Sermon Notes for December 17th
December 17, 2006
“Shout and Sing for Joy”
Isaiah 12:2-6
1. In the big scheme of things, artists communicate with pictures and have to pay close attention to color, shape, and size. On the other hand, musicians communicate with instruments and voice and must pay close attention to sound. And ministers communicate mostly with words. Only words. Oh yes, I can lower and raise my voice and talk faster or slower and things like that. And like an artist I can try to create some image in your minds. Some ministers can be very theatrical and even entertaining. This has led one person to remark that there are really three doctrines of the God.
a. God b. Gawd and c. Gaaawwwd!
In this regard, I once heard the former mayor of St. Paul, George Latimar
say that whenever he hears a minister say Gaaawwwd! He immediately
sends to reach for his checkbook!
But, whatever the case, words come with the business. And, what
We are really concerned about is, after all, THE WORD OF GOD isn’t it.
2. While I am not an English major, I do occasionally write poetry, and I
Try to pay close attention to words. Yet, sometimes, I get it wrong.
Words, words, words …
Today, one of the problems we face is the mis-use of words by advertising.
It is often very subtle. Also, in politics, we have what is called the “spin factor” as officials try to answer questions in ways that avoid giving a straight answer. This happens in business as well. Lawyers do it, public relations people do it. We all do it … sometimes.
And so, the language we use gets confusing. We want to say something and yet somehow we can’t seem to find the right words to say. Who has not had that happen? A friend or co-worker has a tragedy in their life – a loved one who dies – and we want to offer consolation – but somehow we don’t know what to say. Or, it is we who are suffering, and suddenly we find that others avoid us … and we wonder if they really care --- or is it the case that they don’t know what to say?
3. Speaking of words … I once ran across a quotation which has had me thinking ever since. This is what it said:
The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is unbelief.
Now, there is one to ponder, isn’t it? The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is unbelief.
It was only this past week that I discovered who said it. It was Leslie Weatherhead the famous Methodist preacher in England. Weatherhead served at City Temple in London during the 1940’s and 50’s and wrote many books. During WWII the church was completed destroyed and later rebuilt. Weatherhead is not well known anymore in this country.
The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is unbelief.
4. Quite commonly if I asked you what the opposite of Joy is … you would answer “sorrow.” Is that not right? So, would I. So, how can this be?
So, I went to the dictionary, but even there I found no answer except other than both happiness and joy on the one hand and sadness and sorrow on the other are separated only by a matter of degree or depth. Joy, in short is something greater and more profound than happiness. At this point I ran across and mediation by Father Ron Rolheiser, a Catholic spiritual director, whose book I have been reading. Here is what he says:
Too often we confuse joy with good cheer or with a certain rallying of the spirit that we try to crank up when we go to a party or let off steam on a Friday night. We tend to think of joy this way: There is ordinary time in our lives, when duty, work, emotional and financial burdens, tiredness, worries, and pressure of all kinds keep us from enjoying life and from being as cheery and pleasant as we would like.
This is kind of the way it often is, isn’t it. We work hard all week, there are worries and responsibilities … so we look forward to the weekend … to play golf or go out and “have a good time.” But, then, its back to work and the temporary happiness wears off again in the daily routine. This is not joy.
5. So what is it? The great Christian writer, C.S. Lewis said:
"Joy, must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again...I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is."
Philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard suggests that joy is to be completely in the now. He said that “joy is the present tense…the whole emphasis is on the present.”
And Rolheiser concludes by saying: This is joy: Imagine walking to your car or to the bus after a day's work, tired, needing some rest. But, just as you reach your car or the bus stop, you fill with a sense of life and health; in some inchoate way, all jumbled together, you feel your body, mind, soul, gender, history, place within a family, network of friends, city and country, and this feeling makes you spontaneously exclaim: "God, it's good to be alive!"
That's joy. As C.S. Lewis puts it, it has to surprise you. You can't find joy; it has to find you. That's its real quality.
