Tag: Fiesta

Love Without Hypocrisy

Psalm 149:5-6, 1 Let the faithful rejoice in triumph; let them be joyful on their beds. Let the praises of God be in their throat and a two-edged sword in their hand… Hallelujah! Sing to the Lord a new song; sing his praise in the congregation of the faithful.

Introduction

Last week Paul exhorted us to lean upon the mercy and grace of God so we are “transfigured by the renewal of the mind”, no longer conformed to this “present age” but to proving the will of God into the world. The gist (tl:dr): as those who follow Christ out of the Jordan and into the world, we take the path of the Cross. We seek out and go to the least of us, to identify with them, to be with them, considering ourselves no better and no worse but as them because this is what Christ did. For Paul, when we are encountered by God in the event of faith, everything changes; by “everything” he means e 👏ver 👏y 👏thing 👏

All of this depends on the change that occurs with the inner person in the encounter with God in the event of faith as the inner person is redefined and substantiated by the love and grace of God producing faith and trust that God does really love you. In this faith, the need to use works to make one right with God dies away. The one who has this faith, who trusts God, is the one who can now be and act in the world toward the beloved of God, the neighbor, without using the neighbor or works to justify oneself before God because they are justified by faith alone.

Now, Paul says, we can act and be in the world as we are on the inside with God; that which we have received from God we now share outward toward our neighbor and this proves God’s will in the world. How do we do that? Well, according to Paul, it’s as easy as…

Romans 12:9-21

[Let] Love [be] without hypocrisy. Abhor the evil, adhere to the good and to tenderly-loving siblingly-love toward one another, prefer valuing one another, shrink not regarding diligence, be fervently devoted to God in conformity with the Spirit, rejoice according to hope, bear up against tribulation, persevere in prayer, share in the needs of the holy ones, and pursue loving strangers. Speak well of the ones who persecute you, speak well and do not curse. (Rom. 12:9-14)[1]

Our passage opens with an odd construction of a noun and adjective in the nominative case (subject): [Let] Love [be] without hypocrisy (Η αγάπη ανυπόκριτος). There is no verb in the Greek, it’s implied. However, the most interesting aspect to this construction is that it’s the only expressed and explicit subject stated for the passage.[2] So, we can see this nominative phrase as the controlling thought for the passage. In other words, Paul tells the Romans to let love be without hypocrisy, and this is how you do it…

Paul starts with the exhortation to abhor evil. Anything threatening the will of God being proved into the world is to be abhorred/detested. This means, in light of letting love be without hypocrisy, the Romans are exhorted to love that which is of God in a Godly way: up front and honest, not secret and cloaked darkness. We cannot love authentically and entertain that which is antagonistic to the love, life, and liberation of divine activity in the world. Anything that is indifferent, death, and captivity is of the reign of evil and to be abhorred and detested. How are the Romans to detest this evil? By joining themselves to the good, to the tenderly-loving siblingly-love toward one another. In other words, love each other as siblings, as if you are all related, as family…this is the good that one is to cleave to: treating your neighbor as if they are blood relations. And, as Paul goes on to say, preferring to value one another, having esteem for the neighbor who is also a sibling.[3]  This is what love without hypocrisy looks like; this is the good way, the better way, the way that is configured to the renewed mind born of faith in Christ.[4]

Paul continues to explain love without hypocrisy. He exhorts the Romans to be hot and not lukewarm in the Spirit. This is connected to being devoted to the Lord. This heat and devotion render the Christian eager to bring the outer person inline with the inner person and to see the very seriousness of the situation at hand in the world holding the neighbor captive. To be lukewarm in the spirit is equivalent to not caring about how the world is catapulting itself into death and destruction and taking everyone with it.[5] To be hot in the Spirit is to feel the urgency of God, the pathos of God, to be caught up into the great line of prophets who go into the world proclaiming in word and deed God’s love, life, and liberation.

The Romans are to rejoice according to hope; hope is a reason to rejoice, and rejoicing invigorates hope, just as a fiesta participates in resistance and liberation![6] From here the exhortation moves to bear up against tribulation and persevere in prayer. Moving through the idea of love without hypocrisy means daring to rejoice in having hope even now, in pulling together and resisting the goal of tribulation and persecution, which is death and destruction. And there’s no better way to do this than through honest and presence-filled prayer[7] individually and corporately participated with the goal to commune with God, to draw close to God through Christ and by the power of the Spirit so that our strength and focus are continually renewed.

