Joy to the World
A sermon by Lanny Peters
Pastor, Oakhurst Baptist Church
The First Sunday of Christmas
December 26, 2004
The year of my fifteenth birthday may have been the worst year of my life. I was in the middle of the normal identity struggles that come in adolescence. My battle with acne made me dread looking in the mirror each morning. And my father had recently entered a mental hospital. But I told no one about it and was scared to death my schoolmates would find out. And on top of all this, the pastor at my church, to whom I felt a closeness, left for another church.
To make matters worse, the new pastor seemed to have it out for the youth of the church. We felt like he was forever singling us out for criticism. He insisted the youth group meetings have more serious Bible study and less frivolity, which for us translated as less fun. All this reached a peak when he preached a sermon about the evils of teenage rock music. He entitled it "Jeremiah Was Not a Bull Frog." This was in reference to a very popular song of that time by the group "Three Dog Night".
He began by talking about the name of the group. He saw Three Dog Night as a secret code for a kind of anti-Trinity slogan. He then did a line-by-line exegesis of the song that went something like this:
The opening verse is:
"Jeremiah was a bull frog, was a good friend of mine. I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine, and he always had some mighty fine wine."
He said this ridiculed the great prophet Jeremiah. He pointed out that in his name it promoted drinking alcohol. He expounded quite a bit on this before turning to the second verse.
"If I were the king of the world, tell you what I'd do."
He stopped to proclaim that Jesus was the only king of the world, and that this was blasphemy. But the next line really enraged him.
"I'd throw away all the cars and the bars and the war and make sweet love to you."
He then denounced anti-war protestors, long hair, sexual promiscuity, and a host of other evils. Finally, he got to the last verse:
"You know I love the ladies. Love to have my fun. I'm a high flyer and a rainbow rider. A straight shooting son of a gun."
In this he saw drugs and violence. After a time to elaborate on this, he turned to the refrain, which made him the maddest of all. He said it was a blasphemy because it poked fun at the great Christian carol, "Joy to the World".
The refrain, as any of you baby boomers know by heart, went like this: (Sing it with me.)
Joy to the World
All you boys and girls
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea
Joy to you and me.
I was so angry after that sermon I started a petition calling for the pastor's resignation. Twenty members of the youth group had signed it before it fell into the hands of our Sunday School teacher who confiscated it and gave me a long talking to. Our rebellions continued unsuccessfully for several years. But in the end, it was a member of our youth group who was his undoing. I was off at college when I heard the news. His teenage daughter, who was a good friend of mine, became pregnant. Expecting no mercy, he resigned immediately and the family left town.
He may have been a good man. He did once rescue me from some boys who were chasing me to beat me up. But what he failed to realize was that we youth heard in that song something we so desperately longed for in our lives; that is, JOY.
An interesting word: joy. It is rarely used in everyday conversation. It seems to be a word reserved for Christmas cards and to be written only in elegant calligraphy. Joy is a word which only seems to belong to an event long ago or a hoped for future that we wish for one another once a year.
But if the word "joy" is not common in our contemporary life, it is found throughout scripture. It is there in that evocative passage in Isaiah that speaks to the deepest longings of the human heart. The passage images life in all the ripeness of its potential and the beauty of its promise. At the heart of the passage is the word "joy."
For now I create a new heaven and a new earth and the past will not be remembered and will come no more to mid. Be glad and rejoice for ever and ever for what I am creating because I now create Jerusalem "Joy" and her people "Gladness.' I shall rejoice over Jerusalem and exult in my people. No more will the sound of weeping or the sound of cries be heard in her...They will build houses and inhabit them, plant vineyards and eat their fruit...My people shall live as long as trees...the lion and young lamb will feed together...they will do no hurt, no harm on all my holy mountain.
Isaiah 65:17-25 [NJB)
·
The
Bible brims with many other testimonies about joy--"The joy of the Lord is
your strength" (Nehemiah 8:10). "Shout to the Lord with loud
songs of joy" (Psalms
47:1). "Rejoice always" (I Thessalonians. 5:16).