6. Which leads me to conclude that while happiness is about pleasure and “feeling good.” Joy is a profoundly spiritual thing which is connected, somehow to God, and ultimately involves love and even suffering.
For we must understand that real love is not always going to bring us happiness. Real love, in fact, may bring responsibilities, worry and anguish as well has pleasure and enjoyment.
Take for instance, last week we had our children’s Christmas pageant, it’s supposed to be a rather light hearted and happy time … and yet, at one moment when finally all the little children were front sing in all their costumes and posing for the pictures … for a brief moment, at least for me, it went beyond happiness. As I said, later, it was priceless!
And that is also what joy is – it is priceless. And it can’t be bought at the store. It can only happen because we are in tune with the deeper truth about life and understand the Love of God for all people. Oh yes, it was a cute picture … but what you don’t see on the surface is all the parental worry, and effort, and caring, and even suffering to raise children and to do it right. All, so, for one brief moment, it all seems worthwhile.
7. Now it has been my observation over time that often when I perform weddings which I do … that mothers, particularly, and sometimes fathers will be moved to tears sometime during the wedding. Sometimes, even the bride or bridegroom.
Tears at a wedding. Why is that? At a funeral, yes, but weddings are supposed to be happy times. What is going on here?
Can it be that what is happening is a case not merely of happiness but of joy. For the tears are not from sorrow but from joy! Or is it a sense of loss – that ones child is fully grown and no longer a child – thereby releasing the parent of further responsibilities. Well, it is many things, no doubt.
Or take the famous story of the prodigal son, who takes his inheritances and foolishly squanders it … bringing no end of grief to his loving father. And yet, the father never gives up, never stops caring, hoping that someday his son will return … and then he does … and the father is filled with joy … no, it is much deeper than happiness … it is joy … nourished by love.
It could have ended differently. The father could have disowned his son. But this would not be the way of love, would it.
8. As a result, we may conclude that hard-heartedness does not go along with joy. No, just as in Dickens’s immortal story of Scrooge -- the true secret of Christmas joy is revealed in his new found generosity and love.
Yet Scrooges uplifting transformation can make us all want to outdo each other in celebrating the holidays. As one blogger on the internet put it:
The thing about joy is that it cannot be bought and sold in the marketplace. We can’t train for it or plan for it. We can’t build our schedule around it and we certainly can’t force it, like a Christmas Amaryllis, to bloom in our lives. And because we can’t control joy – something that we so desperately want - we spend much of our time working to prevent the opposite of joy.
And if those things don’t work, we put on masks. We disguise ourselves with giddiness and say we are “just so happy!” Our busy social calendars masquerade as joyful living and we run breathlessly from one holiday activity to another, telling our friends how excited we and how much we LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the holidays. Our lifestyle becomes a magnificent façade, behind which we hide our pain. To top it all off, we have to meet the expectation of our culture which demands that we to shove our heartache in the closet, get out in the world and enjoy life.
9. No, you can’t manufacture joy. Nor can you avoid suffering or sorrow in this live. And you can’t be happy all the time unless you take a lot of drugs – and then you aren’t really happy -- just out of it.
And let’s face it, if you have lost a loved one this past year … or at any time, Christmas won’t be the same. It may not be a happy one. But it still can be a joyful one -- for joy comes from another place – and it is a spiritual condition not merely an emotion.
In his book, Seasons of Hope, David Butler writes that because “freedom can only be tasted in all its sweetness by those who know the feel of chains, so joy sings with its most full-throated glory only in spirits enlarged by the weight of despair and softened by the brine of tears.”
And this is what sets joy apart for it can be experienced even in the midst of sorrow. And this is what makes Leslie Weatherhead’s statement true … the opposite of joy is not sorrow … it is unbelief. It is really the lack of understanding and experiencing the love of God which cuts us off from Joy. For if our hearts are cold … we experience really nothing but temporary pleasure and pain.
10. Now we may ask, what can we do, if joy cannot be manufactured to find it at
Christmas or in life generally? Well, first of all we must understand that all the Giddy happiness, fretful busy-ness, and the bustling about that leaves us breathless – these come and go and often leave us feeling empty and in need of renewal.
