Jo¥ TQ THE WORLD JUNE 23, 1974
PSALM) 47
Md VESTAMENT SELECTED

READ! PS. 47 R.S.V.

Robert Hudnut has written a diary of sorts, recording daily
reflections on his ministry.| Oné of the entries reads:

; preached an old sermon this week. \ re is fatal.\ There's
nothing staler isn. SH BNE sermon \ I've got a cracker barrell
as deep as the next fellows but I rarely dig into itl Only when
I get caught by too much emergency pastoral work.

It's not that the older sermon isn't good. | It's often better
than the current crop, and certainly better than one done ina
few hours. | lt*s just that 1i"s old. | 1t w longer comes alive
for me." | (Surprised by God. P.41)

If you are concluding that my reading that is a warning that I'm
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about to preach an old-sermon, you are, at least partiallycorrect.\ It
also happens to echo precisely my sentiments about old sermons. \ They're
st@le - at least for the preacher.\ And yet, as I confronted the choice

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of what to say on the few Sundays remaining in this pulpit I kept coming

back to those major ideas that have grown in importance for me, not only
—_—_—s.

as sermon material, but as the real stuff of lite:\Tite as I have lived
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it primarily in relationship with the people of this congregation over
the past eight years.
At the top of that list of ideas - is Joy \ joy as a_componet of
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Christian Faith: \joy as a basic Life-stance. \ And so I pulled several

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sermons from the fite:\ and freshened them up for the occasion} and
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discovered again what experience has already taught me - namely that it

takes more time to do this job_properly than to start from scratch.

“Wos rreeets - Joy to the World -

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Listen, for starters, to some scripture:\first a paraphrase of

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the 47th Psalm which I've already read from the R.S.V.\and then some

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samplings from the rest of the Bible:

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JOY TO THE WORLD -2-

“Clap your hands, stamp your feet! Let your bodies and your wices
explade with joy. God is not some human concoction. He is for real! And
he is here! Despite all attempts to rationalize him out of existence,
He is in our world, and he reighns over our universe.

The rulers of nations often ignore him. Men of learning often pass
him by. The masses of his creatures substitute their own little gads
in his place and worship the things they can see and feel. There are
others who build fortresses about themeselves and manifest no need for
God.'

Qur great God will not & ignored. He will not remove himself from
our world. Let us recognize his presence and fiil the air with his
praises." (Pharaphrase - Psaim 47, "“Alive")

\ ¥s0 the Lord's people shall come back,set free, and enter Zion
with shouts of triumph, crowned with everlasting joy: joy and gladness
shall overtake them as they come, and sorrow and sighing shali flee

away." (Isaiah 51:11)

"At the sight of the star they were goverjoyed." (Matthew 2:10)

"No not be afraid: I have good news for you: there is great joy

coming to the whole people." (Luke 2:10)

"How blest are you when men hate you...0n that day be glad and

dance for joy." (Luke @522))

"I have spoken thus to you, sa that my jy may be in you, and your
joy complete.: (John dosed! )
"They hurried away from the tomb in awe and great joy, and ran to

tell the disciples.” (Matthew 28:8)

"The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but justice, Base

peace and joy, inspired by the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 14:17}

‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace by your fatth
in him, until by the power of the Holy Spirit, you overfttow with hope."
{Romans 15:13)

“We write this in order that the joy of us all may be complete."

aaa a a hore

JOY TO THE WORLD ~3-

The late Harry Emerson Fosdick, reflecting on passages such as
those, once wrote: \"The New Testament is the most joyful book in the
world. \ rt opens with joy over the birth of Jesus; and it ends with a
superb pictere of a multitude which no man could number, singing Hal-

—r — a
lelujah choruses. \ No matter where you open it, amid fortunate and dis-
couraging circumstances, you always hear the noteof joy.

Even when a company of friends gather at a farewell supper before
their leader is crucified, he says to them, (shese things have I spoken
unto you, that gy joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made cuit.)

