“Joy to the World”                                       December 5, 2009
Zephaniah 3:  14–20                                     Deryl Fleming

When I asked adolescents what three things they most wanted in life the most common response was “to be happy.” When I then asked what they thought would make them happy the answers were pretty much what you would think:  education, marriage, children, a successful career and sometimes a lot of money. Happiness is largely about the circumstances around those issues.

Joy is something else. “For the joy that was set before him” Jesus “endured the cross, despising the cross, despising the same.” On the night he was betrayed Jesus’ Christmas wish for those nearest and dearest was “that my joy may be in you and your joy be full.” His Christmas charge to them was “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”

Anybody here grow up on the Old Testament as the book of law and the New Testament as the book of grace? Not, Not, Not. Tomorrow’s Old Testament reading is in Zephaniah, a little known minor prophet of the exile. The first chapter is gloom and doom for Judah. The second chapter is gloom and doom “the fierce anger of the lord for surrounding nations. The third and concluding chapter is a song of joy.

Better than a presidential pardon, the divine pardon lifts the well earned sentence from Judah and not only does the community rejoice, but God rejoices. “He will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love, he will exult over you with loud singing.” And God has a bigger voice than Charles Bailey and Eric Fischer together. The psalmist invites us to make a joyful noise to the lord. Here the prophet has God making a joyful noise to the world over his beloved Israel, you and me.

Once upon a time Advent was, like Lent, a penitential occasion:  a call for repentance, an about face, some serious change, a somewhat somber season. Even then the third Sunday was Gaudet, the Sunday of joy, when through the subdued preparation for God’s coming in Christ the song of joy broke though. It could be held no longer. When I told Lee tonight’s theme was joy, he guardedly asked if it was too early to sing “Joy to the World.” “I said yes, but we’ll sing it anyway. We can’t help it. “Joy to the World, all the boys and girls. Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me.”

Mary Lou Sleevi, a local artist, published Women of the Word, a collection of prints and poems about the women of the Bible. She featured both women of pain and women of joy. A photographer was sent by a local paper to get some photos from the book. He said to the author, “I don’t hang around churches much, but I need to shoot a couple of these. Which ones do you suggest?” Two hours later he was still there, fascinated by the portraits. Finally he said, “the pain in the faces I understand, but the joy – tell me about that.”

I’ve been reading Mary Karr’s new memoir. She says about her infant son, “Never have I felt such blazing focus for another living creature. I can’t stop looking at him. Joy it is, which I’ve never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different think because its focus exists outside the self–delight in something external, not the satisfaction of some inner craving.

This week I talked with a woman whose 50-something brother has bi-polar disorder and has repeatedly wrecked havoc on his family. He has an 18-month-old granddaughter whom he loves and wants to see, but for understandable reasons his daughter has said, “No, Dad, you can’t come.” “So sad, “said the sister to me. Then she went on to report the laughter she and the mother had over the joy bringing 18 month old child. So sad, so glad. Christmas can be like that for some.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” the exile. Judah, like Charles Dickens’ time, had everything going against them and God going for them. Joy to the World, their world and ours.

From his prison cell the Apostle Paul, in tomorrow’s epistle, calls the Philippian church to “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.”

Says God to the exiled strangers in a strange land, “I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.” Joy to the World.

In his posthumously published memoir Ted Kennedy writes about his mother’s grief over losing three sons and says her grief never robbed her of her joy. Happiness depends pretty much on circumstances. Joy comes from knowing that we are loved, and that not because of what we have done but just because we are. Later at Golgotha and sooner at Bethlehem God will say as only God can say it. “I love you and don’t you forget it.”

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.