For Joy is something entirely different. Joy comes to us in the midst of pain, when someone speaks a word of comfort or offers a shoulder to cry on. Some would call it gratitude. Joy comes when we feel utterly abandoned and someone offers to stand with us. Some would call it friendship. Joy is found in the deep sigh of contentment when we recognize the gifts we have been given. Some would call it peace of mind. For Joy truly grows out of gratefulness and generosity of spirit.
This year people filled Christmas baskets to deliver to those less fortunate here in Bemdiji. You will never see the recipients but you might be interested in this statement made by a development director from the Boys and Girls Club in another state regarding a similar project.
"It truly makes a difference. (Families) are usually so overwhelmed, they're left speechless or shedding tears of joy," said Christine Pouch, development director for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Porter County. “Many people say their prayers have been answered when they receive the gift cards.”
11. Joy can occur any time, any place, in any circumstance. In ancient times and more primitive societies today … people still must go to a well to draw water. In many of those places, it was the work of women.
Even up till modern times this was true in the Hebrides Island off the north coast of Scotland where work patterns in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland tend still to be traditionally gender-based. Women domost of the child-caring, virtually all domestic chores, dairy tasks, carding, spinning and dyeing wool, and waulking (fulling) the cloth after it had been woven. Whatever the chore, it is made lighter by singing. Nowadays, with the increased interest in Celtic culture, you can buy CDs which illustrate the rich variety of their songs performed with breathtaking beauty and tenderness by women at work.
Today, in modern industrial and post-industrial society, people do not sing at work. And, so, with it, go the joy of community, comradeship, and the celebration of life in the everyday. And yet, we still sing together here in church – do we not.
Well, it was Isaiah, who heard the women singing at the well and compares it to life with God:
With joy you will draw water
from the wells of salvation.
No, Isaiah is not talking about happy times … for in the days when these words were written, the Hebrews had suffered captivity, abandonment, slavery … they had been alienated and homeless …
12. Through all this, however, God had been with them. God had not abandoned them. God had not thrown them unto the dust-heap of forgotten nations and civilizations.
And now they were returned to their homeland … at last. And, now they knew that God was once again in their midst and they rejoiced with Isaiah who said.
Sing to the LORD, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world. Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you."
This is the joy of the father of the Prodigal Son. This is the joy of the wife whose husband has just returned from Iraq. This is the joy of the mother at birth. This is the joy of sinner who was found salvation. This is the joy of the Christ being born in Bethlehem.
And so we come here today … to draw from the wells of salvation the deeper water … to nourish our souls and experience the joy.
13. And how can we spread that joy around and make it contagious this year?
Trouble is, so many people see the church as joyless or they have experienced religion in negative terms. A judgmental God. Unrealistic rules and expectations. Insensitive and bigoted people – that kind of thing.
Unfortunately, many today are turned off the message of the Jesus Christ. And yet they are still seeking, trying to find, searching … for something.
We are trying. You may have seen the United Methodist Ads again on CNN and some of the other channels. They are specifically run at Christmas because that is often when people look to the church. These are new ads, same message, “open hearts, open minds, open doors.”
It’s all there, but are we doing the best we can to reach out to people? What do you think?
14. A week from today, it will be Christmas Eve. Many of you will be gone, traveling to far away places to visit loved ones and friends.
Other people will take your place in church. People we seldom see the rest of the year. Many are here because they have come to Bemidji to visit relatives rather than the other way around. We will welcome them. And then there will be those who have no church, who are new to the community, and those who are curious, and lonely. They will come hoping to find something lacking in their lives. Some hope. Some Joy. Some mysterious connection to God.
And though we have all been through it many many time, there is always something of the unexpected, the unusual, the amazing for all of us as we wonder about the whole thing. The child in a manger. The Hopes and Fears of all people. A tiny thing. Yet a revelation from God on High to all people.
I have come to give you good news of great joy for all the people – to you is born this day in the city of David – a Savior.