From prayer the exhortation moves toward the neighbor: share in the needs of the holy ones. Meaning, among Christians there is not the mentality of “you made your bed now lie in it”; rather, like the one who helped Christ carry his cross, we take a share in the needs of our siblings. You do not walk alone; you are seen, known, and loved; let us walk together.[8] Paul pushes this further, it’s not just those with whom you share a pew or those in your neighborhood, but strangers, pursue the love of strangers (τήν φιλξενίαν). Give this unhypocritical love even to strangers freely and willingly; you did not earn God’s love therefore others do not have to earn your love.[9] This goes for language toward other people, especially those who persecute you. The Romans are charged with loving the stranger and to bless the enemy, speak well and do not curse. Through the presence of God’s love in our hearts and minds, clinging to love without hypocrisy, we love as we have been loved; we love even those whom we do not know and those who persecute us; we do not become that which we abhor.[10]

Conclusion

Rejoice with the rejoicing, weep with the weeping, have the same understanding toward one another, do not think lofty things but be carried away with lowly things, do not think yourself wise, return to no one evil over evil, foresee the beautiful in the face of all humanity…be at peace with all humanity, do not vindicate yourselves, beloved…do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil by the good. (Rom. 12:15-17, 18b-19b, 21)

Beloved, we love because we have first been loved. We dare to love in a real way, invested with our entire selves even if it means we might get hurt, even if it means we may sacrifice our own lives. There’s a story written by Leo Tolstoy that I believe, in the ending of Master and Man, encapsulates the thrust of this part of Romans 12,

STRUGGLING up to the sledge Vassili caught hold of it, and stood for some time without stirring, trying to get back his breath. Nikita was not in his old place, but something was lying in the sledge covered with snow, and Vassili guessed it was Nikita. His terror was altogether gone now, and if he feared anything it was that state of terror he had experienced whilst riding, and especially when alone in the drift. At all hazards he must not let himself fall into that state again, and in order to safeguard his mind it was necessary to think of something, to do something. So he commenced by turning his back to the wind and unbuttoning his coat. Then, as he began to recover a little, he wiped the snow off his boots and gloves, and girded himself afresh, tight and low down, prepared for action, as when he went out from his store to buy grain from the peasants. The first business that occurred to him was to free the pony’s legs, which he did, and then led and tied Mukhorty to the front of the sledge, and went behind him to put the breeching and pad in their proper places. During this operation he saw something move inside the sledge, and from beneath the snow Nikita raised his head. Evidently with a mighty effort the peasant gained a sitting posture, waved his hand in front of his face with a strange gesture as if chasing flies, and said something which seemed to Vassili as if he were calling him.

He left the sacking without arranging it, and came up to Nikita.
“What is the matter with you? What do you say?”
“I am dying; that is what is the matter,” answered he in a broken voice. “Look after my son and my wife.”
“What is the matter? Are you frozen?”
“I feel my death! Pardon! The love of Christ,” murmured Nikita in a tearful voice, continuing all the while to wave his hands, as if keeping off flies.

Vassili Andreïtch stood for half a minute without speaking or moving, then rapidly, with the same decision with which he was wont to strike hands over a good bargain, he stepped back a pace, turned up his cuffs, and with both hands began to dig the snow off Nikita, and out of the sledge. When this was accomplished, he hurriedly undid his girdle, threw open his fur coat, and flung himself upon Nikita, covering him not only with his coat, but with his whole glowing warm body.

Arranging the skirts of his coat between Nikita and the back of the sledge, and grasping him between his own knees, he lay flat, resting his own head on the bast, and now he could no longer hear the movements of the pony or the whistle of the wind, but only Nikita’s breathing. Nikita at first lay motionless, then sighed deeply, and moved, evidently feeling warmer.

“There now! And you talking of dying! Lie still and get warm! That’s how we shall…” began Vassili. But to his huge astonishment Vassili could not get any further in his speech, for the tears crowded into his eyes, and his lower jaw trembled. He left off talking and only gulped down something rising in his throat.
“I have got a regular fright, and am as weak as a baby,” thought he to himself; but that weakness, far from being disagreeable, gave him a peculiar pleasure, the like of which he had never felt before.
“That’s how we are!” he repeated, experiencing a feeling of curious quiet triumph, and lying still for a long time, wiping his eyes on the fur of his coat, and tucking under his knee the right side of his coat which the wind kept blowing loose. But he wanted terribly to tell somebody how happy he was.

