With Joy

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Advent 3C

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Isaiah 12

¹“You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me. ²Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. ³With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

⁴And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. ⁵Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. ⁶Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Where is the joy?

Isaiah is a compiled book. That means it is made up of the writings of Isaiah, certainly, but of others who wrote in the spirit of Isaiah, or with the same message and theme as Isaiah. The earliest sections of the book seem to have been written beginning around the year 740 BCE and over the next 40 years. The exile to Babylon began nearly a century later, in 605 BCE, and lasted for approximately 70 years – until the year 536 BCE. Scholars have divided what we now have as Isaiah into two – and actually three separate groups of writings. Chapters 1-39 were written before the Babylonian Exile, and chapters 40-55 were written during the Babylonian Exile. Chapters 56-66 were written after the return from exile, when the remnants of the people of Israel are back in their homeland, beginning to rebuild the Temple and rediscover their covenantal relationship with God.

Where is the joy?

As our passage this morning comes from the 12^th chapter, it is written to the Kingdom of Judah at a time when their existence seems to be especially tenuous. Though it was still at least a century off, their conquest loomed large in the awareness of the national psyche. They lived in the shadow of the power of the Assyrian Empire. The Northern Kingdom, of Israel, the ten tribes other than Benjamin and Judah, had been or was in the process of being overtaken and absorbed by the Assyrian Empire, and the prospects for the Kingdom of Judah didn’t seem to be much better.

Where is the joy?

That uncertainty is something that we have all shared – maybe not on a national level as they were then, but certainly on a personal level – when faced with the loss of a job, or health, or the death of a loved one. As Audrey West, Associate Professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago says, “it is no small thing to stare the menace in the face and say, ‘I will trust, and I will not be afraid.’”

Where is the joy?

These six short verses actually break down into two hymns – two songs – sung first by an individual and second by a group. In the Hebrew, the ‘you’ is in the singular form, along with all the pronouns in the first 3 verses. Then, beginning in verse 4, the ‘you’ is in the plural – in other words, this second section of the chapter is written as though for a choir or a congregation to sing.

And what they are singing isn’t just any old song of thanksgiving; it is deeply resonant with their history. The middle section of verse 2 is a quote from another hymn of thanksgiving sung at an earlier time of deliverance by God of the people of Israel – it is found in Exodus 15 verse 2. At that time, the thanksgiving was after being delivered from Pharaoh and his chariots after having crossed the Red Sea.

This is the first time in the book of Isaiah that the word ‘salvation’ is used. Because it is derived from a verbal root meaning “to be wide, spacious,” it connotes the idea of deliverance from all that would stand in the way of one’s peace and prosperity. There is an element of word play, a subtle reference to the writer, in the triple repetition of the word in verses 2 and 3, since the very name ‘Isaiah’ means, “the Lord is salvation.”

The second song begins with the same words as the first “And you will say in that day,” … ‘that day’ is a statement of hope in and of itself. It is a reference to the end of an era – when the Messiah will come. "That day" is a day of judgment and salvation, a day that calls God's people forward, beckoning us to live into its reality in the present moment, no matter the circumstances.

Here the people of Israel, the people of Judah, were facing what for them was TOTAL uncertainty about what their future held – as a nation, as individuals. It was normal for conquering armies to sack and to pillage and to kill. In fact, it’s not unusual to find even in the Old Testament to find where the Israelites themselves were ordered to go in and kill everyone. That would have been fresh on their minds.

If the power of the first song is that it is a lone voice singing out against fear in the face of overwhelming odds and certain loss or defeat, the power of the second song is that it is a whole congregation lifting their voices in praise and thanksgiving in the face of those same odds, calling others to do the same – and proclaim the greatness of God to the nations, which would seem to be counterintuitive, in light of the fact that Israel is crumbling, and Judah is facing obliteration, they are singing the praise of their God despite that fact.

It would seem to point to something else going on here. That even though the image brought out in the congregational song – that of a mighty warrior, able to deliver his people in battle, on the face of it, it seems to be a case of … you know how sometimes you are filling out a form and you come to a question that does not apply to you and you put in the space “N/A” (Not Applicable? … It seems like it might be that … but what they are singing of is patently opposite the worldly vision they are living through and are facing the prospect of CONTINUING to live through for the foreseeable future.

The people of Israel and Judah, and by extension – we – are still singing because of the radical redefinition of what a mighty warrior is supposed to DO. It means that we do not let our hope, our peace, our joy, depend on anything – ANYTHING but the promise that we have in God’s salvation and God’s faithfulness, love and God’s grace.

Earlier this morning we sang a hymn in our opening assembly – a traditional German Christmas Carol – How Great Our Joy – the words refer to the usual imagery of Christmas –

While by the sheep we watched at night / Glad tidings brought an angel bright.

There shall be born, so He did say /
in Bethlehem a Child today.

There shall the Child lie in a stall / this Child who shall redeem us all.

This gift of God we’ll cherish well
/ that ever joy our hearts shall fill.

The refrain – the chorus – is what I love about this hymn, and it’s designed, I think, to be sung antiphonally, men and women, or one section and then another:

How great our joy! (Great our joy!)


Joy, joy, joy! (Joy, joy, joy!)


Praise we the Lord in heaven on high! 


(Praise we the Lord in heaven on high!)

To find it in us, to sing with Joy, to live in Joy, when we are living through times that would seem to drain all that joy from us, is of God. It is the Spirit calling out, calling out to us and from us and saying “just wait, there’s hope, there’s peace to come, there is rest to come! God’s salvation is at hand, God’s love does not fail!

Let’s pray.

“Loving God, your word speaks of peace that passes understanding, and we thank you for that and we pray for that, and have, at times, experienced that.

But we are surprised by joy that passes understanding. Even in the midst of our darkest times, you fill us, you touch us with the certainty that you are with us, and in that presence we find joy.

Go with us now, even as we know you have been with us, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”