Let us pray.
“Shout and Sing for Joy”
Isaiah 12:2-6
1. In the big scheme of things, artists communicate with pictures and have to pay close attention to color, shape, and size. On the other hand, musicians communicate with instruments and voice and must pay close attention to sound. And ministers communicate mostly with words. Only words. Oh yes, I can lower and raise my voice and talk faster or slower and things like that. And like an artist I can try to create some image in your minds. Some ministers can be very theatrical and even entertaining. This has led one person to remark that there are really three doctrines of the God.
a. God b. Gawd and c. Gaaawwwd!
In this regard, I once heard the former mayor of St. Paul, George Latimar
say that whenever he hears a minister say Gaaawwwd! He immediately
sends to reach for his checkbook!
But, whatever the case, words come with the business. And, what
We are really concerned about is, after all, THE WORD OF GOD isn’t it.
2. While I am not an English major, I do occasionally write poetry, and I
Try to pay close attention to words. Yet, sometimes, I get it wrong.
Words, words, words …
Today, one of the problems we face is the mis-use of words by advertising.
It is often very subtle. Also, in politics, we have what is called the “spin factor” as officials try to answer questions in ways that avoid giving a straight answer. This happens in business as well. Lawyers do it, public relations people do it. We all do it … sometimes.
And so, the language we use gets confusing. We want to say something and yet somehow we can’t seem to find the right words to say. Who has not had that happen? A friend or co-worker has a tragedy in their life – a loved one who dies – and we want to offer consolation – but somehow we don’t know what to say. Or, it is we who are suffering, and suddenly we find that others avoid us … and we wonder if they really care --- or is it the case that they don’t know what to say?
3. Speaking of words … I once ran across a quotation which has had me thinking ever since. This is what it said:
The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is unbelief.
Now, there is one to ponder, isn’t it? The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is unbelief.
It was only this past week that I discovered who said it. It was Leslie Weatherhead the famous Methodist preacher in England. Weatherhead served at City Temple in London during the 1940’s and 50’s and wrote many books. During WWII the church was completed destroyed and later rebuilt. Weatherhead is not well known anymore in this country.
The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is unbelief.
4. Quite commonly if I asked you what the opposite of Joy is … you would answer “sorrow.” Is that not right? So, would I. So, how can this be?
So, I went to the dictionary, but even there I found no answer except other than both happiness and joy on the one hand and sadness and sorrow on the other are separated only by a matter of degree or depth. Joy, in short is something greater and more profound than happiness. At this point I ran across and mediation by Father Ron Rolheiser, a Catholic spiritual director, whose book I have been reading. Here is what he says:
Too often we confuse joy with good cheer or with a certain rallying of the spirit that we try to crank up when we go to a party or let off steam on a Friday night. We tend to think of joy this way: There is ordinary time in our lives, when duty, work, emotional and financial burdens, tiredness, worries, and pressure of all kinds keep us from enjoying life and from being as cheery and pleasant as we would like.
This is kind of the way it often is, isn’t it. We work hard all week, there are worries and responsibilities … so we look forward to the weekend … to play golf or go out and “have a good time.” But, then, its back to work and the temporary happiness wears off again in the daily routine. This is not joy.
5. So what is it? The great Christian writer, C.S. Lewis said:
"Joy, must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again...I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is."
Philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard suggests that joy is to be completely in the now. He said that “joy is the present tense…the whole emphasis is on the present.”
And Rolheiser concludes by saying: This is joy: Imagine walking to your car or to the bus after a day's work, tired, needing some rest. But, just as you reach your car or the bus stop, you fill with a sense of life and health; in some inchoate way, all jumbled together, you feel your body, mind, soul, gender, history, place within a family, network of friends, city and country, and this feeling makes you spontaneously exclaim: "God, it's good to be alive!"
That's joy. As C.S. Lewis puts it, it has to surprise you. You can't find joy; it has to find you. That's its real quality.
