The Joy of the Lord is Our Strength

The scriptures referred to are Nehemiah 8:2-10 and Luke 4:14-21.

It was a typical Sunday afternoon at Wheaton College, which is to say that my roommate and I were studying. We had tuned the radio to a Chicago station that was playing spirited gospel music. It turned out that we had come across a broadcast of a series of African American worship services. Evidently each of the little storefront churches had paid for a half hour of air time, but all of their services were much longer than that. So in the middle of each service the sound would cut out and the announcer would tell us the name of the next church from which they were broadcasting. As 2 white boys, we were mesmerized by the style of worship, especially the "call and response" preaching. The pastor would thunder out a phrase and the congregation would punctuate it with an "Amen!", "Preach it, brother," and/or "Hallelujah!" Often a back and forth rhythm built up between the preacher and his congregants. In one case, the choir started to sing their responses. They got louder and longer and in their excitement, they weren't leaving any space for the poor preacher to talk. He tried to regain control of the sermon but finally said, "Oh, let's just praise the Lord!" And for a while, everybody sang. Eventually, the singing wound down and with a half-hearted rebuke, the preacher picked up where his sermon had been interrupted. My roommate and I loved it. Nothing like that was likely to happen at our churches.

A revolution of worship has swept through many churches. Services are slicker, the production values are higher, the music is more upbeat. The idea is to make people feel good. By that standard, Ezra failed in today's passage from Nehemiah. The Jews have returned from exile in Babylon. They have rebuilt the temple and Ezra the priest was reading the Torah to them. It's evident that the laity hadn't heard them before. In fact, it seems that the Levites were translating the scriptures. They were written in Hebrew and the people spoke Aramaic. The relationship between the 2 languages is similar to that of Chaucer's English and our own. But we are told that when the people understood God's law, they wept. There's a reason why. Most scholars think that Ezra was reading from the Book of Deuteronomy. In that book Moses recaps the history of the Exodus and the Ten Commandments. He then lays out the blessings that will come with obeying God's laws and the curses that will result from not obeying them. The Jews hear this and realize that they have strayed. So they begin to wail.

This is not what Ezra intended. To him the reading of the law was to be a joyous occasion. The people haven't lost anything. Rather what they lacked has been restored to them. If hearing the law revealed that God's people have broken the covenant, it was like finally getting a name for the illness you've been suffering from. Now that you have the diagnosis, you can apply the cure. So Ezra tells the people, "Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength."

In liturgical churches we have seasons. Some are obviously joyous: Christmas and Easter, for instance. Some are obviously not, such as Lent. The texts selected for the lectionary usually speak to the themes. But in almost every service, regardless of the season, we celebrate the Eucharist. "Eucharist" means "thanksgiving." Whatever else we contemplate, as we come to the Lord's table together, we remember the mighty acts of God for which we give thanks. In fact, that is why the Church started celebrating Sunday instead of the traditional Sabbath. It's the day of the week when we commemorate God raising Jesus from the dead. Every Sunday we proclaim that God turned the grief of Good Friday into the elation of Easter. Because the joy of the Lord is our strength.

That joy is rooted in the passage that Jesus reads in today's gospel. Christ is kicking off his ministry. And in the synagogue he reads the section of Isaiah that goes: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor." There are several key words in there: Spirit, anoint, good news. Jesus is not doing this out of mere human initiative. He is prompted and led by God's Spirit. When we set out to do anything for God, we must make sure that we are doing it in the proper spirit. God doesn't want us to do things begrudgingly or out of grim determination. Because the spirit in which we do something affects how well and how thoroughly we do it. He wants us to do things out of love for him and mercy towards others and when possible, out of the sheer joy of serving him. Because the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Jesus says that he has been anointed. That's what the Hebrew word "Messiah" and the Greek word "Christ" mean. The Jews anointed their prophets, their priests and their kings.  When we call Jesus the Christ, we are saying that he is all 3 to us. That is a reason to rejoice. And the joy of the Lord is our strength.

