Defiant Joy: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Advent III
1 The Lord God’s spirit
is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me.
He has sent me
to bring good news to the poor,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and a day of vindication for our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
3 to provide for Zion’s mourners,
to give them a crown in place of ashes,
oil of joy in place of mourning,
a mantle of praise in place of discouragement.
They will be called Oaks of Righteousness,
planted by the Lord to glorify himself.
4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins;
they will restore formerly deserted places;
they will renew ruined cities,
places deserted in generations past.
8 I, the Lord, love
justice;
I hate robbery and dishonesty.
I will faithfully give them their wage,
and make with them an enduring covenant.
9 Their offspring will be known among the nations,
and their descendants among the peoples.
All who see them will recognize
that they are a people blessed by the Lord.
10 I surely rejoice in
the Lord;
my heart is joyful because of my God,
because he has clothed me with clothes of victory,
wrapped me in a robe of righteousness
like a bridegroom in a priestly crown,
and like a bride adorned in jewelry.
11 As the earth puts out its growth,
and as a garden grows its seeds,
so the Lord God will grow righteousness and
praise before all the nations. (CEB)
“If
you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands; if you’re happy and you know it,
clap your hands. If you’re happy and you
know it and you really want to show it; if you’re happy and you know it, clap
your hands.”
It
may be too early in our time together yet, St. Luke’s, for me to be truly
candid about how many songs meant for children I outright despise. However, this is one of them. This ubiquitous repetition has roots in a 20th
century Latvian folk song and is intended to develop memory and language skills
as well as physical awareness in children.[1] I suppose it achieves that, as I’m willing to
bet an overwhelming majority of you could sing along within three words of my
starting.
On
this third Sunday of Advent, we light our candle in celebration of joy. Also known as Gaudete Sunday—Latin
for “you rejoice”—and often marked in Advent wreaths by a pink rather than blue
or purple candle, this day is a moment to remember that this is a good season
and we are waiting for a good thing, a birth that changed the world. This faith system sets aside this day in
reminder that there is joy in this waiting, in this coming child, in this
journey.
Joy,
not happiness. The song of clapping
hands, much though I may dislike it, does recognize that happiness is something
you can display. We speak of happiness
as a momentary thing, an emotion as changeable as the weather that comes and
goes, a thing we pursue with determination and, sometimes, a complete lack of
awareness of what we’re actually seeking.
This happiness is good—I’m a fan of being happy, though I wouldn’t
recommend it be an all-the-time thing.
But happiness is not quite the same thing as joy.
“I
surely rejoice in the Lord; my heart is joyful because of my God.” In his book Surprised by Joy, the
author and theologian C. S. Lewis writes of “an unsatisfied desire which is
itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term
and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one
characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has
experienced it will want it again. Apart
from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be
called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it
would ever, if both were in this his power, exchange it for all the pleasures
in the world. But then Joy is never in
our power and pleasure often is.”[2]
Happiness
is not really a thing in the three stories we are intertwining on this third
Sunday of Advent—that of the Israelites returning from exile to a demolished
city where those left behind have learned to go on without the exiles and,
thus, are not all that thrilled to have to adjust to their return; that of the family
slowly and circuitously moving toward a manger in Bethlehem to place an
unexpected child; and that of us, here at the end of 2020 where about the only
good thing to be said is that it snowed here in Essexville yesterday (and I may
be the only one happy about that). This
braid of tales doesn’t seem to have a lot of reason for happiness; we
may find our hands stilled because we don’t know whether we are happy.
But
oh, Church, all three tales are drenched with joy.
“The
Lord God’s spirit is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me. He has sent me to bring good news to the
poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim release for captives, and
liberation for prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” The year here referenced by the speaker in
Isaiah is the Jubilee Year as described in Leviticus 25. “During the Jubilee property and people held
as payment for debt were returned to the families to which they originally
belonged (Leviticus 25:10). The use of the Leviticus language in Isaiah 61 is a
clear indication that the liberty proclaimed is intended to be made permanent
in new social and economic relationships within the community.”[3] This group of Israelites, the descendants of
the original exiles, returned from Babylon to “ancient ruin,” “deserted
places,” and “ruined cities.” This was
not how it was supposed to be: after the
years spent wondering whether God had forgotten them, surely the return to
their homeland was to be a celebration of all that was beautiful, all that was
theirs, all that was home. This
was to be the Jubilee, this mending of what was torn, this finding what was
lost. But the effect of the Babylonian
destruction, even after all these years, was still there; the pain of the way
the nation had been split by the conquering armies was fresh. To stand amidst the ruins was no Jubilee, and
yet—and yet this spirit of the Lord, this ruach (which, by the way, is
the same Hebrew word used to describe what we Christians call the Holy Spirit),
proclaims a Jubilee year; a year of release, of healing, of liberation, of good
news. A year of joy—not happiness, that
ephemeral thing, but joy, joy that reaches deep below the surface of the
world and says not only are we not dead yet but we are indeed living.