6. Which leads me to conclude that while happiness is about pleasure and “feeling good.” Joy is a profoundly spiritual thing which is connected, somehow to God, and ultimately involves love and even suffering.
For we must understand that real love is not always going to bring us happiness. Real love, in fact, may bring responsibilities, worry and anguish as well has pleasure and enjoyment.
Take for instance, last week we had our children’s Christmas pageant, it’s supposed to be a rather light hearted and happy time … and yet, at one moment when finally all the little children were front sing in all their costumes and posing for the pictures … for a brief moment, at least for me, it went beyond happiness. As I said, later, it was priceless!
And that is also what joy is – it is priceless. And it can’t be bought at the store. It can only happen because we are in tune with the deeper truth about life and understand the Love of God for all people. Oh yes, it was a cute picture … but what you don’t see on the surface is all the parental worry, and effort, and caring, and even suffering to raise children and to do it right. All, so, for one brief moment, it all seems worthwhile.
7. Now it has been my observation over time that often when I perform weddings which I do … that mothers, particularly, and sometimes fathers will be moved to tears sometime during the wedding. Sometimes, even the bride or bridegroom.
Tears at a wedding. Why is that? At a funeral, yes, but weddings are supposed to be happy times. What is going on here?
Can it be that what is happening is a case not merely of happiness but of joy. For the tears are not from sorrow but from joy! Or is it a sense of loss – that ones child is fully grown and no longer a child – thereby releasing the parent of further responsibilities. Well, it is many things, no doubt.
Or take the famous story of the prodigal son, who takes his inheritances and foolishly squanders it … bringing no end of grief to his loving father. And yet, the father never gives up, never stops caring, hoping that someday his son will return … and then he does … and the father is filled with joy … no, it is much deeper than happiness … it is joy … nourished by love.
It could have ended differently. The father could have disowned his son. But this would not be the way of love, would it.
8. As a result, we may conclude that hard-heartedness does not go along with joy. No, just as in Dickens’s immortal story of Scrooge -- the true secret of Christmas joy is revealed in his new found generosity and love.
Yet Scrooges uplifting transformation can make us all want to outdo each other in celebrating the holidays. As one blogger on the internet put it:
The thing about joy is that it cannot be bought and sold in the marketplace. We can’t train for it or plan for it. We can’t build our schedule around it and we certainly can’t force it, like a Christmas Amaryllis, to bloom in our lives. And because we can’t control joy – something that we so desperately want - we spend much of our time working to prevent the opposite of joy.
And if those things don’t work, we put on masks. We disguise ourselves with giddiness and say we are “just so happy!” Our busy social calendars masquerade as joyful living and we run breathlessly from one holiday activity to another, telling our friends how excited we and how much we LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the holidays. Our lifestyle becomes a magnificent façade, behind which we hide our pain. To top it all off, we have to meet the expectation of our culture which demands that we to shove our heartache in the closet, get out in the world and enjoy life.
9. No, you can’t manufacture joy. Nor can you avoid suffering or sorrow in this live. And you can’t be happy all the time unless you take a lot of drugs – and then you aren’t really happy -- just out of it.
And let’s face it, if you have lost a loved one this past year … or at any time, Christmas won’t be the same. It may not be a happy one. But it still can be a joyful one -- for joy comes from another place – and it is a spiritual condition not merely an emotion.
In his book, Seasons of Hope, David Butler writes that because “freedom can only be tasted in all its sweetness by those who know the feel of chains, so joy sings with its most full-throated glory only in spirits enlarged by the weight of despair and softened by the brine of tears.”
And this is what sets joy apart for it can be experienced even in the midst of sorrow. And this is what makes Leslie Weatherhead’s statement true … the opposite of joy is not sorrow … it is unbelief. It is really the lack of understanding and experiencing the love of God which cuts us off from Joy. For if our hearts are cold … we experience really nothing but temporary pleasure and pain.
10. Now we may ask, what can we do, if joy cannot be manufactured to find it at
Christmas or in life generally? Well, first of all we must understand that all the Giddy happiness, fretful busy-ness, and the bustling about that leaves us breathless – these come and go and often leave us feeling empty and in need of renewal.