And what is the good news that he is to preach to the poor? "He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives..." This is always a major theme in the Bible. The defining moment for Israel was God delivering them from slavery in Egypt. It was echoed by their return from exile in Babylon. To them God is first and foremost a liberator. In Jesus this role is universal. Jesus did not come to liberate the Jews from Gentile oppression, as in the popular conception of the Messiah. He came to liberate all people from the evil that enslaves us. As we see in Nehemiah, the Jews returned from exile but they realized that, because of their sins, they weren't home free. They were still far from God. Jesus came to end the separation from God's goodness that we each experience. He came to reconcile us to God, to offer forgiveness, to bring us all the way back home. That's reason to rejoice. And the joy of the Lord is our strength.

He also came to proclaim "recovery of sight to the blind." As N. T. Wright points out, whenever Jesus healed people, he was not only giving them back their spiritual health, he was restoring them to the community of faith. By Jewish law, the imperfect could not enter the inner courts of the temple and worship. So not only did they suffer from the physical toll of blindness or leprosy or deafness or being lame, they suffered socially and spiritually. Jesus restored them in every sense.

Of course, the singling out of blindness cannot be an accident. Jesus also came to restore sight to the spiritually blind. Jesus dealt with many examples of short-sightedness and complete inability to see the truth. As we see, the sick and handicapped  were viewed as cursed. And another misperception was that if you were well off, God must favor you. That's why the disciples were so shocked when Jesus said that a camel could squeeze through the eye of s sewing needle easier than a rich man could enter God's Kingdom. They naturally assumed that the rich had an "in" with God. We, too, cut the wealthy a lot of slack. Those who already have advantages are granted additional advantages. Our prisons are overflowing with non-wealthy persons convicted of drug charges. But how often do we hear of some movie star or rock star or radio host or scion of the rich being let off, provided he get into rehab and do some community service? Things we condemn in the poor--substance abuse, promiscuity, irresponsibility--we treat as entertainment when they are reported of the wealthy and famous. Jesus saw everyone as equal in God's eyes. No one gets special treatment. Everyone who repents has equal access to God's grace.

In fact, Jesus was called "to let the oppressed go free." The Greek word translated "oppressed" really means "crushed" or "bruised." Live long enough and you feel beat up by life. You get knocked around. You get pressed and bruised. Jesus came to free us from getting crushed by life's misfortunes. He does this by granting us forgiveness for any part we play in our misfortunes and giving us strength to forgive those who oppress us. This forgiving of others is part of our healing and it is not easy. By forgiving someone we are not saying that what they did was not evil. After all, you can't forgive good behavior, only bad. No, in forgiveness we are saying, "What you did to me was bad. I forgive you anyway." Forgiveness is living with the consequences of the sins of others. It is letting go of the anger and bitterness and resentment that crush and deform our spirits. It is expelling the poison left by the bite of another man's sin. And how does Jesus make this possible? By giving us his Spirit, the Spirit that let him forgive those who crucified him. By living daily in his Spirit, we slowly find the ability to forgive and find freedom in all circumstances and that makes joy possible. And the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Finally, Jesus was anointed "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." This refers to the year of Jubilee in ancient Israel. Every 50 years slaves were to be freed, debts were to be forgiven, and ancestral lands were to be returned to families. Jesus is talking about this in a cosmic sense. God's intention is not to destroy but to restore. And because of this, we need not approach him with dread but with love. God is the father in the parable of the prodigal son, who upon seeing his repentant son from afar, runs to him and kisses him and throws him a huge "Welcome back!" party.

The Jews listening to Ezra that day were only hearing part of the message. They got the part where it said, "You have strayed; you have fallen short; you have missed the mark." They weren't hearing the part that said, "God is faithful and loving and forgiving. God wants to start over with you. God is offering you a clean slate." God doesn't want us to go around feeling bad. He wants us to go around doing good. Like any parent, he wants us to learn to walk, learn to think, learn to make good choices and learn to deal with the consequences  of our bad choices as well as those of others. But we must never forget that God is ultimately rooting for us. Our victory is his victory. And, remember, the joy of the Lord is our strength.