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Lenten Sermon Series, Lent 4 - Laetare, March 6, 2005
A Sermon based on Isaiah 66:10 by Luke Bouman (->current sermons ) |
Isaiah 66:10 Nearly 25 years ago I found myself behind the “iron curtain” in what was then East Germany. I was traveling with 19 classmates from my Valparaiso University’s Reutlingen Study Center, along with our director Marc Riedel and his family. The trip had been arranged for us to see Eisenach and Wittenburg, sites of reformer, Martin Luther, as well as Leipzig, Berlin and other places of cultural interest. While other European travel was managed by our class in smaller groups or as individuals, this trip, because of our destination, included the whole group. It was a strange trip, less than a decade before the collapse of the government there. Though the skies were often clear, the rampant air pollution cast a pall over day to day life. The buildings, not brightly painted to start with, were dingy and graying. The people seemed bereft of joy. Even as visitors, we soon discovered that spontaneity and joy were not luxuries that we were afforded either. As we waited for a late afternoon tour to begin, one of our group members noted that on campus in the U.S. our university was celebrating “homecoming.” Since we were parked next to a grassy area in a place called “The People’s Park” in Leipzig, several of the group members improvised a football game, using a hairbrush for the ball. The general silliness and joy of this romp attracted the attention of “The People’s Police” who told our group that the grass was not to be played on and sent them back to our tour bus like dogs with tails tucked under their legs. Joy was not allowed. It is no surprise then, when the group was staying in West Berlin, that few took the opportunity to go on an optional side trip to the Eastern side of the wall. I was curious, and also wanted to take advantage of the legendary inexpensive East German music prices to enhance my piano music collection. So I went with the small band to brave the East. We entered and left at the infamous “Check Point Charley.” We noted the differences between West and East. Where the West was, during that time, a city of lights and colors, of nightlife and excitement, the East was darker, more subdued. In the West the bombed out church on the Kurfurestendam stood as a memorial to those who had died in WWII, and a warning not to let such a thing happen again. In the East, the bombed out cathedral stood overgrown with trees and weeds, fenced off, as a memorial to failed religious expression and the malevolent indifference of the state. In the West, the city abutted the wall, using every available scrap of land for the residents. In the East near the wall was a “no man’s land,” a beltway separating people from the wall, giving them no access to even thoughts of escape. No guard towers with soldiers armed to kill were needed in the West. The two hour interrogation as we left, making sure that we had not sold our Blue Jeans while there, left me feeling no desire to go back again. It is no wonder that, as our bus cleared the last check-point on the way out of East Germany that Fritz, one of my classmates, began to sing “The Star Spangled Banner.” Nor is it a surprise that we all joined him. Our freedoms as United States Citizens, something we had taken for granted all of our lives, did not, in that moment seem so trivial or automatic. We sang with joy, with gusto. My appreciation for The National Anthem has always been altered by that experience. Today’s traditional introit from Isaiah 66:10 sings clearly that kind of joy and release. The people of Israel were greeting the news that their captivity in Babylon was at an end. They were going home! Their joy could not be contained. Perhaps they were apprehensive about what their future at home would be like, but for the moment they were singing unrestrained joy. It was also a joy that could not be contained. All nations, all peoples, were invited to rejoice with Jerusalem. But what is such a song doing in the midst of the season of Lent? Even though the Sundays during this time are not officially in Lent, still a pall is cast over the season for most people. Are we able to really break loose of the restraint that is usually associated with Lent to sing this kind of joy and abandon? If all we know about Lent is what is happening now, the answer is probably no. We wallow in our self flagellation and guilt. We focus on repentance and our unworthiness. We subscribe to a bit of momentary theological forgetfulness. The good news is that we do not have to live Lent this way. We do not have to act as though we do not know the outcome of this season. While Lent climaxes in the cross on Good Friday, we do not encounter that cross as a people who do not know the ending. While the worship of Lent encourages us to wait a season to hear the words of forgiveness that match our Ash Wednesday confession, we do not live as though the forgiveness itself is withheld. We are, we always will be a people of God’s future that comes in Jesus Christ. Perhaps some will limit their understanding of that future to a secret furtive smile that they shield from view in public. Others will laugh and sing with abandon, even though Lent calls for a more somber tone. But all know this joy. For we, who have known the captivity of Sin, also know the liberation of God’s love. We have seen what like is like on both sides of the wall, and in fact we live in the tension between the grave somber gray of our sinful selves and the bold beautiful color of God’s new creation, coming as it does in our very midst, in our very beings. Who can say how we respond when our life bursts into the vibrant colors that God has planted within us. I only know that I will likely be singing music that was so infectious that I could not help but join in. Music of freedom and release. I remember being with a group of youth from South Africa at a youth congress about the time that the White government of that country gave back power to its indigenous peoples. Nelson Mandela had been freed from Prison. Bishop Tutu was speaking to the gathering. It was a joyous moment of thanks and relief. The singing began, out of their joy, and it welled up inside all of the people there until the whole gathering could sing. In the midst of their joy, the pain and suffering of their people was not forgotten, but as one of the folks there later remarked to me, it seemed that their joy was heightened by their great sorrow and pain. I knew at once it was true. So, we too sing with Jerusalem on this day. We sing even in the midst of this season of somber repentance and renewal. In fact, the more acutely aware of our pain we are, the more joy we experience in God’s sweet release. For only in God’s good time do we understand the joy that comes from a real encounter with pain that leads us out the other side. And only faith gives us the courage to walk such a road as the Lenten journey provides. Rev. Dr. Luke Bouman
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