For Joy is something entirely different. Joy comes to us in the midst of pain, when someone speaks a word of comfort or offers a shoulder to cry on. Some would call it gratitude. Joy comes when we feel utterly abandoned and someone offers to stand with us. Some would call it friendship. Joy is found in the deep sigh of contentment when we recognize the gifts we have been given. Some would call it peace of mind. For Joy truly grows out of gratefulness and generosity of spirit.
This year people filled Christmas baskets to deliver to those less fortunate here in Bemdiji. You will never see the recipients but you might be interested in this statement made by a development director from the Boys and Girls Club in another state regarding a similar project.
"It truly makes a difference. (Families) are usually so overwhelmed, they're left speechless or shedding tears of joy," said Christine Pouch, development director for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Porter County. “Many people say their prayers have been answered when they receive the gift cards.”
11. Joy can occur any time, any place, in any circumstance. In ancient times and more primitive societies today … people still must go to a well to draw water. In many of those places, it was the work of women.
Even up till modern times this was true in the Hebrides Island off the north coast of Scotland where work patterns in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland tend still to be traditionally gender-based. Women domost of the child-caring, virtually all domestic chores, dairy tasks, carding, spinning and dyeing wool, and waulking (fulling) the cloth after it had been woven. Whatever the chore, it is made lighter by singing. Nowadays, with the increased interest in Celtic culture, you can buy CDs which illustrate the rich variety of their songs performed with breathtaking beauty and tenderness by women at work.
Today, in modern industrial and post-industrial society, people do not sing at work. And, so, with it, go the joy of community, comradeship, and the celebration of life in the everyday. And yet, we still sing together here in church – do we not.
Well, it was Isaiah, who heard the women singing at the well and compares it to life with God:
With joy you will draw water
from the wells of salvation.
No, Isaiah is not talking about happy times … for in the days when these words were written, the Hebrews had suffered captivity, abandonment, slavery … they had been alienated and homeless …
12. Through all this, however, God had been with them. God had not abandoned them. God had not thrown them unto the dust-heap of forgotten nations and civilizations.
And now they were returned to their homeland … at last. And, now they knew that God was once again in their midst and they rejoiced with Isaiah who said.
Sing to the LORD, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world. Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you."
This is the joy of the father of the Prodigal Son. This is the joy of the wife whose husband has just returned from Iraq. This is the joy of the mother at birth. This is the joy of sinner who was found salvation. This is the joy of the Christ being born in Bethlehem.
And so we come here today … to draw from the wells of salvation the deeper water … to nourish our souls and experience the joy.
13. And how can we spread that joy around and make it contagious this year?
Trouble is, so many people see the church as joyless or they have experienced religion in negative terms. A judgmental God. Unrealistic rules and expectations. Insensitive and bigoted people – that kind of thing.
Unfortunately, many today are turned off the message of the Jesus Christ. And yet they are still seeking, trying to find, searching … for something.
We are trying. You may have seen the United Methodist Ads again on CNN and some of the other channels. They are specifically run at Christmas because that is often when people look to the church. These are new ads, same message, “open hearts, open minds, open doors.”
It’s all there, but are we doing the best we can to reach out to people? What do you think?
14. A week from today, it will be Christmas Eve. Many of you will be gone, traveling to far away places to visit loved ones and friends.
Other people will take your place in church. People we seldom see the rest of the year. Many are here because they have come to Bemidji to visit relatives rather than the other way around. We will welcome them. And then there will be those who have no church, who are new to the community, and those who are curious, and lonely. They will come hoping to find something lacking in their lives. Some hope. Some Joy. Some mysterious connection to God.
And though we have all been through it many many time, there is always something of the unexpected, the unusual, the amazing for all of us as we wonder about the whole thing. The child in a manger. The Hopes and Fears of all people. A tiny thing. Yet a revelation from God on High to all people.
I have come to give you good news of great joy for all the people – to you is born this day in the city of David – a Savior.
Let us pray.
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