Daughters of Joy
Phil 4:4-7, Zeph 3:14-20
Preached Canberra Baptist Church 3rd December 2006
Did you hear the one about 2 little boys who were staying with their grandparents for the Christmas holidays. While kneeling to say their bedtime prayers the smallest boy began yelling his prayer at the top of his lungs. DEAR GOD, FOR CHRISTMAS I’D LIKE AN X-BOX, A BIKE, A SCOOTER, A NEW DVD…” His brother interrupted him. “Why are you yelling? God can hear you. He’s not deaf”. The younger brother replied “I know God’s not deaf, but Grandma and Grandpa are”
Good King Wenceleslas rang Pizza Hut to order a pizza and was asked what type of crust he wanted. “The usual – deep pan, crisp and even”
Father Christmas and his wife were arguing about the weather – Mrs Christmas insisting that rain was coming and Father Christmas equally sure it wasn’t. When she kept insisting it would rain he asked how she could be so sure. “I asked Rudolph’, she said. “Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear”
And I’m sure most of you know what would have happened if there had been three wise women visiting the baby Jesus instead of three wise men: they would have asked directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned out the stable, made a casserole and brought practical gifts.
Let me read you a poem: called “Carol for Comedians” (Leonard Mann)
Three mighty kings, ‘tis said,
Once came to Bethlehem town
And each bore on his head
A golden crown.
Upon the East a star
Lay like a gorgeous gem
Which led them from afar
To Bethlehem.
There in a manger laid
They found a little Child
And at their gifts displayed
It sadly smiled.
A vagabond came in
Who too had seen the star,
A man of merry sin
As such men are.
He had no precious gems,
Gold, frankinscense nor myrrh,
No crowns nor diadems,
Poor wanderer.
He’d songs upon his lips
And laughter in his eye
And tales and jokes and quips
To pass time by.
He sang a ditty and
He winked so roguishly
The Child stretched out Its hand
And laughed with glee.
One of the themes of the Advent season is joy, and today that is our focus. We suppress it a bit with our formal seating arrangements and 12th century hymns – not that I mind singing such beautiful ancient expressions of faith – I did choose it after all! – but the words “joy” and “rejoice” are so prevalent in the bible – 519 according to my concordance – that you would hope it would spill over a bit more into our worship. Some of you will have heard Jim say he thinks all church meetings should start with prayer and end with a joke, or vice versa – and I think he has a good point. So I started my sermon with some jokes today anyway.
As many of you know, I’ve been co-teaching a course at St Mark’s entitled “Wisdom and Worship in the Old Testament” – I taught the worship part of the course. Some of the features of worship in the old Testament are that it is relational, so is often characterised by responsive prayers, psalms and songs, it is communal, where whole communities would join for important worship events, and it incorporates all of life’s experiences: – it belongs in the everyday as well as the temple, it includes sorrow and lament as well as thanksgiving and joy. Walter Brueggemann who has written a guide to worship in ancient Israel, says this: “Israel’s most characteristic utterance in worship is praise, the exuberant rhetorical act of gladly ceding one’s life and the life of the world over to Yahweh in joyous self-abandonment.” We get a glimpse of this joyous self-abandonment in the story of David dancing before the ark as it was brought into Jerusalem, or the victory song of Miriam thanking God that they successfully crossed the red sea. In the OT the men went out to battle, the women met them after successful campaigns with singing and dancing. But all of it is tied up in the experience of worship. In modern Jewish worship there are still days set aside for dancing with the Torah, parading it round the synagogue with the words “be glad and rejoice with the joy of the law”. This picture is a far cry from the idea we have about the Jewish attitude to the law which we probably largely get from Jesus conversations with Pharisees in the gospels or Paul’s comments in Romans – a view that sees the typical Jewish attitude to the law is that every little stipulation must be pedantically and grudgingly followed. In the Old Testament worship and law are closely tied together, so true worship according to the prophets, is joyfully fulfilling the covenant stipulations.
In the reading we just heard from Zephaniah there are four imperative verbs asking daughter Zion to rejoice:
sing aloud
shout
rejoice
exult with all your heart
After Zephaniah’s three long oracles of judgement, there are four reasons given as to why they can rejoice: The Lord’s judgements have been removed, as have the enemies of Jerusalem, disaster would no longer be sent on them, and the Lord was king and present amongst them.
The Philippian church were also asked to rejoice – the word recurs seven times in that short book.
So if this is an expectation for God’s people, who are the biblical daughters of joy that can be models for us?
The nations (Ruth)
(Zeph 3:9-10)
There is often a move from the universal to the specific in the biblical witness. The Old Testament starts with the affirmation that God created and blessed the whole world, before narrowing down to a story of Abraham and his descendents. The New Testament story of Jesus begins with the affirmation that the light of Jesus’ birth was perceived in far distant countries, and non-Jews were amongst his first worshippers, but then the story focuses on just a few individual followers and disciples. Even the small prophetic book of Zephaniah speaks first of God bringing salvation to the nations, and only then to Jerusalem. Earlier in chapter 3 a prophecy speaks of the nations beyond the rivers of Ethiopia bringing offerings to God, and the term used for the scattered nations might also be translated “the daughter of my dispersed ones”. In a clear reversal of the Tower of Babel story the prophecy speaks of the nations being gathered again and all allowed to speak the same pure language, the language of worship. This prophecy is perhaps best personified in the Old Testament in Ruth, the Moabite daughter-in-law who chose to embrace the Yahweh as the true God, saying to her Israelite mother-in-law “where you go, I will go, where you lodge, I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” (Ruth 1:16)
In the Jewish Festival of Weeks, on the Day of Pentecost, the story of Ruth is read, and as they hear the story of the Moabitess who became the grandmother of King David, Jews continue to look forward to the day when Jew and Gentile will worship together.
