Jubilation!
I have felt joy ever since I received this invitation to preach, joy in you, for you. Thank you Ben and Bob and the 75th Anniversary Committee. So what else could I name this sermon? Jubilation! There is no jubilee without jubilation. Let it be full.
Mary Oliver counsels us in her poem “Don’t Hesitate”:
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy
don’t hesitate. Give in to it….
whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. 1
Let joy, at least for now, drown out CNN, FOX News and MSNBC. To read the news is not a command of the Lord. But hear Jesus:
These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full (John 15:11).
And Paul wrote from prison of all places:
Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say, Rejoice (Phillipians 4:4)!
The kingdom of God is many things, justice, mercy, peace; it is also joy.
I
Jesus preached the Jubilee of God. What was the Biblical Jubilee? According to Leviticus 25, on every 50th year there was a Jubilee year. Lands lay fallow, slaves were set free, debts forgiven and land was returned to its original owners. It was a time of what I call deliverance-joy. So let’s first focus on that, the joy of deliverance.
Jesus echoed the biblical Jubilee in his inaugural sermon in his hometown, quoting Isaiah 61:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and (indeed) has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18-19).
Isaiah 61 was itself prophesying Israel’s deliverance from Babylonian captivity. And indeed it happened. So the exultation :
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord…
for God has clothed me with the garments of salvation
…has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings up its shoots,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,
so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise
to spring forth before all nations.
(Isaiah 61: 10-11)
The joy of deliverance
We remember historical days of jubilation. V.J. Day and the end of W.W.II. Do you remember seeing the iconic photograph of the sailor in Times Square that day kissing the nurse he found in the jubilant crowd?
Or the day the Berlin Wall, which divided East and West Berlin, came down and the Cold War began to thaw, with people dancing in the streets.
And what about more personal days of jubilation? A deliverance from addiction, or severe illness. You hear the doctor’s report: Five years clean of cancer, and you can’t keep back the tears.
Deliverance may be large or small. Spiritual deliverance as you move from what Nouwen called a House of Fear into a House of Love. Or, deliverance from the dangerous cold of a homeless night on the streets into the warm and welcome, not to mention food, of Room In the Inn.
Jubilee in the Bible is always aspirational. We’re not sure if the Jubilee Year of Leviticus 25 was ever carried out. But it was God’s dream for ancient Israel, as God has a dream for America today.
And there was Jesus proclaiming it again in that hometown of his, a sermon which ended with people enraged, carrying him out of the synagogue and trying to throw him off a cliff. (That’s why this pulpit is thirteen feet off the sanctuary floor: to make it harder to haul a preacher out of it. The spindles and rails are good for hanging onto.) Jesus’ hometown wanted jubilee without justice; jubilation without mercy.
II
But God’s salvation comes to us in two forms, says Professor Claus Westermann: Salvation as Deliverance and Salvation as Blessing. Not just in big dramatic acts of deliverance but also in the everyday ordinary (but not so ordinary) moments of blessing. So we move to the joy of blessing.
A wedding, the birth of a baby or a grandchild. The call of a friend to say “I love you.” Everyday healings so small that we often forget to say thanks. A Band-Aid is a testament of healing on the way.
Or this blessing, not small: the 75 years of life together in Christ at Myers Park Baptist Church, of witness, worship and community, sacred and miraculous connection.
Or the blessing of this world itself. A sunset that surprises. Or the “round jubilance of [a] peach”, as one poet put it. 2
Poets activate such joy. Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote of the beauty of a fall day: “O World, I cannot hold thee close enough.” Or Mary Oliver:
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily. 3
Salvation as Blessing. How can we not jubilate?!
III
Then there is the joy that is not only a gift. But also an act of courage. How can one be joyful in the face of personal pain, or the pain, horror and cruelty of the world? But joy, miraculous joy, persists amid the ruins.
Kibiyashi Issa writes:
We wander
The roof of hell
choosing blossoms. 4
Dorothy Thompson, famous journalist of the 1940’s, observed a friend in France, a woman serenely happy despite having experienced much misfortune. She exhibited, wrote Thompson, “that most beautiful form of courage, the courage to be happy”.
Poet Jack Gilbert says:
We must risk delight….
We must have
The stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of the world.
Then he adds
…To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.5
The blessed who hunger and thirst after justice need especially the psychic and spiritual energy of joy.
So let us not be afraid to be joyful in the face of life’s pain. It is no affront to God.
