Scripture Text:
Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses of the Negev. Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy. —Psalm 126
Sermon:
Have you ever been out to the Southwest, to the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona and Southern California? It’s harsh but beautiful desert country. The riverbeds are usually dry- just broad, shallow depressions in the ground, usually full of sand and rock. They call these Arroyos- it’s a Spanish word that originally meant “brook” or “creek,” but in the Southwest it’s come to mean exclusively these dry, parched riverbeds.
And it doesn’t rain much, but when it does, watch out. The arroyos can drain a tremendous area, so when the sky opens up, the arroyos fill quickly. The storms drop huge amounts of water, and the rocky soil doesn’t soak it up very well, and suddenly a flash flood torrent of water is rushing along. In seconds, the driest most parched ground can become a Niagara tearing through the desert.
They’ve got these all over the world- any desert can have an arroyo. In the Middle East they’re called wadis, and that’s what the Psalmist is talking about when we read, “restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses of the Negev.” The Negev is an incredibly dry desert in the south of Israel- and its watercourses are wadis, or arroyos. They lie bone-dry for ages, and then suddenly the waters come rushing through.
Our Psalm today was written in a time when the Israelites felt that parched bone-dry sense of things in their souls. They could look back on a time when things had been good- when God had restored their fortunes- a time of laughter and songs of joy, a time when other nations envied Israel. What a time that must have been- but for now, it seemed like a distant dream. One of those dreams that seems crystal clear, but when you wake up you can barely remember it, and the details slip away like sand through your fingers. One of those dreams you can try to explain to someone, but the more you say, the less sense it makes. No, for now things were dry and barren. It was a desert time.
And so this Psalm cries out for restoration. And not a smooth, easy, gentle kind of restoration. No- like the watercourses of the Negev. Like the arroyos of Arizona. Like a huge, crashing torrent of water, tearing its way through the desert, cresting over the banks and carrying things away from the dry ground.
I know a lot of us are hurting in this room. I know a lot of people are hurting in this world. There are so many people and so many communities and so many nations that are dealing with various kinds of droughts- actual lack-of-water droughts, economic droughts, the drought of unemployment or depression or grief. And we need restoration- we need something new. We need shouts of joy in our mouths instead of weeping and choking back the tears.
At this time of year our need for joy manifests itself in the preparations for Christmas. I don’t mean the preparations for the religious observance of the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I mean all of the other things we do- not just pious Christians, but our whole culture. We go shopping for gifts. We put up riotously decorated trees in our living rooms. We festoon our houses with marvelous displays of lights. We bake cookies and eat great festive meals. It’s great stuff- I love the lights, especially- I love to drive around on a cold winter’s night and slow down to look at all the lights. These things are gestures of happiness. For some they are signs of the great happiness we feel at this time of year. For others, they are not so much signs of what is, but of what we long for- the lights and the gifts and the TV specials are an expression of the yearning we all have to be filled up with happiness.
But while happiness is what our culture has to offer at Christmas time, Christmas itself points to something related but different. That something different is not happiness- it is joy. We’re good at happiness, and it’s easy to brew it up with the delights of the many other holidays we celebrate this time of year.
Happiness is that warm and comforting thing that treats us easily. But joy- joy is different. Joy is what the Psalmist calls out to God for- bring us joy and let it come in quantity. We need it- we need great ripping torrents of it crashing through the dry and deserted places in our world and in our heart. Maybe that’s a strange image- after all, a flash flood is destructive and dangerous. But the thing that joy and a flash flood have in common is this- they change things. Happiness comes and makes you feel good for a while- but joy will change you, and joy will stick with you. If happiness is holding a baby in your lap, joy is becoming a parent.
And joy is what the world needs. The Psalm calls not for the happiness and nostalgia of old times- but for a new and powerful infusion of joy into the world. The prophet Isaiah saw it too- in a vision that calls for ruins to be restored into a gleaming city, for oppressed peoples to go free, for the brokenhearted to be bound up and cared for. This is not a vision of short-term happiness- not when God’s people are pictured as mighty oak trees of righteousness, not when the restoration is pictured as the whole earth blooming with the fresh new shoots of springtime. It is a vision of a change, toward something new and whole and sound and long-lasting.
The more Christmases I live through the more I realize that a lot of it comes and goes very quickly. Talk to me in late January, when it’s been this cold for two or three months about whether that eggnog is still making you feel festive.
But at the center of all this happiness, don’t lose sight of the joy. Don’t forget that it all points to Jesus Christ- to the incarnation- to those long-ago days when God became one of us. This is the point of the Nativity. When we are lonely and parched and longing for a change that will bring something new into the world, God has been there- God has lived that sorrow and suffering from the inside. And Christmas is the remembrance of when that began- when God came into the dry desert world with us, so that we could be swept up in the torrent that changes things, and changes us, and leaves us overflowing with joy.