The Daughter of Jerusalem
(Zeph 3:12-13; 14ff)
Zephaniah also had a message of hope and joy for Jerusalem, addressed to Daughter Zion or in parallel poetry the Daughter of Jerusalem. It is addressed to the ones who had steadfastly clung to their faith despite the turbulence of their historical experience of being attacked, ransacked and carted off into captivity. While some were saying the downfall of Jerusalem meant that God had abandoned them, these faithful ones had been witness to the fact that God had remained in their midst. It was the experience of Exile that gave rise to the term Immanuel – God with us – such a precious reminder of the truth of Advent that God comes to dwell amongst humanity. In the promises of Zephaniah the Daughter of Jerusalem would find that with God in her midst all her needs would be met – she would have nourishment, tranquillity, and security. Often in the prophetic books the term “on that day” is a term of terror – an announcement of judgement. But Zephaniah gives a new and positive meaning to the phrase by embedding it right in the middle of a series of repeating ideas that encourage the daughter of Zion to trust in her God. It is a chiastic arrangement of words in the text that is easier to see when it is set out visually moving towards a central point and back again. But let me try to describe it verbally:
Sing aloud… shout for joy
The lord has turned away your enemies
The lord is in your midst
You have nothing to fear
ON THAT DAY (and then the ideas are repeated in reverse)
Fear not
The Lord is in your midst
A mighty saviour
The Lord will rejoice over you… he will sing joyfully
This announcement that God too joins in the joy of restoration, that Yahweh will rejoice over THEM, is a wonderful reminder that Worship is never one-way. Does God, too, exuberantly and gladly cede his life over to the world in joyous self-abandonment? This text suggests that he does.
Philippians (Euodia and Syntyche)
At the beginning of chapter 4 in Philippians – a letter with a theme of joy as we’ve already noted – Paul returns to another theme of the letter, that of urging the Philippians to be in agreement with each other. In ch 4 vs 2 Paul speaks directly to two daughters of the community, Euodia and Syntyche, asking them “to be of the same mind in the Lord”. Perhaps there was some disagreement between them or alternatively together they were not of the same mind as Paul. Perhaps he was asking them as members of his team to agree with him on a particular issue! There’s not enough information for us to decide. The way Paul refers to Euodia and Syntyche shows that they are on a par with many other women leaders in the early church who were mentioned by Paul in his letters. But since the letter goes straight on to the passage that was read to us earlier, they too, despite the tension, were exhorted along with the rest of the community to rejoice, to be gentle, prayerful, and to display the other characteristics listed in that passage. Paul seems to be saying that the joy that is founded in God should be able to be shared with everyone in the shape of kindness and equanimity, and these two daughters of the community could be a wonderful witness to the power of that joyful attitude to faith and community.
Mary
On this first day of Advent I also want to focus on another biblical daughter of joy – Mary, the mother of Jesus. As part of the Protestant church traditiont Baptists do not venerate Mary. We don’t say the rosary or sing hymns to her – very occasionally we sing hymns about her. But we all have an image of her, I’m sure. There is a poster on the hall noticeboard of a new feature film that has been released called The Nativity, with the young actress Kiesha ?????????? playing the part of Mary. The church received a promotional DVD about the film on which the Christian producer speaks about the desire to portray the story in intimate terms, capturing the lives of the young people involved in all the conflict, crisis and pain that growing up brings. They wanted Mary to be seen as a Real Person. I am looking forward to seeing it some time – mainly because the Marys in classical cinema are usually the same sort of Marys we see on Christmas cards: eyes downcast, hair tidy, expression serene, untroubled and untroubling. A humble and obedient servant of God. It makes me curious. Could a woman like that ever get cranky or depressed? Could we imagine her crying out with labour pains? Did she have needs and wishes of her own? Did she ever raise her voice? But when we think of the story we realise Mary would have been a girl who had enough gumption to risk a scandal. When trouble was brewing she didn’t bother with a priest, rabbi or therapist but went to visit a friend she could trust. And she was the woman to whom we tribute the Magnificat found at the beginning of Luke’s gospel – a poem of prophetic disturbing images. “My soul magnifies the Lord. My Spirit rejoices in God my saviour. Scatter the proud. Bring down the powerful from their thrones.” I don’t suppose she whispered those words with downcast eyes.
In Mary’s Song of Joy we can see the Spirit of God had come alive in her. In God’s choice of Mary as the means of enabling the incarnation we also imagine God rejoicing in humankind, especially in a humble peasant girl who nonetheless had courage and an openness to throw caution to the wind – to be taken where the spirit blew.
Us
And what of us? Can we, too, be daughters and sons of joy in our time and place? Can we live our lives so that God’s promise of a time when all nations live in harmony and speak a common language of peace may become a reality? Can we recognise God in our midst even if our own lives are in turmoil? Can we rejoice in God’s goodness and know that God is rejoicing in us? Can we be a joyful community rising over disagreements and witnessing God’s love to the world around us? And can we know the Spirit’s movement in our lives, leading us in new directions and giving us the courage to go?
Each month we gather around the communion table. For each of us it means something different. For you it may be an opportunity to confess your sins and renew your faith. Or maybe you will come because you only know God a little but want to have a greater sense of his presence in your life. It may be that for you this meal is a foretaste of the feast of heaven, the inclusive, welcoming banquet of joy. Or it may be a time of nourishment and strengthening, food for the journey. Whatever your experience is as you come to the table, you are joyfully welcomed by God who is host. Let us prepare for that welcome as we sing together the hymn no. 439 – Jesus the joy of loving hearts.