Loading...Sing aloud! Shout for joy! Rejoice! Exult!
For years, people had lived in a foreign country with a foreign language and culture and where they could not worship as they wanted.
They’d lived like this for so many years and through so many generations that they weren’t really sure anymore where home was or what home was.
The people were feeling lost and homeless.
Some may have even wondered if God had abandoned them.
Sing aloud! Shout for joy! Rejoice! Exult!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Deborah felt like she’d been in the wilderness for years.
She had an illness that no one had been able to figure out.
Then her mother got very sick and died.
The water heater leaked everywhere,
and then the pastor of her church left suddenly
to move to another church in another state.
Everything seemed broken.
Even though she had a house, Deborah felt homeless and lost.
She felt like she was in the wilderness.
She even wondered if God had abandoned her.
Sing aloud! Shout for Joy! Rejoice! Exult!
But how do we sing a song of rejoicing when we are in the wilderness?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John the baptizer,
the same John for whom Zechariah sang
that beautiful song from last week,
has called us out to the wilderness,
to the edges (and even beyond) of what is comfortable.
As if that wasn’t enough
he then proceeds to holler at us:
“You mess of snakes!
What makes you think you can escape judgment?
Your actions do matter!
You can’t just rely upon religious heritage,
or saying the “right words”,
or showing up to church on Sundays.
Your actions show that you are in relationship with God.
They are the results of life lived in God.
If they’re not there, then where is God for you?”
So, there we are in the wilderness,
confronted with our own brokenness,
feeling confused, ashamed, lost, abandoned, homeless
when that refrain is sung again:
Sing aloud! Shout for joy! Rejoice! Exult!
~~~~~~~~~
But how do we sing a song of rejoicing when we are in the wilderness?
What would motivate such a song?
No question about it, Paul was a fiery and intense person.
From the beginning of his life, through schooling,
and into his first job as a Pharisee,
he had a single-mindedness about him.
He took on the challenging and really difficult work
that others shied away from
because he believed that what he was doing was right,
and because he knew that he could do it.
After his life altering conversion
(including a name change from Saul to Paul),
and Paul’s sharing of his faith in Christ
rather than persecuting those who were Christians,
his forceful personality came right along with him.
As he traveled north into what is now Turkey and into Greece,
he became known pretty quickly in each place
not just by the people who heard his preaching,
who then became members of the new and fledgling churches,
but by various groups of people who heard about him.
Religious leaders (Jewish), merchants, townsfolk.
More than once,
Paul’s self-assurance (some might call it “cockiness”),
his cutting tongue, and
his uncompromising position on Jesus Christ and faith
actually got him thrown into prison.
And prison is exactly where he was when he wrote this letter
to his friends in Philippi,
this young church which struggled and wandered,
which fought amongst themselves,
which felt a little lost, and maybe even kind of homeless.
Paul, in one wilderness – prison –
wrote to his friends in another wilderness
and encouraged them, even commanded them, to rejoice,
to give thanks, and to pray in thanksgiving!
In this snippet from Paul’s letter,
he reminded the Philippians, and us,
that our specific life situation or circumstance
is not what causes us to rejoice or not.
Rather, we are called to rejoice because God is with us at all times.
Sing aloud! Shout for joy! Rejoice! Exult!
But how do we sing a song of rejoicing when we are in the wilderness?
How do we sing with joy when we feel lost, abandoned, or homeless?
~~~~~~~~~~~
Paul reminded the Philippians,
as he reminds us,
that we are at home in God,
that we are remembered, and re-membered, by God,
that Jesus is with us in the wilderness,
that the Holy Spirit finds us, so we are not lost.
Sing aloud! Shout for joy! Rejoice! Exult!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How do we sing a song of rejoicing when we are in the wilderness?
We do it by remembering God’s presence with us in the past.
The Israelites could sing with the prophets Zephaniah and Isaiah
because
they remembered how God had led the people home before
and they remembered that
as God led them before,
God made a home with them in their wilderness journey.
We tell and re-tell the stories of faith,
both those found in our Holy Scriptures,
but also the stories of God loving, redeeming,
and transforming us.
We tell the stories of God making a home with us in our wilderness places.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How do we sing a song of rejoicing when we are in the wilderness?
We look for ways that God is teaching, shaping, and molding us
even in the midst of wilderness.
John’s harsh words startled the crowds who’d gathered
to be a part of the not uncommon cleansing ritual of baptism.
John startled them out of their normalcy,
out of what they expected to hear,
out of their wilderness and confusion and lost-ness.
John startled them into life and they asked,
“how then, do we live as people in relationship to God
and as people who trust God?”
It was as though John was just waiting for someone to ask this!
He taught the people that even in the wilderness
of being an outcast (as the tax collectors were),
of being misunderstood and even hated (as the soldiers were),
of not having any idea of where to start (everyone else gathered),
they could live this way of rejoicing, and of exultation.
John teaches us
how to live with a sense of abundance and sharing
rather than of scarcity (and clinging to all that we have);
how to live with compassion and vulnerability
rather than of fear and slamming the doors (literal or figurative);
how to include all people in this way of life
rather than to exclude those different, frightening, or even scary.
John begins to teach us (and prepare us for the really great lessons from Jesus) about living a life that is turned around (a life of repentance) to face God in the world and God’s beloved people.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How do we sing a song of rejoicing when we are in the wilderness?
You rejoice because life and wholeness in God eclipses any situation.
You exult because salvation is here, no matter what has happened, what may be going on now, or what may happen.
You sing aloud because you have been changed to live for others, not for yourself.
The joy and hope for which you have been searching are closer than your own heart
because God is already there and has already made a home in you.
You brood of vipers!
Join the song and the rejoicing of the ages:
Sing aloud! Shout for joy! Rejoice! Exalt!
Amen