***

Several times he glanced at the horse, and saw that his back was bare and the sacking was draggling in the snow; he ought to get up and cover him but he could not make up his mind, at that moment, to leave Nikita, and break in upon the happy condition in which he was revelling. He no longer felt any fear. He was warm from below from Nikita, and above from his coat, only his hands, which were holding the fur round Nikita, and his feet, which the wind kept uncovering, were beginning to be numbed. But he gave no thought to them, but only how best to restore warmth to the peasant lying beneath him.

***

He woke, but not altogether the same as he had fallen asleep. He strove to rise, and could not; to move his arm, he could not, nor his leg. He tried to turn his head, and could not even do that. It astonished him, but did not vex him in the slightest. He knew that this was death, and neither did that vex him. He remembered that Nikita was lying under him, warmed and alive, and it seemed that he was Nikita, and Nikita was he, and that his life was in Nikita, and not in himself. He strained his ears and heard Nikita breathing.
“Nikita is living, so that I am also alive,” said he triumphantly to himself. And something quite new, such as he had never known before in his life, came over him.

He remembered his money, his store, his house, his buying and his sales, and the Mironoff millions, and could not understand why the man they called Vassili Brekhunoff had worried over what he had worried over. “You see! he did not know what he was about,” thought he, referring to Brekhunoff. ‘He did not know as I now know. For I know now without a mistake, I know now.” And again he heard that voice calling. “I come, I come!” he answered joyfully, with his whole being. And he felt that he was free, and nothing further held him back. And these were the last things that Vassili Andreïtch saw, heard and felt in this world.

Around the storm still raged, and the snow whirlwinds covered the coat of the dead Vassili, the shivering head of Mukhorty, and sledge with Nikita lying warm in the bottom of it under his dead master.[11]

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] the other subjects addressed are the audience in the following imperatival participial and the imperative verbs implied by the masculine nominative plural or second person plural, respectively.

[3] LW 25, 455. “He is speaking here of that inward honor which is a high regard and esteem for one’s neighbor.”

[4] LW 25, 454. “In this passage the apostle is dealing with the idea that the love among Christians ought to be a special and more perfect thing than the relationship among strangers and enemies.”

[5] LW 25, 456. “For they must be fervent in one of the two, either the spirit or the flesh. And the fervor for one is the freezing out or extinction of the other … Therefore the man who does his work with lukewarmness of necessity will be fervent in the flesh. And on that account he is compelled as it were to ‘waste the work’ which he performs, because of the fervor of the flesh.”

[6] Ada Maria Isazi Diaz Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the 21st Century. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997.

[7] LW 25, 458.

[8] LW 25, 462.

[9] LW 25, 463.

[10] LW 25, 466-467.

[11] Leo Tolstoy Master and Man, Trans. S. Rapoport and John C. Kenworthy. Rev. George Gibian. New York, NY: Penguin, 1995. Pp. 74-81.

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Burning Ember of Divine Fire: Resistance!

Psalm 27:8-10 Even now God lifts up my head above my enemies round about me. Therefore I will offer in God’s dwelling an oblation with sounds of great gladness; I will sing and make music to Abba God. Hearken to my voice, God, when I call; have mercy on me and answer me.

Introduction

Recently I encountered a little reminder: “Your feelings let you know that you’re alive.” My knee jerk reaction was: “Maybe I could use less knowing??” I feel so much right now. Every day seems to compound the previous one, ushering in deeper hues of the feelings from before accompanied by new ones or ones long dormant. Huh, I’ve not felt that shade of gray in a while… A lot of it revolves around being dissatisfied with the way things are, dissatisfaction threaded through with worry that this is it, this is all, this will be the new normal from now on. I know I’m not alone; I think we all carry heavy emotional burdens right now. There’s a lot to feel; and feeling the feels carries great risk. What if it is too much for me to bear and it crushes me?

It might. That’s the risk. That’s why we numb.

The urge to numb our dissatisfied inner worlds is on the rise. There are times to numb, you’ll never hear me advocate for human life sans devices helping us catch a break from the turmoil of our external and inner worlds. However, it seems that for the past three years the need to numb is more prevalent. If I’m numb I can’t feel that subtle worry settling in the marrow of my bones. If I’m numb, I can ignore the deeper shades of gray. If I’m numb, who cares if things stay the same or get better… If I’m numb, I can’t feel that dreaded dissatisfaction. I can’t feel anything in fact.

