GOOD NEWS IN HARD TIMES
A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

December 14, 2008

Psalm 126   &   I Thessalonians 5:16-24 

We've made it halfway through Advent.  We are starting the third Sunday of Advent the theme of which is joy.   I got a call from a student this week who called to share the joy of her last class, her last lecture this semester.  I suspect there are several of you here who are part of the educational structure on both ends.  There are more than just a few professors and lecturers who are also experiencing joy. Surely students and professors alike will feel even more joy as this next week comes to completion and finals are over.  Then there is the unique fabric to this town of Bloomington that feels joy when a semester is over and everyone sort of leaves for a few weeks.  That joy is followed by loneliness and the quiet misery of not having enough waitstaff at our local restaurants and joy returns when school gets cranked back up in mid-January.  This cycle is oversimplified, for certain.  There is much more depth to it than we have time to ponder in this short sermon, but bear with me as we ponder the reality of joy. 

You might remember with me from last week that the Israelites, the elites of Jewish society, have been in captivity in Babylonia for 70 years.  The Babylonians, when they did conquest, would sweep in and take the elite, the college graduates and above, back home with them.  It left the people leaderless at home in the recently vanquished territory.  It also brought to Babylonia the best and the brightest and added a most unique dimension to their society as they surrounded themselves with the very best scientists, philosophers, theologians, musicians and artisans of many crafts.  King Nebuchadnezzar's empire is now being taken over by a new conquest that has allowed the Jewish elites to go home to Judea if they wish.  What joy to be free to go home.  What joy to no longer be under the weight of oppression.  

Do you remember the joy of going home after being away for a long time?  The joy of packing your stuff.  Oh, I want to take this home.  Oh, I will want this when I get home.  Oh, the anticipation of going home.  I remember going home after being away at college the first semester.  I went home at Thanksgiving for the first time.  No one was home when I got there.  I still remember walking in and smelling home and being greeted by the dogs.  It was a wonderful reunion with home.   

It took me about two days to be ready to be gone back to college and my friends and the freedom and, oh yes, the education.  But even being back on campus, back in classes, back with my friends and my emancipation from my home of origin, that rousing joy soon would fade as the working reality of being in school and working out new relationships would bring real life in Middletown , USA back into focus. 

Psalm 126, which we read this morning, was about the “shouts of joy” that those prominent Israelites had as they came back home again to Judea, to Jerusalem .  The Psalm is actually a lament, a cry for help in the midst of the terrible circumstances that they found once they got home and found it devastated and devastating.  The Psalmist remembers how they shouted with joy and laughter on their way home from seventy years in prison.  We can image them perhaps even dancing on their way.  (Jews can dance unashamedly.  Not so Christians, especially Protestants.) 

Years later however, they are struggling and the joy of coming home again has evaporated.  The glorious homecoming was uplifting, but now reality has set in.  They have seen all the syllabi; they can see what they must do to rebuild the shattered land of their dreams.    Return, we know only too well, is not the same as restoration, as anyone knows who has tried to heal a relationship, or to rebuild a community after a natural disaster.  The people of New Orleans know this only too well after Katrina.  The people of Texas grapple in similar ways with the broken remnants left by Hurricane Ike.  Just returning to their homes, is not the same thing as having their lives restored.  That will require a much deeper transformation, both an individual and a communal effort.  The joy of coming home again soon fades into tough realities. 

Let me share with you a personal philosophical theological problem that I have as a preacher at Christmastime, especially this Christmas season, December 2008.  I have file folders full of really cute Christmas stories that are filled with nostalgia, joy, stars and tinsel.  I can do that stuff.  But, I also have story after story filling my mind, my soul, my heart with everything that is not working out for so many this Christmas season.  You know what I mean.  Last month in our country alone there were over one-half-million new unemployed persons.  Unemployed persons standing in line to receive benefits are soon going to look as long if not longer than the lines outside Best Buy on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  It is going to be a long, cold winter of despair for millions of our fellow Americans, and that is not even to begin to touch the despair of billions of others around this globe.  