IV
Speaking of God…There is what I would call mystical joy. The joy of oneness with God—which is also oneness with life. These are moments of self-transcendence. In his autobiography, Confessions, Augustine, writing to God wrote: “You are deeper in me than I am in me.” Mystical joy happens in moments given to us, in music, in worship, in solitude when we connect with the God who is deeper in us than the “I” of us. The ego falls away; we are “lost in wonder, love and praise”.
I think this was what Jesus was talking about when he talked of joy, when he prayed that we may be one with God as he was one with God. Such mystical joy is not given to the “mystics” alone, but to us all.
V
There’s one more kind of joy I wish to talk about. David Brooks, the N.Y. Times journalist whom you will have this year, calls it moral joy.6 It is the joy of living according to our best and highest values. It is the joy of being engaged in a cause greater than ourselves, the source of justice, beauty, peace or love. Perhaps you’ve wandered onto the wrong road, or crash landed, and by the grace of God find your way again. Have you ever gotten lost in the woods and after a frightful time of frantic search found the familiar stretch of path again? Jubilation. Moral struggle, followed by moral joy.
The recovery movement has that wonderful phrase: “Do the next right thing.” We cannot undo the wrongs we have done. And we cannot plan all the right moves for the rest of our lives, but we can do “the next right thing”, and when we do we experience moral joy.
This is the opposite of what we might call moral smugness. Moral smugness is about human perfectionism: “Look at what I have achieved!” But moral joy knows that it all comes from God. There is no room for moral smugness, only gratefulness and humility.
Some churches are possessed with moral smugness. They pride themselves on their righteousness and look down upon others. But churches of moral joy face honestly the moral struggle and support each other along the road that leads to life, wholeness and health.
When I think about the moral joy of engaging in a cause greater than ourselves, I think of Myers Park Baptist Church who over its years has engaged in great moral issues of society, who has bravely faced racism, injustice, women’s inequality and hatred toward our LGBT brothers and sisters.
When we witnessed our full inclusion of LGBT persons at the N.C. State Baptist Convention, we were cast out by a vote of around 2,980 to 25. We did not ask for a recount. But what I think what many of us felt was moral joy. Throughout our history Myers Park Baptist has lived, not just at the corner of Queens Road and Selwyn Avenue, but at the corner of Love and Courage.
VI
Where do we find the source of joy, of jubilation? I think it comes from God and the ever near kingdom of Heaven.
The Baal Shem Tov was the founder of Hasidic Judaism. It arose in 18th century Europe during a time of danger and persecution of the Jewish people, but it was marked by ecstatic joy, singing and dancing. The Baal Shem Tov said,
Leave sorrow and sadness. Man must live in joy and contentment, always rejoicing.
He was asked why Hasidic Jews always break into dance and song, swaying when they pray—even under difficult historical circumstances. And he told a story—as rabbis are wont to do.
Once a musician came to town, a man of immense talent but unknown to anyone. He stood on the street corner and began to play.
Those who stopped to listen could not tear themselves away. Soon a larger crowd gathered. They began to move in its rhythm. Before long the whole crowd was dancing wildly in the streets.
A deaf man walked by and wondered: “Has the world suddenly gone mad? Why is everyone jumping up and down, waving their arms and turning in circles in the middle of the street?”
Then Baal Shem Tov said, “Hasidic Jews are moved by the melody that issues from every creature in God’s creation. If this makes them appear mad to those with less sensitive ears, should they therefore cease to exist?”
If we exult in jubilation it is because we hear the music of the kingdom of Heaven coming, as God comes, in justice, joy, beauty, peace and love. It is the distant song that, by God’s grace, dwells in our hearts.
When we come to worship the first movement of worship is Praising, Thanking, Blessing, Awe and Delight. May it never end.
So may the Lord bless you and keep you
May the Lord make his face to shine on you
and be gracious to you
May God give you the grace
never to sell yourself short
The grace to risk something big for
something good
The grace to remember that the world
is too dangerous for anything but truth
and too small for anything but love
So may God take your minds
and think through them
May God take your lips
and speak through them
May God take your hearts
and set them on fire. 7
Amen
Footnotes:
- Mary Oliver, “Don’t Hesitate”, Devotions N.Y.: Penguin Press, 2017, p. 61
2.Li-Young Lee, “From Blossoms”, Joy: 100 Poems (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), p. 154
- Mary Oliver, “When I am Among the Trees”, Devotions op. cit., p 123.
- In Joy: 100 Poems, op. cit., p.XXII
- Jack Gilbert, “A Brief for the Defense” in Joy: 100 Poems, op. cit., p. 36.
6.David Brooks, The Road To Character (N.Y.: Random House, 2015)pp.XVI-XVII, 262.
- My adaptation of a benediction by William Sloane Coffin.