One of the marks of the living is the ability to be dissatisfied; to be dissatisfied is to disagree with death. To feel our feelings—whatever they are, even if they are painful—opens up the door to the reality that somehow and somewhere life is coming more in line with the principles of death rather than the dictates of life. To dare to feel means taking straight-on the real feeling of being truly dissatisfied. What if it is too much for me to bear and it crushes me?

It might. That’s the risk. That’s why we resist.

Isaiah 9:1-4

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness–
on them light has shined.

Isaiah’s text emanates hope completed and yet to be realized. The light has shone and his audience will see it. In a deliberate play of verbal tenses, Isaiah’s hope is visceral and tangible. You can feel Isaiah’s excitement as he proclaims these words to a downtrodden people, those trapped under mills-stone sized oppression, those stripped of their liberty and reduced to the margins of society.

Isaiah is one of the great prophets of Israel who stands between God and God’s people, representing God’s love and desire for the people and representing the people’s angst and dissatisfaction to God; the prophet is the sympathetic one, the one who identifies with God and with the people.[1] The divine pathos—the divine passion—of God for God’s people encourages Isaiah to declare to the people that their cries are heard, their tears counted, their pain felt (personally) by God. In the same breath, Isaiah is given the courage to stand and step against the death dealing characteristic of the kingdom of humanity; with divine passion, Isaiah articulates the divine no! to oppression and violence.[2] Judgment has come for those who harm God’s beloved.

Isaiah’s language fluctuates between speaking on behalf of God and for the people; this fluctuation highlights the duality of Isaiah’s existence trapped in this articulation of mutual love.[3] He carries the emotional, thundering content of divine speech into the world to ears longing for liberation like parched tongues eager for water, and then moves to articulate the depth of gratitude and praise from God’s people to God.[4] Isaiah, and all prophets who came before and follow after, are aligned to the divine concern and the human concern—they’re sympathetic to what is going on both in heaven and on earth and they are eager not only to speak God’s loving and liberative reign but also to act cooperatively against human tyranny.[5]

This human tyranny, for Isaiah, works against the livelihood of God’s people, restricts thriving to an elite few, submerges feeble and weak human bodies deep into the waters of misery, injustice, and alienation; and, for Isaiah, this isn’t acceptable. In sympathy with the people and with God, Isaiah is committed to pronouncing the judgment of God[6] on those who oppress God’s people, and is empowered to proclaim a better way to live in the world and to communicate a strength to respond to the dissatisfaction of the way things are.[7]

For the yoke of their burden,
and the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.

Isaiah, in this brief section, articulates the longed-for liberation of the people. Their yoke (of oppression) that stretches across their shoulders is broken. This is not merely a spiritual thing that Isaiah articulates, it’s not as if God’s people are burdened by the violence and condemnation of structures wired against them but they aren’t really; it is this way and the response is to ask God to break the rod of the oppressor and to rid themselves of this yoke. But it’s not about Israel rolling over and waiting for God to show up; God is with them, the prophet represents this fact. Isaiah wakes the people out of slumbering numbness and asks them to look and see their plight. They are in darkness; they need light. They are yoked; they need liberation. “THIS IS NOT NORMAL!” Isaiah Thunders! He joins them up into God’s love for them, the beloved, and exhorts them to feel what has too long been buried and trapped, refused for fear.

Life demands feeling even the very worst of emotions, so Israel can live in a way that resists death. For death is not just of the body, it can happen before, as they walk around and go through their days. Israel must be summoned into their plight, to feel it, to remember they are alive…even if it might be too much for them to bear, even if it might crush them. Because…

It might. That’s the risk. That’s why they resist.

Conclusion

You [God] have multiplied the nation,
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people exult when dividing plunder.