One of the nice things about most of our lives is that we do not have to live in the either-this-or-either-that-world.  Either it is all depressing or it is all joy beyond believing.  We have lived most of our lives in a culture of poisoned bipartisan bickering, with our leaders claiming you are either for us or you are against us.  You either are for the war effort in Iraq or you're in favor of terrorism.  I personally have not been in favor of either extreme but you would think we did not have other choices. 

I suspect I am not alone in my search for good news, meaningful Christmas joy without having to resort to extremes that have not produced fruit worth eating.  Our war effort has not made the world any safer for democracy and we are told to expect terrorist attacks of the same magnitude as 9/11 any day now.  We have spent hundreds of billions in the war effort that has only economically weakened us to a state of near-economic-depression.  Our planet remains in peril and we have found ourselves the object of scorn rather than a light shining in the darkness.  

I stand as one who has the greatest respect for our soldiers, those men and women who are able and prepared to implement the orders given to them.  I, with most of you, commend the military of many generations and stand ready with continued support for them through veteran benefits.  But, I would also like to make their jobs in the military more obsolete and not needed, and to see the military industrial machinery less profitable except in the most extreme of scenarios.  Massive military expenditures do not make for strong economies and arming the world only provides weapons to be used against us. 

Are you waiting with me to hear the Good News and the reason to have joy?  Let's do the hard work of discovering what it means to have the joy that is born of the bosom of God rather than with the swipe of a credit card and buying one more present that we really don't need.  Let's look to find the joy that passes all understanding so that we can gift that joy to our children so that they know where to find it when they grow up.  The joy of Christmas remains embedded in that 126 th Psalm. 

Friends, there is no joy in saying this, but we know it to be true, we are at a most significant broken time in history.  During my work in seminary I spent three years in Kansas City learning psychotherapy from Dr. Kraft who had studied under the infamous and famous existentialist Fritz Pearls.  Dr. Kraft, like Fritz, loved to make dramatic counterintuitive statements in the midst of therapy.   If you were to walk into Dr. Kraft's office and say in that low, unenergetic fashion, “Oh, Doctor, I”m so depressed, today,” Dr. Kraft would bellow from his chair,  “My God that”s wonderful, it means you”re finally ready to get better!”  

Unemployment is at its highest rate in decades, the auto industry is in shambles, the investment community is frozen, Gov. Blagojevich has been caught with his hands in the cookie jar, the economy is tanking and the world's belief in our ability to lead has approval ratings below 20%.  Dr. Kraft and Fritz Pearls would say something like, “And God has a plan and is ready to work with you, wow, it is your lucky day!”  

Psalm 126 says that when God and Israel were working together they brought about a transformation of what would otherwise be a barren wilderness.  The Israelites have cooperated with God in the restoration of their country and the building up of their commonwealth as a nation and God will bless the world through their ongoing relationship by modeling what can be accomplished when a nation lives forth God's dreams.

In other words, this 126 th Psalm is a reflection of God's Jubilee at work.  If Israel, if the United States, is faithful to its Law, is conscientious about acting out the Sabbatical laws of letting the land lie fallow, ecological concern made real, so that the land can restore itself, forgiving the debts of the people and periodically freeing its slaves, its immigrants, and if the nation intentionally redistributes the wealth found in its land so that power cannot accrue or wealth accumulate in the hands of its powerful wealthy, then Israel is working with God  for the continual restoration of the nation that  truly trusts in God.  Justice will prevail, wealth will be equitably shared, and a truly loving and relational culture will be built.  And what will be the result of such cooperative behavior? The 126 th Psalm says that the people will grow happy and have great joy.  And God will exhibit what true relationship with the divine is to all the nations of the earth. 

Because of the Israelites responsible action toward their poor and powerless and because of their willingness to share their wealth and power by becoming obedient to the Jubilee Dream from God, a miracle will take place among the people, the Psalmist proclaims.  Having made in the midst of the brokenness of their communal life, their nation state in rubble, having made the decision to be responsible in their treatment of one another and their shaping of the new nation..., will it work, or are they simply being fools with their money?   

So the Israelites are led to discover what will happen when they live their national life, trusting in God in the very way they choose to use their money for the good of all in the community and act justly in their political decisions.  The Psalmist says, “They will come home amid shouts of joy!”  God will fully supply when God's people fully share! 

It is the word of God for the people of God as we prepare to discover the joy of Christmas. 

 
Amen.