"Rejoice in the Lord always, again I
will say, Rejoice" {Phil. 4:4). In Matthew’s gospel, the women who
first experience the resurrection are filled with "fear and great
joy." (A fascinating combination.)
The word "joy" especially runs the width and length of Luke's Gospel. When Elizabeth greets Mary, she exclaims, "For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy." (1:44) When the angels spoke to the shepherds, they said, "Do not be afraid; for see -- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.” (2:10)
The shepherds then made haste to find the bundle of sign of joy the angels had promised, a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. They shared this with Joseph and with Mary, who treasured their words and pondered them in her heart.
This is the season for those of us in the church, Christ's body, to treasure and ponder joy. Suddenly, the competition with our culture is over. The radio channels, which dedicated all their programming for the last month to Christmas music, have moved on to other commercial endeavors.
All day yesterday, we had a fire going and Christmas music playing. At one point, Thomas put on the rather irreverent South Park Christmas album. In their tongue-in-cheek version of "O Holy Night" little Cartman sings, "Christ was born so I can get presents; thank you Jesus for being born," as the chorus swells behind him. Today the masses are busy exchanging all those presents and starting the frenzy all over again at the after Christmas sales, buying and buying, world without end.
But here is our secret. It is not after Christmas. This is only the second day of Christmas; there are ten more days to enjoy. To “in-joy” the true meaning and mystery that "the word became flesh and dwelled among us." From his fullness, we have all received, grace upon grace." (John 1: 14a, 16) This is our joy.
Susan Virginia Hull captures some of this joy in a poem:
Rejoice over everything.
Exult. Exhilarate.
Be glad. Be delighted, elated,
And bowled over with joy!
Frolic Freely, hop, hope,
Dance on the dare, cheer,
Champion the little ones.
revel in the riotous light.
Invoke God without ceasing.
Pray with passion.
Whatever you do
do not quench the Spirit.
Take care not to douse
Or to dampen the bold blaze
in your depths.
Jump into life.
Hold fast to it.
Give thanks for everything.
For everything,
Even the most misshapen
and misunderstood,
is the disguise of the divine.
From Imaging the Word, Volume 2.Susan A. Blain, editor. United Church Press,
The year before I came to Oakhurst, I was invited back to preach the homecoming service at the church where I attended as a youth. The head of the homecoming committee was the same Sunday school teacher that once confiscated my petition to get rid of the pastor. That church that had served that mill community neighborhood since it was first built was moving out. They had several years before called a preacher who was committed to church growth. The mill community had deteriorated considerably. He decided that in order to grow, they had to move to a better neighborhood. My old Sunday school teacher and some others had opposed it for it would leave the community without a church. But she was on the losing side. So, she decided that it would be appropriate, since one of their own had become a minister, to have me come back to preach the last sermon in that building. And I did. Many of my old friends from the youth group also came back, including some I had not seen since I graduated from high school.
It was quite a day. Both the pastor and the minister of music were graduates of Jerry Falwell's Liberty College. I don't need to say much more than that. Let's just say that my sermon was quite a contrast to the rest of the service.
At the end of the service I was to do the benediction. As I stood, it suddenly occurred to me that the very next week they were going to meet in the new sanctuary. The words I spoke would be the last words ever spoken from that pulpit. Completely spontaneously, I said, "For our benediction, I would like to offer the words from an old song:
All you boys and girls.
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea.
Joy to you and me.
Many of the people, especially the Pastor, just looked at me strangely. But my old friends from the youth group were grinning from ear to ear. Maybe it was leftover adolescent rebellion. Maybe it was a chance to get even after all these years. Perhaps some of each but it was also more than these. I had long ago forgiven that pastor. I now had been a minister myself and knew much more about the need for forgiveness. Some days, I even feel the same way he did about the music young people listen to nowadays! When I do, I catch my self and listen to hear any hints of joy.
My benediction that day surprised even me. I believe it came from deep within me, came as a gift from the Spirit, with the message that Joy has the last word. Joy to the world. The Lord is born.