To wake up, to feel one’s dismay, to be dissatisfied with things as they are is the deep calling to deep, it’s the divine summons to take up the cross and follow, it’s the loss of self that’s the gaining of self, it’s being alive. Ultimately, it’s the beginning of our resistance to that which is dead set on stealing our life and refusing our liberation to be fully thriving human beings. To be dissatisfied with the way things are is the burning ember that becomes the divine fire of love that is resistance against death on behalf of life. To resist death, we must live; we must risk the vulnerability of being human and fleshy, thinking and feeling creatures and live…even now, even when things are gray and bleak, midwinter humdrum. We must respond to Isaiah’s summons and wake up and look around, and be on our guard against slipping back into hibernation. We must remember that the God whom we encounter in Christ by the power of the Holy spirit is, to quote Dorothee Sölle and her husband Fulbert Steffensky, the very God who

“…stands on the side of life and especially on the side of those to whom life in its wholeness is denied and who do not reach the point of real living. God is not on the side of the rulers, the powerful, the rich, the affluent, the victorious. God takes sides with those who need him. He sides with the victims.”[8]

As those who are positioned to follow Jesus out of the Jordan, we are exhorted through Isaiah’s words to live and not just barely. We’re exhorted to live as those who have seen a great light, those who have reason to rejoice, to celebrate, to live tremendously, to live fully, to fiesta,[9] to have joy, so that we can mock, resist, and refuse death and destruction its façade of power over us. We are exhorted to join in life’s great songs against death; we are called to identify and sing with those who suffer more than we do.[10] In life’s desire to live we must advocate and raise our voices in celebration of life—for our neighbors and siblings, thus for ourselves—to remind death we’re still alive, dissatisfied as hell but still very much alive.

[1] Abraham K Heschel The Prophets New York, NY: JPS 1962. 308. “In contrast to the Stoic sage who is a homo apathetikos, the prophet may be characterized as a homo sympathetikos. For the phenomenology of religion the prophet represents a type sui generis.”

[2] Heschel, The Prophets, 308. “The pathos of God is upon him. It breaks out in him like a storm in the soul, overwhelming his inner life, his thoughts, feelings, wishes, and hopes. It takes possession of his heart and mind, giving him the courage to act against the world.”

[3] Heschel, The Prophets, 308-309. “The words of the prophet are often like thunder; they sound as if he were in a state of hysteria. But what appears to us as wild emotionalism must seem like restraint to him who has to convey the emotion of the Almighty in the feeble language of man. His sympathy is an overflow of powerful emotion which comes in response to what he sensed in divinity. For the only way to intuit a feeling is to feel it. One cannot have a merely intellectual awareness of a concrete suffering or pleasure, for intellect as such is merely the tracing of relations, and a feeling is no mere relational pattern.”

[4] Heschel, The Prophets, 309-310. “´It is such intense sympathy or emotional identification with the divine pathos that may explain the shifting from the third to the first person in the prophetic utterances. A prophecy that starts out speaking of God in the third person turns into God speaking in the first person. Conversely, a prophecy starting with God speaking in the first person turns into a declaration of the prophet speaking about God in the third person.”

[5] Heschel, The Prophets, 309. “The unique feature of religious sympathy is not self-conquest, but self-dedication; not the suppression of emotion, but its redirection; not silent subordination, but active co-operation with God; not love which aspires to the Being of God in Himself, but harmony of the soul with the concern of God. To be a prophet means to identify one’s concern with the concern.”

[6] Heschel, The Prophets, 171. “No one seems to question her invincibility except Isaiah, who foresees the doom of the oppressor, the collapse of the monster.”

[7] Heschel, The Prophets, 309. “Sympathy, however, is not an end in itself. Nothing is further from the prophetic mind than to inculcate or to live out a life of feeling, a religion of sentimentality. Not mere feeling but actin will mitigate the world’s misery, society’s injustice or the people’s alienation from God. Only action will relieve the tension between God and man. Both pathos and sympathy are, from the perspective of the total situation, demands rather than fulfullments. Prophetic sympathy is no delight; unlike ecstasy, it is not a goal, but a sense of challenge, a commitment, a state of tension, consternation, and dismay.”

[8] Dorothee Sölle and Fulbert Steffensky Not Just Yes & Amen: Christians with a Cause. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1985. p. 82

[9] Ada Maria Isazi-Diaz Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996. p. 131.

[10] I’m influenced here by the work of The Rev. Dr. James H. Cone in The Spiritual & The Blues. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1972. p. 130. “Whatever form black music takes it is always an expression of black life in America and what the people must do to survive with a measure of dignity in a society which seems bent on destroying their right to be human beings. The fact that black people keep making music means that we as a people refuse to be destroyed. We refuse to allow the people who oppress us to have the last word about our humanity. The last word belongs to us and music is our way of saying it. Contrary to popular opinion, therefore, the spirituals and the blues are not songs of despair or of a defeated people. On the contrary, they are songs which represent one of the great triumphs of the human spirit.”

