resounding and rejoicing

 

Blessed be God who animates our lives and promises Joy to the World. Amen

In the liturgical cycle of things today is known as Rose Sunday, the Sunday we light the rose colored candle which symbolizes the Joy which is born at Christmas and the Joy to come among us. 

It is also known apparently by some as “stir it up Sunday”! This reminds me of preparing a cake to bake and getting out the lumps. Sometimes amazingly delicious, and joyful, things come from stirring. It can be a form of preparation. It can take time.

So let me see if we might stir something up in order to come to a new understanding of God’s Joy at Christmas. 

In stirring ideas about joy this past week and stirring the lectionary as well, I came upon something very new to me and related to joy. Simply put, Isaac Watts did not write Joy to the World as a Christmas carol! It was written rather as musical setting for Psalm 98 at a time when the Psalms were sung in different ways in the Church of England. 

Talk about an aha moment!

Many of us struggle to come up with known, familiar and beautiful Advent hymns. They are outnumbered in the hymnal and often carry ponderous messages. I personally love many of them but do look forward to the day when Joy to the World is belted out with trumpets and tympanum. 

Yet this year, even were it in the bulletin for Christmas, we would not be belting out any words. I view this news of the intention and different context for Joy to the World as an invitation to try it on as an Advent hymn and especially to do so on this Sunday when we look for Joy under every new article and anxious moment.

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare him room,

And heaven and nature sing,

And heaven and nature sing,

And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the world! the Saviour reigns;

Let men their songs employ;

While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains

Repeat the sounding joy,

Repeat the sounding joy,

Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found,

Far as the curse is found,

Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,

And makes the nations prove

The glories of His righteousness,

And wonders of His love,

And wonders of His love,

And wonders, wonders, of His love.

When I ponder this hymn with Advent lenses, I see wonder, angels, music, preparation and the intimate connection between truth and grace coming on earth and our joyful response. 

Repetition causes this hymn to beat a steady prayer in our bodies. The words resounding and rejoicing carry me along. Make a joyful “sound” to the Lord offers hope that this longed for grace will come on earth to lay a cloak of peace and joy and hope and love over all creation.

Repeat the sounding joy

Repeat the sounding joy

Rejoice Rejoice Emmanuel

While I am now mixing my metaphors/hymns, I hope you might see or feel the conveyance of excitement and hope which Joy to the World causes. It points to Emmanuel, then and to come. It holds us in this in between space. 

Joy, deeper and different from mere happiness, comes when truth and grace reveal the good news of Jesus Christ, the wonders of His Love. Joy happens when justice and mercy kiss! 

And we made in God’s image long for all God’s gifts including deep Joy.

The great Benedictine scholar Sebastian Moore wrote this:

“Desire is not an emptiness longing to be filled
Desire is a fullness, longing to be in relationship
Desire is love trying to happen.”

Our very appreciation and longing for joy may cause us to turn to God with corrected lenses and renewed hope. 

We are called to be God’s joy in the world. To seize the opportunities to reflect truth and grace, not to mention mercy and justice, to and into the world. 

So I invite you on this Sunday when there is not playing on the merry organ to nevertheless ponder Joy to the World and allow its joy to orient or reorient you to the preparation to receive him still, and allow the dear one to enter in. 

Like Mary in the Magnificat responds to the terrifying and life giving news of her conception, we too might hear an angel call us to rejoice at holy news!

Like Paul in Thesssalonians we too might realize our invitation to rejoice always in unceasing prayer.

We too might say yes with joyful praise and in so doing not just study joy and examples of it but Become the Joy!

Repeat the sounding joy

Repeat the sounding joy....