Even though in my experience it isn’t true, I have become accustomed to accepting the idea that most Christians are a dour lot. One Catholic edict back several hundred years ago even labeled as Anathema anyone who causes a laugh in church. Anathema means they were cursed. Are we really that dour? When people thrust that image of joyless Christians onto me, that Christians are no fun, a joyless lot who continually think about how angry God is, I confess there are times when I accept it without thinking. It seems to me that much of our country sees Christians as that unhappy couple in Grant Wood’s “American Gothic”. Should be on the screen now. Don’t those people look like they might fit into our conception of a Presbyterian Church? What a couple of dour people. I was watching the Muppet Movie recently. One of my favorite scenes is when Kermit and Fozzie fall asleep in the parking lot of a Presbyterian Church. They wake up a little while later when they hear loud, funky music coming out of the church. Good music, toe tapping music. Kermit turns to Fozzie and says, ‘They don’t sound like Presbyterians to me.” Actually, I’d like to hear that line every we sing praise music. I think that would be fun. I think Fozzie was reflecting what our society expects of Christians. To me he illustrates well how society sees Christians, sour faced disciplinarians concerned, or consumed with other people breaking God’s law and how to put a stop to it.
And quite frankly, that image is a lie. It is what society would like to color us as, it is what they think of us. But the truth is that I have had more good laughs in church settings than anywhere else. We have the ability to laugh at ourselves, the freedom to laugh knowing that life is not without purpose and meaning but that our future is secure. There isn’t the laughing to keep out depression, to keep the nothingness out for a little while longer that I see in other places in society. There is joy in this church, there is joy when the people of God get together and fellowship, when they get together and worship. Psalm 126.
When the LORD brought back the captives to Zion,
we were like men who dreamed.
2 Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
3 The LORD has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.
4 Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like streams in the Negev.
5 Those who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy.
6 He who goes out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
Let’s pray.
As you may know, we are looking for a time at the Psalms of the Ascent. These are a series of psalms, numbers 120-135, that were sung by Jewish pilgrims. These pilgrims were heading to the Temple, the only Temple, located in Jerusalem. They would travel from all over the known world in order to perform the rituals of worship of God; celebrate specific feasts, offer sacrifices for sins on the altar in the Temple. They would do all this in God’s special presence, as He was specially present in the inner sanctum of the Temple, where the Arc of the Covenant was stored. The pilgrims would sing these songs, these psalms, as they traveled toward Jerusalem, as they traveled upward to Jerusalem. Jerusalem sits on top of Mount Zion, as so the pilgrims would be going up, slowly, step by step, up to where God was located. They would be going up to worship, going up to go through the rituals of worship.
As a point of history, I want to go through a little of the history of the Israelites. After they were brought out of Egypt by God, they eventually, after a 40 year time of purification, entered into the Promised Land. There they dwelled for long time. Their fortunes as a country and a people waxed and waned, often due to the obedience or disobedience of the leader. Under King David, the kingdom of Israel was the physically largest it ever was. A few generations later, Israel was split into 2 countries, Judah and Israel. Israel was in the north, and Judah was in the South. Because of sin, both the northern and southern kingdoms went into a physical and spiritual decline. At the same time, the Babylonians were rising in power. God used the Babylonians to administer His justice on the Israelites for their disobedience as a people. The Babylonians took over the northern kingdom, Israel, in about 760-750 and then the southern kingdom, when Jeremiah was the prophet, fell to the Babylonians about 695-688. The Babylonians took many Jews into captivity; the best and the brightest were taken away to contribute to the economy of Babylon. This is the context that the book of Daniel was written in, as well as some other psalms like Psalm 90 and Psalm 137. In any situation, the Jews were going to be allowed to return to Israel, to reclaim their land and rebuild the Temple.
And so they were. 80 years later, the Jews were allowed to start coming back. This is where we get Ezra-Nehemiah; it is the story of the return to Israel out of exile. And that is what Psalm 126 refers to directly. That joy that comes from returning to the land. The joy of recovering, or at least starting to recover, what was lost due to disobedience. The joy of returning to the land God had given them, that same joy is what the psalmist is evoking for the pilgrims as they return to the capital of the promised land, the place where God specially dwelled even after the disobedience of the past people.
When the LORD brought back the captives to Zion,
we were like men who dreamed.
2 Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
3 The LORD has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.
Joy is one of those ethereal characteristics of Christians. In Galatians chapter 5, Paul lists it second behind love as one of the fruits of the Spirit. There is something about real joy that sets Christians apart from other people. Sure, anyone can purchase a semblance of joy from a good movie, or really good comedians, but that sort of joy is so very temporary. It seems to be a characteristic of our time that pale shadows of the feelings God gives us when we follow Him can be purchased. Love, joy, peace; semblance’s of all these emotions can be purchased in one way or another. Quite a commentary on our times.
This is not to say that we are required to be full of joy. I don’t want anyone to think that because they are not joyous all the time that they are not a Christian, or indeed, not a disciple of Christ. Joy is not a requirement of being a Christian. Joy instead is one of the results we see in people who have committed their lives to Christ. When we accurately know who God is, what He has done for us in Jesus Christ, and what the result is for us; when we know and accept that Jesus died on the cross to wipe away our sins and the result is that we get a free pass into heaven as a result, that should bring us joy. If it doesn’t, then we are too caught up in this world. We’re too caught up in what other people think, too concerned with ourselves and our future. If we Christians don’t have joy there is usually a reason why; too concerned with this world, too caught up in what we don’t have…
Bono from U2, the rock band, said recently that joy is one of the few emotions that cannot be contrived, cannot be commanded to appear, it cannot be wished into existence. I think he’s right. Real joy is not something that we can buy, it is not something that can be gotten like so many other things in our world. Happiness runs out, but deep joy doesn’t. But there is something we can do to receive joy; choose to live in God’s abundance, in His love, in His forgiveness, in His grace to His glory. We can decide to follow God and experience joy out of His life. Or we can choose to follow ourselves, always struggling to meet our own perceived needs. God wants to meet our needs, not the ones we think are important, but the deep needs, the ones that will give us joy in Him.