The Episcopal priest Rick Morley takes this passage and focuses on its mentions of ruins, writing, “God…was speaking of Jerusalem. The Holy City. The City of David. The place that once housed the Ark of the Covenant, and thereby the very Presence of God himself. It was in ruins, but those ruins will be ‘built up’ and repaired. Not in an act of historical refurbishment, but in a new way – in a new form. And, far more important than the ruined buildings, was the faith of Israel that was in tatters. It was a renewed faith and hope that the God who had brought them out of the fiery furnace in ages past would once again work his wonders…our God is a God who builds up and restores. Who makes all things new. And, he’s the God who has invited us along, to pick up a hammer and get to work rebuilding and refashioning the world around us, and the faith that was been entrusted to us and handed down to us by the saints.”[4]
Do you hear the
difference, Church? Do you hear the way
that the Israelites can stand amidst the ruins and have joy because of a God
Who loves justice, because of a Spirit Who anoints with liberation in Her
fingers, Who has not forgotten them, Who clothes the people in victory over the
despair that the world offers?
It
is the same kind of joy that allowed a young woman to accept that the messenger
from God offering her a part in the strangest story ever told said yes, I will
accept bearing this divine child out of wedlock. It is the same kind of joy that allowed a man
to take on the reality that he would be scorned for seeming to have gotten
overeager about his marriage and yet raise a child that wasn’t his with love
and faith anyway. It is the same kind of
joy that allows us to look at the rising death toll and the falling finances, at the federal executions stealing life, at the multi-faced shadows that have crept over this year and say yes, we will
follow the God Who has made an enduring covenant, trusting that our grief is
not unending.
As
we’ve worked through the Sundays of Advent, we’ve been talking about the stages
of grief—for even here, on this Sunday of joy, there is sorrow. There are those who are not here celebrating
with us, those for whom we light other kinds of candles; there are the ruins
that are not yet rebuilt and may never be.
The third stage of grief as described by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is
bargaining, and what an interesting thing that is in the cradle of joy that we
sometimes cover over with happiness.
“If
I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.”[5] These two verses from the 137th
psalm were written from the midst of exile, from the anger and pain of being
cut off from the homeland, from the certainty that God would set all things
right if Israel simply came back to obedience with the correct amount of
apology. I will give up my speech if only
I will not have to forget my beloved city; I will lose my working hands if only
I will be able to delight in home once more.
If You, O God, will give me back what I have lost—it’s a powerful thing,
the desire to bargain with God; who among us hasn’t said, “I will pray more
often if You will grant this health, God,” or “I promise I’ll go to church
regularly if this crisis can simply end.”
I swear I’ll let the spirit of Christmas live within me if you’ll only
make 2021 less awful than this year, God.
Bargaining
helps us find some kind of control, and fine for it. Bargaining can get us what makes us
happy—clap your hands if you know it—but it cannot bring us joy, for as Lewis
said, that “is never in our power.”
“The
Lord’s spirit is upon me.” It is not a
matter of God having agreed to a deal with the Israelites to bring them home,
and yet there is joy. It is not a matter
of God having preserved the cities so that the people can return to a safe and
ready-to-go home, and yet there is joy.
It is not a matter of God working within the established rules of what a
family looks like, and yet there is joy.
It is not a matter of a child being born in a respectable way to a
well-heeled family who can raise a king, and yet there is joy. It is not a matter of this year having been
one that we will all remember fondly, and yet there is joy. There is this defiant gift from a Spirit Who
replaces discouragement with a mantle of praise, this bone-deep refusal to let
the world overwhelm us. Joy holds us
close to the Light as the shadows show us ruined cities, ruined plans, ruined
relationships, and joy whispers, “There will be life, beloved; there
will be a Jubilee Year where the mourners are comforted, the prisoners set
free, the poor given good news because such things are promised by a God Who
loves justice, Who is faithful, Who loves with robes of righteousness and crowns
instead of ashes.” If you’re happy and
you know it, go ahead and clap your hands, but if you’re joyful?
Live. Live abundantly, ferociously; live like the
city will be rebuilt, like the child will be a blessing to the whole world,
like this year will not be the only one that makes us who we are. Gaudete, populi;[6] rejoice, for this a God Who
inspires joy, joy that winds into our souls, “oil of joy in place of mourning,”
for we are never forgotten or left alone to face this world. Thanks be to God for it. Amen.
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