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Joy, Even Now

Psalm 146:4-6 Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! whose hope is in their God; who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them; who keeps God’s promise for ever; who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger.

Introduction

Every so often I look up words I know well because I know them too well; maybe I’ve lost the nuance of the word. Did you know “joy” and “happy” are not the same thing? Did you know “joy” participates in “happiness”? Joy carries the idea of “delight” and “well-being”, it’s got heft, substance, something that sticks to the bones like a really hearty stew in the middle of winter. Joy participates in exuberant exhibition of emotion and subtle contentedness of bliss. In its verbal form (to joy, joying, joyed) it takes on an extra measure of itself, “to experience great pleasure or delight: REJOICE”[1]

When was the last time you rejoiced? When was the last time I rejoiced?

If there’s a way to unjoice or dejoice or be ajoice, that’s me. I cannot recall the last time I had “joy”. I’ve had excitement. I’ve had pleasant surprises making me temporarily happy. I’ve laughed, chuckled, smiled at times. I’ve even been “content”, but that’s a slippery slope because one can be content in dire circumstances through “normalization” and “desensitization” (akin to surrender, giving up, numbing out). But “rejoice”? Have joy? IN THIS *wave arms about* ECONOMY?

If it’s been a while since you last rejoiced or had joy, you’re not alone. It feels decadent to have joy. The heaviness I’ve carried about for the past (nearly) three years has rendered me unable to be seized by something as beautiful as joy let alone something causing me to rejoice! Joy in the midst of violence? Joy in the midst of death? Joy in the midst of chaos and strife? Joy in the midst of sickness? Rejoice?! WHY. What about the gloom and doom of our socio-political world gives me the reason let alone the time and the space to have joy, to rejoice? I’m fine with drab and meh; I know drab and meh.

The heartbeat of joy weakens.

Isaiah 35:1-10

Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
“Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
God will come with vengeance,
with terrible recompense.
God will come and save you.”
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
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;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp,
the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

Is. 35:3-7

It’s like Isaiah knows the turmoil of our inner worlds. Of us he doesn’t speak, though; we’re invited into this moment through words caught by ancient scrolls. Israel is his concern, the poor, the weak, the hindered, the oppressed, the widowed and orphaned, the exhausted, the threatened. Prophetic words as fruit of the prophet encountered, embraced, and captured by the divine pathos—the divine passion—of God for God’s beloved. The prophet embodies the love of God for God’s people, and the prophet’s words reflect that love, signal to it, make it audible, manifest it. They ebb and flow between sour and sweet, but all the words are dedicated as a love note from The Lover to the Beloved. Sour notes fit a melody when sweet ones speak in reply; the musical communique penetrates ears and hearts of those to whom the tune was written, eager to resuscitate feeble lungs and rejuvenate unsteady legs.[2] Isaiah’s words here in chapter 35 are filled with the promises of God; it’s in God Israel’s exhorted to anchor their hope as the conduit of divine peace.[3]

Israel can only handle so much darkness and distance; the human spirit is resilient to a point. To keep throwing one’s anchor into the void of nothingness begins to break even the heartiest of souls. When God is perceived as far, distant, gone, negligent, Israel grows faint circling around the vortex of death, exhausted by the hopelessness and peacelessness of being trapped under the kingdom and rule of humanity. But then, Isaiah. Isaiah comes calling out the decrepit kingdom of humanity and declaring the reign of God. The speaking of God’s promises unentangles Israel from their chaos (unpeace) and becomes the story interrupting their captivity which is the foundation of their hope. The prophet declares not an old thing, but a new one.[4] Words cut through the oppressive gloom, pierce brutal silence, and rupture Israel’s melancholic lethargy. It’s in these words from prophet to people, “God becomes near and clear,” and the agony of a hopeless and peaceless existence dissipates.[5] Shema, O Israel, hear the footfalls of your God drawing near, look and behold[6] your God, the God of love and life, the substance of your hope, the source of your peace, the space for your joy.

And the ransomed of God shall return,
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Is 35:10

The heartbeat of joy revives.