When an apostle is put in jail overnight he passes the time singing,
and if you listen to him in his Roman prison, you will hear him dictating,

Ce] ST aiemieemiinadnmmamesnammeimmien’ 2
(‘Resotcs X% in the Lard always: again I will sy, rejoice.’
There is enough tragedy in the New Testament to make it the saddest
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book in the world, but instead, it is the most joyful."
— ned

The Shorter Chatechism, an old, dusty document in archaic language

written in 1647 begins with a rather remarkable a-ffirmative. \ The first

question is (what is the hief end of man?"} And the answer reads, {'Man's

chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever." ) It's not what

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you'd expect 17th century Reformers to wite about the nature of man.
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But they did, and they had hold of something very important; namely that

our purpose in being here is to live in the right relationship with our

creator, and that the product of that #Krelationship ought to be joy.
We affirm that every time we worship together:

mm Why did God create us?

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To glorify and enjoy him forever!

And yet I think it would be fair to generalize that we_don't Post of

—_—.
us ~ most of the time don't think in terms of enjoying God.\ Per aps we

don't enjoy much 4& of anything.\ And who can blame us? \after_ait, the

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future can Took pretty grim, and the preset doesn't Took so hot either,

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bette amen

We're fouling up the rivers, oceans, air and landseape.\ We can't live
b eaneninmnmelite Dr asad

on the energy we are producing and we can't produce any more without

—ar

JOY TO THE WORLD -4..

further fouling up the rivers, oceans and air and landscape. \ We have
more chemical and bacteriological weapons in our secret arsenals than we
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can dispose of decently:\ we have more nuclear power than we need to in-

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cinerate wery man, woman and child on the face of the globe several times

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over, and congress has just approved abudget that will enable us to refine

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and expand that capacity.\ We have cities that can't be governed and more
educated people than jobs;\spiraliing school costs and high taxes;
pornography masquerading as entertaintent. drugs in the classroom: and a
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whole aT of high federal officials convicted or on trial_for makéng
a mockery of the democratic process - which means us.

What a delight, several weeks ago, to see a teleyision show that

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resurrected the humor of Will Rogers: la simple humor with the grace to

laugh at ourselves and to gain a new perspective on all the weighty

problems that bear down on us.\ But who can blame us for being less than
joyful? ?
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More to the point, however, our religion - which &K if the Bible and

Shorter Chatechism are to be trusted - ought to be the source of joy in

contrast to the grimmness of the world - more to the point, our_religion
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isn't very joyful either.

The reasons we two, I betieve. | the first goes back to the days of the

early church whewg Great thinking began to influence our Hebrew for-

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fathers. \ Thanks to the Greeks the early Christians over the years came

to the conclusion that things of the spirit are good, while things of the

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flesh and the world are bad. \ That tegeron of reality into two categories
was a direct contradition of Hebrew, or Old Testament Thplogy. | The

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faith of Israel was essentially life-a$$irming, RRNA ERA Lusty,
earthy.\ But Christian Faith, filtered through Greek philosoph uickl
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became life-denying. \ The result was a theological stance which really :
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didn't mean what it said when it affirmed that God created allthings good.

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In fact, it came periously close at times to saying, in effect, that God

had made a rather monumental mistake when he gave men bodies.\ In the
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JOY TO THE WORLD -5-
name of religious piety men starved themselves, slept three hours a
night and mortified the flesh by all sorts of self=inflic in\ All

pleasure was suspect - sexuality was to be hidden, disguised - and

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empoloyed only for the obvious necessity of propgating the vase, \ wat
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ever was fun, joyful, pleasure producing - had to_be bad.

Now, not many people would articulate their faith in those terms today,

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and yet I telieve the philosophic residue is still with us:| and that for

many peple having fun_and feeling good is just a little suspect.
The second meason our faith is not always joyful 6r joy producing
has to do with the Puritains\ The Puritains are much maligned in a
thoughtless way and I don't want to be part of that.\ byt they did believe
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that any expression of joy - anything that looked like a celebration,

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or lots of fun, was inherently of the devil and sinful. \Frivolity

of any kind was frowned upon:\even Christmas as a celebration was
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abolished, by the more vehement Puritains.

Again, there aren't many people who think that way today \ And yet
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the Puritain influence on the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition in

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this country was xXhkems innense\ With the result that many of us grew
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up in churches that were essentially grim, dull, sober and no fun at all.

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We may not associate fun and joy with sin any nore:\ but neifher do we

associate fun and joy with Christian Faith.

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Karl Barth once wrote:\"A gloomy, morose and melancholy Christian

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can obviously attest only a gloomy, morose and melancholy gospel. | Such

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a gospel (would be) not of Christ, but of the world without him, of a
God who is not for us but against us...it would not be good or glad

news, but bad or sad news - the saddest of ait." [(c.Dogn IV 3 P.661)

Or more to the point, listen to the words of a woman sitting in a

service of worship.

