“Unabashed
Joy”
(Isaiah
35: 1-10, Luke 1: 46-55)
One of the questions in
last week’s newsletter was, “what will be our refrain?”
This
week, I ask how we might multiply and magnify that refrain or our song. The need for joy and love is necessary to our
very survival, but to sing such a song in difficult times may seem daunting. How do we lift our voices in praise and
thanksgiving when so much of our lives seem worthy of lament and intercession? The scripture readings for this morning, I
think, show us the way.
Isaiah
35 speaks words of comfort and promise in the midst of war and desolation; the
chapter prior offers a terrible and terrifying vision of God’s wrath against
the nations, and the chapter following describes threats toward Jerusalem. And yet in between wrath and threats, Isaiah
writes about a refrain or a chorus of creation saying, “Be strong. Do not be afraid. Here is your God.” As Barbara Lundblad (I mentioned her last
week) puts it, “Isaiah dares to speak a word out of place. A word that refused to wait until things
improved.” Some scholars say this
hopeful promise belongs to what is known as Second Isaiah – or a later writing.
Others argue that it comes even later -- sixth century BCE or perhaps even later
still -- surely after the exile. Our
passage this morning seems out of place; it comes too early. So, who moved it?
Some
things even our best scholarship cannot explain. Perhaps the Spirit hovered over the text and
over the scribes: “Put it here,” breathed the Spirit, “before anyone is ready.
Interrupt the narrative of despair.” So, here it is: a word that couldn’t wait
until it might make more sense. A bold
sense of Joy, unapologetic - unabashed.
The
Luke passage, the Song of Mary, strikes a similar tone. Mary is in a world of trouble: she is pregnant,
unmarried, only betrothed to a man named Joseph. One could imagine that she felt fear,
insecurity, uncertainty about her own future. And yet, she sings out again with bold,
unapologetic, unabashed joy: God is great. God has done and will do great
things. Holy is our God.
It
takes courage and love to sing our songs of joy in the midst of great
suffering. Unabashed joy is different
than being told in the midst of your suffering that, “God doesn’t give you more
than you can handle.” In fact, I really despise that platitude. I think we are given more than we can handle
on our own. I think suffering, heartache
and pain come in waves of drowning intensity.
They come in crashing blows that destroy us, if we were to do it all
alone. For me, I think God breaks
through and helps us handle those crushing waves of pain and sorrow.
How do
we speak joy into places of suffering so that it honors the depth of human
feelings and, at the same time, the all-encompassing love of God? Both Isaiah and Mary speak of a particular and
embodied joy: seeing eyes, hearing ears, gushing waters, growing seeds, the
hungry filled, the humble lifted.
They
also speak of a particular and embodied suffering: feeble hands, fearful hearts,
people scattered and brought down. We like to think if we could just get
through the suffering – on the other side of that suffering – there will come
joy: first comes suffering and then we progress to a joyful state of being. But the truth is, these deep feelings get
tangled up together.
We can
go from one to another, back and forth, or feel them all at the same time. And, I believe, that the good news for today
is that we can feel all these things, including suffering, and still joyfully
proclaim a day when, “Gladness and joy will overtake [us] and sorrow and
sighing will flee away.”
Amid rumors of war and desolation,
Isaiah 35 surprises us. A voice speaks
without addressing anyone by name, removed from a specific time. This poem in Isaiah follows one of destruction:
“The streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her
land shall become burning pitch…Thorns shall grow over its strongholds, nettles
and thistles in its fortresses.” Then,
without a break and without explanation, Isaiah 35 interrupts that devastation
and despair:
The
wilderness and the dry land shall be glad.
The desert shall rejoice and
blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing…
I remember visiting Mount St Helens quite
a while after the volcano eruption.
There was devastation everywhere.
The trees were burned and bare, the earth was scorched and black. And yet, in the midst of that destruction,
new shoots of greenery were visible, new buds were breaking through.
Pain and sorrow mixed with unabashed
joy; back and forth, in and out,
Years ago, I would worship periodically at a men’s
shelter in Pittsburgh. Many of them with
mental challenges. Quite a few of them still
drunk or high from the night before. These
services were normally quite chaotic, people come and go at will. In the middle of worship, people speaking out
loud with one another, sometimes with very bold and nearly shouting voices. As a pastor and leader of worship, it was
always a challenge. One Sunday afternoon
I was leading worship for the third or fourth time there, a man who couldn’t hear
or speak began waving frantically at me and kept pointing at himself. I guess when he thought he’d gotten my attention,
he suddenly got up and stepped into the middle of the circle, bowed his head in
silence, and began to sign a hymn for us. It was beautiful, like a dance… In that moment,
everything and everyone got quiet. No
one spoke, all eyes were glued to the man in the middle, signing a hymn for us.
All of our notions, or at least all of my
notions, of ‘leader’ and ‘led’, ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’ were turned upside down.
Our worship abruptly became a token of
the resurrection in the midst of the powers of sorrow and pain, or struggle and
even death, perhaps a glimpse of God’s beloved community. Even Isaiah couldn’t have imagined the glory
of that moment as the hands of the speechless were singing in unabashed joy!
Mary’s beautiful song of praise is commonly
called the Magnificat, from the Latin for “magnify.” Mary magnifies the Lord, proclaiming God’s
greatness and rejoicing in God as Savior.
She begins with God’s actions in her own life, for in choosing her to be
the mother of the messiah, the Mighty One has indeed “done great things for”
her. Elizabeth has just welcomed and
honored her, saying, “blessed is she who believed.” Now she recognizes with awe that not only Elizabeth
but all generations will call her blessed.
The blessedness that Mary celebrates stands in
stark contrast to our culture’s attitude.
By our standards she does not look at all blessed. God has chosen her to be the mother of the
messiah, but in practical terms what does that mean for her? She is not from a family that can afford
expensive food or clothing. She is a
nobody, a peasant girl from a small village.
Her friends and neighbors see her as a disgrace because she is unmarried
and pregnant – after all Joseph had planned to divorce her quietly.
Isaiah dares to speak a word out of place. A deaf and mute homeless man dares to worship
in the midst of chaos. Mary sings in the
midst of her own drama. A poem, a hymn,
a song that refused to wait until things improved, until people got quiet. We see and hear disturbing news every night
on TV every morning on the front page of the paper or in print. Add to that the data of our own lives: waiting
for the test results from the doctor, mourning the death of a loved one,
wondering if we’ll make it through the next round of lay-offs. We know the data of our days all too well and
we long for a word that comes to us, maybe a little out of place. But a word of unabashed joy, nonetheless.
Who will speak this unabashed joy, this a word
out of place in our time? Will you?
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