Isaiah 35:5-10
The eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
The lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert ...
A highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Holy Way;
No traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.
No 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.
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
and come to Zion with singing;
and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads.
The theme for this week is Joy and, just like Hope and peace, there are many, many layers in any discussion of Joy.
The Isaiah reading we used in our candle-lighting is a promise written for the people in exile that they will one day be returning to Jerusalem from Babylon. It is a it is a joyous anticipation of the celebration for those who had been dragged away from home and family and who are now home again. It is tempting to just stop and remain here – right here – in the joy.
But we have to remember that the joy was still to come and that when it did come, it would be followed in short order by contention and struggles for power, and some truly ugly battles as to who were the real sons of Abraham – those who remained at home or those who labored in Babylon?
It should be a promise of good times, the return from exile, the return to home, with blessings right and left. Well, yes, except that when the promise was realized, the “home” the exiles returned to wasn’t the one they’d been fantasizing about for years. Those who had been left in Jerusalem had taken to doing things their own way and the returnees didn’t seem to fit anymore. Those who’d been left behind were hurt that the returnees didn’t seem to appreciate just how hard it had been for them, too.
Somehow, our story, when we follow it a bit further along, appears to be equal parts praise and lament.
Sound familiar? We, too, live in a world that often-times is unfair.
Some of us live in comfort, some of us live on the streets. Some of us are untouched by disasters while others’ lives are destroyed. Some of us live in rented apartments, drowning in tons of paperwork and red-tape as they try to figure out how to rebuild lives that recently went up in flames. Some people, like the folks in Houston and Puerto Rico are trying to dig out of the shambles left of their lives after Rita passed through – and many of them feel utterly abandoned and alone.
Whenever there is this level of disparity in people’s lives, joy is often accompanied by its opposite. The opposite of Joy I believe, is not fear or war – it is hatred, and wherever the possibility of Joy exists, we will, unfortunately, find hatred and anger and envy, and well. Look around you anywhere today and you can easily find hatred – hatred that someone else expects us to do something differently; hatred that life isn’t actually “all about what I want”; hatred that someone thinks I should share or care about others in any way; hatred that someone, somewhere feels Joy that I do not; hatred that some people are different; hatred stoked by greed and selfishness.
Where does Joy fit into the lives of these people? If we stick with our Matthew 25 theme for Advent – whatsoever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me – where can joy be found for those who feel bereft? Where and how do we fit into the task of offering and building joy for and with them? And harder yet, how do we offer joy to those who are mired in jealousy and hatred?
I woke the other morning singing one of my favorite old hymns – actually, I realized I’d been singing it all night, in my sleep:
- “I heard the bells on Christmas day
- Their old familiar carols play,
- And wild and sweet the words repeat
- Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.”
But it was this verse that I found myself singing over and over:
- “And in despair I bowed my head:
- “There is no peace on earth,” I said,
- “For hate is strong, and mocks the song
- Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!”
What a despairing verse – and it pretty well reflects my feelings lately as long-held rights are disappearing and whole peoples are being demonized and the poor are being tossed aside to live or die as they can on their own.
- “For hate is strong, and mocks the song
- Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!”
This song was thoroughly stuck in my head and I walked around singing it for several days. Finally I realized I knew nothing of its origin so I looked it up. It was a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the middle of America’s Civil War, when hate was most certainly strong.
His wife had died a couple of years previously, leaving him to raise several children on his own, and most recently, one of the children – his beloved oldest son Charles -- had joined the Union army and had been severely wounded – he almost died and was left paralyzed for the remainder of the war – only eventually recovering.
Longfellow had reason to know that hate was strong, but whenever that verse comes to mind, it is followed immediately by the last verse, with which he concludes the poem – the one that reminds us
- “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
- God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
- The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
- With peace on earth, goodwill to men.”
We have a choice: we can choose to live in despair – where we will be no help to ourselves or to anyone else; or we can choose to live with God’s promises and God’s deep joy. One of the quotes on today’s handout is from Henri Nouwen: Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.
It’s our choice. We can either live our tidy lives and pretend that ugliness isn’t real; or we can be part of those God calls to stand with God and right the wrongs so that the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, goodwill to men.
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