Joy to the World Isaiah 35:1-10 Matthew 11:2-11 Reverend Shannon Jordan www.wpc-decatur.org December 15, 2019

How many of you have participated in a event at work or church or in your neighborhood? People give gifts and you don’t know the giver of the gift. There is also the kind of secret Santa who at time walks around giving unsuspecting people money. They give extra-large tips or pay for people’s items in a Walmart line. A church in Atlanta recently went to a store and gave $10,000 to pay off everyone’s lay-away items. This week one secret Santa made the news by using helpers. He recruited city bus drivers in Milwaukie to give cash away to people who rode their buses. In his interview his face was hidden to hide his identity. He shared how he has so much fun giving to others and how if you are having a bad day, finding someone to bless will cheer you right up! This is the joy week in . Joy is an interesting concept. It is often confused with happiness and is hard to define. Henri Nouwen described the difference between joy and happiness as follows, “While happiness is dependent on external conditions, joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing – sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death - can take that love away. Thus, joy can be present even in the midst of sadness."

“Joy is a tough thing to grasp, but when you have it, you have it, and you know it. We also may know people who have it. It is a rock steady view of the world that can’t be shaken. It is based on what God is doing in our world and not on what we can do or see. To experience joy we have to know that there is more than what we can see and can touch.”

We can only be filled with this Joy if we have claimed the Hope from week one and Peace from last week. This Advent we have been remembering that it is the 400th anniversary of the carol, Joy to the World. This hymn, written by , is a Christological review of God’s work in our world. It is about coming and starting the process of making all things right. This is the theme of Advent. I was really intrigued by the passages that the lectionary gave us this week. Remember for our new people, the lectionary is the reading plan for getting through the Bible in three years that many of the mainline denominations use. Anyway, this week’s passages are really good and are making me think about the passages differently than usual. I love the passage that Sally read from Isaiah. The writer paints a beautiful word picture of how it feels for the exiles to return to Israel. It is like a desert in bloom. The passage went on to describe what a world in line with God’s vision would look like, and it is similar to what I read but more explicit. Yes, the blind would see and the deaf would hear. But also, 6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; Here in Alabama we understand the importance of rain to an agricultural community. We can grasp why this image of water is so important to the Israelites. They are living in an agricultural country. They live and die according to the rains. No rain, no crops. No crops, no food. No crops no extras to sell to pay taxes. No taxes, they lose their land. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer. The writer goes on and adds to the description. We walk in the way and can’t stray. We can’t get off God’s path for us. We are safe. When John the Baptist asks Jesus for reassurance that he is indeed the , Jesus responds with a series of verses from Isaiah to remind him. Isaiah 35 and 61 are put together to get what Jesus said. Regardless, John the Baptist, in prison, would have been reminded of the passage in Isaiah. God will redeem this. God will restore this. God will have victory in God’s time. Hang in there. We did not read another passage from our lectionary, James 5:7-10 Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors! As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. All three of these passages speak to patience. All three of these passages speak to waiting on God to work in the situation. We go from one extreme of people having to live as exiles. Some of us are exiles from our families. Some of us are exiles from the lives we want or think we deserve. Some of us are exiles from the health we want. The Matthew passage has John in prison. There are many prisons we can get trapped in, not just literal prisons. None of us are in literal prison right now. But some of us may be in prisons of anger. Prisons of bitterness. Prisons of self-pity. Prisons of pettiness. Joy gets us out of this. Joy gives us laughter and support and encouragement when things are tough. Holly Lowe commented on Thursday at Lunch Bunch about how much she appreciates how cheerful everyone is and how they don’t whine. We all laughed at how we could grumble and whine, but we don’t at that lunch. By choosing to follow God and not grumble and complain, we choose joy. I am really thankful! It does help us experience joy! We have to choose the way to joy. We have to have hope we can only find in God. We have to have peace that we can only find when we trust that God has it. We have to make choices to stay connected to God and God’s perspective of the world. We have to be generous with others. We can’t be self-centered to have joy. I watched another funny video this week that went viral. A woman was feeling the Christmas Spirit and decided to pay it forward and buy the woman behind her at the gas station her ginger ale. She was feeling joy as a result of blessing this woman with the ginger ale and with a smile on her face, she went out to her car. And she was so surprised by how what goes around comes around, joy of joy, a strange man was cleaning off the windshield of her car!!! Wow! Christmas is awesome! People are so nice! She bound up to the man, babbling about the joy of Christmas and how she loves Christmas and gave him a big hug. He was just standing there, doing nothing, saying nothing. As the woman was hugging him in joy and looking over his shoulder, she saw her car. It was exactly like his car, and it was right behind her car. He wasn’t cleaning her window. Joy allows us to see the light in our dark world. Joy allows us to see God’s plan at work. Joy allows us to see our role in that. This week I had the blessing of going on a United Way tour with a group of pastors to see some of their partners. I was blown away by the dedication people have in our town for the hurting, for the poor and the destitute, for victims of abuse, for children, for the homeless. There are so many ways that we can partner with organizations to make a difference. We don’t need to do it all. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We can do something. There is something for every single person here to do to help someone. There are children who need help learning to read. Learning to read by second grade is a huge indicator for whether or not they will graduate from high school. A high school degree helps them find jobs. It reduces their chances of ending up in jail. We can all take an hour a week to be with a kid and help them learn to read. Don’t like kids? What about meals on wheels? There is a route that needs drivers. If we had just 4 people sign up, we could share a route. It would take less than 2 hours once a month to be part of that team. We have joy. We need to take that joy to the world. The joy we get from God is to be shared. Christmas is a time of giving, a time of thinking of the less fortunate. When we take our eyes off of ourselves, we are much more likely to experience that joy. Joy to the World. The Lord is Come. Let earth receive her king. Let every heart, give him room, and heaven and nature sing.