Conclusion

Remember, “Hope exists because there’s another story to be told. And if there’s another story to tell, then there’s another way to conceive the world. And if another way to conceive the world, then another way to be in the world.”[7] Also remember, “this hope—this other way to be in the world because of a different story—is the means by which peace becomes a gift to us…”[8] If hope exists because there’s another story and another way to be in the world, and by this peace exists, then we can also say that by the same means does joy exist. Hope anchored in God’s story is the capillary of divine peace extracting us from that which entangles us, giving us new ground to stand receiving space to have joy, even now. But, remember, passivity isn’t an option here. The intervention of God is wholly outside of us and wholly not outside of us. Joy exists because God is and God is within us.

There’s an audacity in Isaiah’s prophetic words daring to proclaim joy and rejoicing. Just like with divine love and life, joy sourced in the story of God is revolutionary. It’s not naïve, it’s not blind. Joy, like prophetic declaration, cuts through the darkness and gloom, not with some saccharine happiness, but with boldness arriving with something other, something new, something alive. Isaiah reminds us: we’re not dead yet. Dead bodies do not rejoice; living ones do. Hope exists, and therefore peace exists, and in this space joy and rejoicing exist. Stepping into that space daring to laugh, see beauty, and have delight in yourself, in others, in creation, and in God becomes a form of revolutionary resistance against the death and doom lurking about the kingdom of humanity—like a rainbow parting the stormy sky. Isaiah’s announcement is a summons to a party, a big one: Come, O Israel! Because of hope, come and sing! Because of peace, leap and dance! Your Beloved is near! Come and Rejoice! I dare you!

Joy exists because the story of God disrupts us long enough to give us space to see things as they are, to gather us together, and to sing. Joy exists because there’s a struggle against struggle that is divine and beautiful, the very essence of love and life and fruit of hope and peace. Joy exists because we don’t need to bury our heads in the sand, remaining ignorant to the suffering in the world, oblivious to our own suffering; rather, we can have the audacity and boldness to look it square in the eye and go beyond it. Joy exists because, to quote Ada Maria Isazi-Diaz, “The struggle for survival…is not only a struggle not to die, not only a struggle to live but only barely. It is a struggle to live fully.”[9] Joy exists because somehow in the midst of the chaos and tumult of our world we have hope, and if we have hope then we have peace, and if we have these, we have the space for joy.

The heartbeat of joy quickens.

The stories we’re surrounded by, Beloved, are not the only stories; they’re not the final word. There’s another word. When everything looked lost and drab, when gloom and doom seemed to be the only words whispered on the wind, another word broke through, heralding good news in the middle of the night to those far off, “And the ransomed of God shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

[1] Miriam Webster’s Online Dictionary.

[2] Abraham K Heschel The Prophets New York, NY: JPS 1962. “The words of the prophet are stern, sour, stinging. But behind his austerity is love and compassion for mankind. …Indeed, every prediction of disaster is in itself an exhortation to repentance. The prophet is sent not only to upbraid, but also to ‘strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees’ (Isa. 35:3).” 12.

[3] Heschel, The Prophets, 12. “Almost every prophet brings consolation, promise, and the hope of reconciliation along with censure and castigation. He begins with a message of doom; he concludes with a message of hope.”

[4] Brevard S. Childs Isaiah: A Commentary. The Old Testament Library. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2001. 258. “Moreover, salvation is not merely deliverance from Babylonian captivity, but rather sharing in God’s new creation (65:17ff.). Isaiah 35:10 picks up this same theme, ‘sorrow and sighing will disappear,’ which is finally elaborated in its fullest form in chapter 65.”

[5] Heschel, Prophets, 193. “Agony is the final test. When all hopes are dashed and all conceit is shattered, man begins to miss what he has long spurned. In darkness, God becomes near and clear.”

[6] Heschel, Prophets, 193. “God is invisible, distant, dwelling in darkness (1 Kings 8:12). His thoughts are not our thoughts; His ways in history are shrouded and perplexing. Prophecy is a moment of unshrouding, an opening of the eyes, a lifting of the curtain. Such moments are rare in history.”

[7] Lauren R. E. Larkin “Advent 1 11.27.22”; “Hope, Even Now” https://laurenrelarkin.com/2022/11/27/hope-even-now/

[8] Lauren R. E. Larkin “Advent 2 12.4.22”; “Peace, Even Now” https://laurenrelarkin.com/2022/12/04/peace-even-now/

[9] Ada Maria Isazi-Diaz Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996. p. 131.

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