis, “If you want to be wise, you must first understand that you don’t know everything.”
Which is also what Abraham Heschel also reminds us of when he says the sobering words that “God’s thoughts are higher than human thoughts.
And, so, in the midst of their suffering, through the witness of Isaiah, the Jews came to understand that Israel’s misfortune was not a penalty, but a privilege and a sacrifice because God had chosen them to be the servant to the nations. In other words, they are still God’s chosen people. And no matter what, God loves them!
12. Now it takes a lot of soul searching to come to that kind of conclusion, doesn’t it? No - this is not some shallow religious sentimentality. This is real.
And this is the real crux of the matter – to understand that God is not just a “fair weather” God who always produces happy endings. For if God is just about “happy endings” then, as soon as things go wrong, this God disappears and so do the people who believe in him. Just as many civilizations and their gods have disappeared. But, no the Jews, for their God did not disappear just because things were not going well. The God of Israel stuck it out through thick and thin.
But there is more, for according to Isaiah, this is not some distant uncaring God who inflicts pain willy-nilly or who lacks compassion for the human race which He created. No, Isaiah, calls his people to understand that God suffers, as well. And so, we too, share in the thoughts of God was they are revealed to us through witness of Isaiah, the prophet.
As we hear in this great passage:
In all their affliction He was afflicted… In His love and in His pity He redeemed them, He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
And that is the way is with God, isn’t it. And, we must also realize that it is also that way with those we love most and even with our dear friends.
Think about it what is it that we really find most important in our closest friends?
Well, the other day I ran across this quote from Henri Nouwen, the Catholic priest which describes it best. Here is what he wrote:
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.
13. And here, of course, in this powerful statement, we also have the humanity of Jesus who, like Isaiah before him, and more than any other person, brought us face to face with the presence and caring of God in this world.
As it says in the Scriptures: It was He who was wounded for our transgressions and who bore our sins.
And, in terms of our religious spirituality, it is ultimately, because of Isaiah, and now Jesus, that we may proclaim the message of Psalm 98 today -- even though we are in a different place with different hurts and pains … and because we are all still God’s people we can say:
1 We sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done marvelous things;
his right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him. .
3 He has remembered his love
and his faithfulness to the house of Israel;
all the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.
14. And, today, regardless of our situation, we know that even though we don’t know what the future holds and in spite of our misfortune, trouble, and even war … we can trust in God’s word … and this is what will heal us and make us stronger.
So, today, we can see how, with the Psalmist, that every day is a day for rejoicing. Not superficially, in some sentimential “feel good” way. But, deep down in the heart and soul.
For we know, in our hearts, that God cares for each and every one of us as Jesus reminds us when he says that “not even a sparrow falls to earth” that God does not notice.
This, then is the faith we proclaim and sing and shout the words of Psalm 98:
4 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth,
burst into jubilant song with music;
5 make music to the LORD with the harp,
with the harp and the sound of singing,
6 with trumpets and the blast of the ram's horn—
shout for joy before the LORD, the King.
7 Let the sea resound, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it.
8 Let the rivers clap their hands,
Let the mountains sing together for joy; 9 let them sing before the LORD,
for he comes to judge the earth.
For that is indeed a happy ending. Let us all say, Amen!
posted by Anonymous at 10:50 AM
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