This is a psalm about joy, about the people being allowed to return to their ancestral home, the land they longed for while in Babylon, waiting to go home. This is the joy of coming home. We too, will see a piece of this joy when we return to our home; when we finally get to see Jesus face to face; when we are done with this pale shadow of a world. The joy of homecoming is what we anticipate, it is what we get to look forward to. I want you to notice this; the first half of the psalm is in the past tense, the second half is in the future tense.
Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like streams in the Negev.
5 Those who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy.
6 He who goes out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with him.
The people of Israel knew the history of joy. They knew how high they had been as a people; when the God who made everything chose them to be His people, when Yahweh made a covenant with their Father Abraham. They knew the lows of being in slavery in Egypt. They remembered as they trekked to Jerusalem, singing, the highs of having their own land, and being God’s people, and the lows of having their lands taken away, their children born into slavery, the possession of their very lives taken away from them.
Something we miss is the importance of land in the Middle East. To be a people without land is to be effectively cursed. In our country we’ve always had enough room to keep moving West or somewhere else, but in the Middle East, where all the tribes are so close together, to be a people without land is terrible. Nowhere is home, always wandering through the lands of other people groups. Always in potential conflict with the owners of the land, cursed to wander always through other’s lands. The land was even a part of Israel’s identity-they called themselves the am h’artiz, the people of the land. The Israelites knew the connection of land to the people; they remembered the curse of living as slaves in Egypt and as lower class citizens, a conquered people in Babylon. To have lost their land was proof that they were cursed, that they had angered God deeply through their various types of disobedience.
So there was the joy of getting their land back, and the psalmist is drawing on those feelings of joy; the returning people coming back to their historic lands to reclaim what was theirs. The joy of returning to the promised land, the land that God gave them, those feelings of joy is what the psalmist is tapping into. But I think it goes even deeper. Not only is there the joy of again being the people of the land, the am haritz, but there is the joy of knowing their time of punishment was over. They got their land back, but more important was that they were brought back into right relationship with God. The proof that they were back in God’s good graces was tangible, they were back in the land, allowed to rebuild the city of God, Jerusalem, and the walls around Jerusalem. That joy, of not only being back in the land, but being again in right relationship with God is the purest joy the psalmist can imagine.
There is the past joy of the return, and there is the future joy. You might have noticed that the psalm is separated; the first half is recalling joy, the second half is anticipating future joys. If God’s acts in the past have brought us joy, have brought joy to the Israelites, then as believers we can safely anticipate future joys. There are 2 images that speak to future joy. The first is that line: like streams in the Negeb. The Negeb is a huge desert south of Israel. Most of the time the Negeb is baked by the sun, a dry place. But there are times when a sudden rainstorm comes in, and the dried streambeds and river run again. And when they do, it is just what the plants have been waiting for the; desert blooms within a day or two. Years of waiting suddenly produce a blossoming that we couldn’t have imagined, just a few days prior looking at the sands. But there it is; into a barren area comes life, comes joy.
The other image is of sowing and reaping. Those who sow tears will reap with joy! All the suffering of sowing, back breaking work, all the pain will return in joy-those who sow their seeds in God will reap joy. All that time when it looks like nothing has happened, and all the sowing we have done just sits there, in the empty, barren ground. But then little buds appear, and later on there is so much more than was ever sown in the first place. He who sows in tears will reap with joy. It seems very clear that the psalmist knew what it meant to sow in tears. The people of God have always known struggling, pain and fear, we know the desert of the heart, of barren soil time when we are without joy, when it seems like we will never be joyous again. Ecclesiates tells us there is a time to weep, and a time to laugh. Eugene Peterson rightly says Christian joy is not an escape from sorrow. Pain and hardship still come, but they are unable to drive out the happiness of the redeemed.
Our mouths were filled with laughter- there is the tendency to confuse joy with laughter. We can work up nervous or even cruel laughter, but the deep laughter that comes out of joy in the Lord cannot be faked. It comes when we understand that all things work together for good to them that love God. The joy that develops as we journey ever upward toward God in our discipleship is joy not in ourselves, and how well we are doing, but a joy in God, and how good He is to us. His promises are sure-He is faithful and trustworthy. Our joy, this joy in Christ, is not dependent on us avoiding pain or suffering. In fact, since we serve a Lord who suffered on the cross for us, we should expect suffering of one sort or another. Christian joy is actually found most clearly in the midst of trials and suffering. Paul as he languished in a Roman prison, near his end his time on earth wrote to the Philippians “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice! Let all men know your forbearance. The Lord is at hand!”
Does that sound grim? Does that emotion look like the couple in American Gothic? Of course not! That is the joy of knowing God has shown up, God shows up and God will show up for us. Don’t be grim, be full of joy knowing that your salvation has been taken care of, and moreover, as you walk the path of discipleship in this world, you are not alone. You journey toward God always in His presence, always in His love. Always in His joy, which He gives to you, to me, to us.
Let’s pray.
The New International Version , (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House) 1984.