Psalm 126
“Shouts of Joy”
December 13, 2020
“Joy to the world; the Lord is come!”
Every Christmas Eve that is the carol we go out singing into the dark as the lights come back up after our candles have been extinguished.
Before Isaac Watts wrote those words three hundred years ago, almost the only singing that you would hear in British churches was of the Psalms.
Watts thought there could be more innovation in what gets sung in church and so he took the Psalms and interpreted them with the New Testament in mind.
He basically studied the Psalms from Jesus’ perspective and then put them in verse form to be sung by congregations.
“Joy to the World,” from Psalm 98, is the most universally known of his Psalm re-writes that we and so many around the world will sing from home this year.
Surrounded by pain and suffering and loss in the world right now, missing the opportunities to be face to face with those we love and in spaces that hold such meaning for us, what does joy look like in times such as these?
Today we hear the Psalmist talk about a joy so palpable that it is to be shouted but these shouts come only after sadness.
If we read this Psalm carefully, we hear the tale of joy that was and the hope for such joy to come again.
These are words spoken by those who have known both joy and sorrow and wish very much to be heading toward joy.
How appropriate that we consider it during this Advent season, that we mark as a movement toward something remarkable but with the deeply felt experience of sadness that, like joy, is a part of every life, including that of Jesus Christ.
In spite of all of the wishes for glad tidings of great joy which greet us this Christmas season, we know that this period is not a non-stop feast of joy.
For many of us, Christmas evokes nostalgia for holidays of the past. Especially this year, a lot of us will have quieter celebrations and may be distanced from those we love.
All of us have experienced losses in the last year which seem to come into deeper focus.
The bar for joy can feel beyond our grasp.
We don’t want to dwell on the fact that into each life in which joy resides, there is also a space set aside for sorrow.
As much as this psalm talks about joy, it does so with a recognition that joy comes via a growing process that includes tears – “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.”
Instead, what is acknowledged here is the very real path to joy that weaves its way through the pain and sadness, the loss and sense of the missing that is a part of all of our lives.
We, though, are a people intended for joy.
That is the basis for our faith in a good and loving God who is the bearer of joy.
And there is a purpose to our joy.
It is intended to provide us with the energy and nourishment to keep going and to reach out to those for whom joy is a distant memory or has never been recognized.
Henri Nouwen wrote that “Joy is hidden in compassion. The word compassion literally means to ‘suffer with’…being with a person in pain, offering our simple presence to someone in despair, sharing with a friend times of confusion and uncertainty…such experiences can bring us joy.”
Nouwen goes on to explain that this isn’t the same as happiness or excitement but rather “the quiet joy of being there for someone else and living in deep solidarity with our brothers and sisters in this human family…true joy is to feel our shared vulnerability and feel compassion for another.”
If this is so, then the members of Middle Collegiate Church in New York City are living examples of true joy.
Last Sunday we prayed for this congregation whose historic old church in the East Village was destroyed by an early morning fire on Saturday, December 5th.
The church shared a wall with an even older building – the Women’s Prison Association, which has been dedicated for 175+ years to improving the lives of women affected by incarceration.
In the facility known as the Hopper Home Transitional Shelter which housed 22 formerly imprisoned women. They were forced to flee during the fire in the early morning freezing rain in their pajamas and slippers.
They were quickly moved to another WPA facility to wait and get warm, but it was soon discovered that they wouldn’t begoing back to Hopper Home anytime soon because of the extensive smoke and water damage to the shelter.
Two women members of Middle Collegiate rushed to the fire and learned where the Hopper Home women had gone, all of whom had left empty-handed when evacuated.
Susan and Claudia quickly went out and bought whatever they could think the women might need like toothpaste and hand sanitizer and toothbrushes which they took to the despondent displaced women. Not knowing what else to do to help, they asked the 22 women, “Does anybody want to go shopping?” and almost all of them jumped at the chance.
Over the rest of that same day as the fire smoldered, they went out in small groups and bought bras, deodorant, shoes and coats, putting it all on the 2 women’s credit cards that would quickly be covered by the church’s Deacon’s fund. Soon word got out and the temporary shelter was overwhelmed with donations of clothing and toiletries.
Middle Church member Yusuf George raced in from Queens to help that morning and described the burning of the church he loved as “depleting” but that helping the women next door was a “no-brainer.”
Another member named Katrina explained it this way: “We take it very seriously: Love thy neighbor as yourself…It’s not just saying, ‘This is what I have for you,’ but saying ‘What do you need from us.”
In the midst of this time of darkness, loss and tragedy for so many of us and those we know, may the joy we have in the love of God, made manifest by Jesus Christ who comes to the world as a vulnerable baby, be our strength and our hope to share that joy with compassion.
Let us pray our joy with these words from Kate Bowler:
O God, we are waiting,
We are longing for You,
Our everlasting Joy.
O come to us,
Be with us,
Make our joy complete.
Blessed are we who wait for You
In the desert of our longing and isolation,
In the wilderness that is this our present struggle.
Blessed are we who have sat down,
To wait at the still point between
Desire and expectation.
We have quieted our souls to listen,
For Your words are life to us.
Blessed are we who have this settled purpose:
We are collecting ourselves,
We are getting ready,
We are clearing away the space to receive You,
For we have glimpsed something of
Your glory, Your power, Your joy,
And our hope is in You.
O blessed Babe of Bethlehem, You came
For this one loving purpose:
That your joy may be in us,
And that it might be complete. Amen.
(katebowler.com)