\ "rn church the other Sunday I was intent on a small child who was

turning around smilling at everyone.\ He wan't gurgling, spitting, humming
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or rummaging through his mother's handbag. He was just smiling.
ead oe

JOY TO THE WORLD -6-
Finally, his mother jerked him about and in a stage whisper that
cald be heard in a little theatre off Broadway said, ("Stop that grinning!

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You're in church! ") With that, she gave him a belt on his hindside and
as the tears rolled down his cheeks added, ‘That's better,' and returned
to her prayers. Fe

Suddenly I was angry. \re occurred to me that the entire world is in
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tears and if you're not, then you'd better get with it\t wanted to wait

this child with the tear-stained face close to me and tell him about my
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God. \ The happy God. \ The God who had to have a sense of humor to have

created the likes of us. \I wanted to tell him he was an understanding

God.\ One who understands little children who pick their noses in Church

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because they are bored.\ He understands the man in the parking lot who

reads the comics while his wife is attending Church.\ He even under-
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stands my shallow prayers that implore, (“if you can't make me KKK thin,
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then make my friends look fat.! )

Wat a fool, I thought. \ Here 1X was a woman sitting next to the only

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light left in our civilization...The only hope, our only miracle...our

only promise of infinity. \If he couldn't smile _in church, where was
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there left to go?" (PeQtttive)

We were created to glorify and enjoy cod. \ we were made to be joy-

experiencing creatures. \chitdren do. \ Children enjoy what comes at them
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in life. \ James Cavanaugh wrote a touching bit of verse on the subject.

"Little boy &MX I miss you, with your sudden smile
and your ignorance of pain.

You walked in life and devoured it...without anything but
misty goals to keep you company.

Your heart teat méghtily when you chased frogs

There was not time for meaning - a marshmallow gave it on
a sharpened stick -

a jacknife in your pocket...

a flower in the woods....

JOY TO THE WORLD -/-
A dog who danced and licked ¥% at your fingers
and chewed your jeans.
A game of football you didn't expect
A glass of cider, a cricket's cry.
When did you loge your eyes and ears, when did taste
buds cease to tremble:
Whence this sulleness, this mounting fear, this quarrel
with life - demanding meaning?" (There Are Men Too Gentle to
Live Among Wolves)

The idea that has grown in significance ee - the idea that I

want to share with you = is that God has created us for_joy.\ I have

known that answer to the question in the Shorter Chatechism since I was

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a boy, but only in recent years have I come to understand that it means

exactly what it says -\"Man's Chief End is to glorify God and enjoy
him forever.: ) |

The Irony of it is that the whole reason we are here:\the entire

rationale for the existence of this or any church is something &X4X called

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good news:\not bad news or sad news - or even ambiguous news.\ It squids
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[as ——

1i@it this.\ There is a God whose primary characteristic is love.\ He

has made the world - he made us ~- he is still creating.\ He loves us so
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much that he sent his son to live among us RYoshow that even in the
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midst of pain and suffering and death, love remains supreme, unconquer-
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ing. - -\ N i in Lif
able, everlasting \ And so you and I are safe and free \ othing in life

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can defeat us\ nothing can ultimately hurt us. \The sting has been taken
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out of death:\there is no reason to be afraid. \god still bves us and
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comes among us in many ways - as a comforter, friend; aB a resource; as

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a prod to our conscience and a buoy for our hopes.

Thre is at the heart of our life as a Christian people thef very

best of all possible news. \ News that needs to be sung and affirmed and

told to our children and shared among us and written all over our faces
ease

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afl we confront a joyless world.

JOY TO THE WORLD -9-
We need that And it is my depest conviction that the world needs

us to be what we say we are:\people who are in the business of enjoying

our God forever.

St. Augustine, once said: (A Christian sould be an alleluia from

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head to foot":)and Jesus Christ, our Lord: (1 have spoken thus to you,

so that my joy may be in you. ad your joy complete.) AMEN
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OUR FATHER: we want to be joyful: we wat to feel and express and share

joy. Help us. Help us to see the good ad beautiful in our own lives -

and the lives of others. Give us the grace to enjoy: through Jesus Christ

our Lord. AMEN