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"Salem.....Where a Warm Welcome Awaits You"
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GOD'S DELIGHT
(The following sermon was preached by Pastor Barbara Melosh on January 14th, 2007.)
The pursuit of happiness---it’s right up there with life and liberty in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, and it’s a quest that is alive and active in American life today. Look through any magazine, browse through any bookstore, listen to radio or watch TV, and you’ll find all kinds of offers and advice to help you in your own pursuit of happiness—from chocolate to life coaches, self-help manuals to college courses. One of those is described in last week’s New York Times Sunday magazine (Jan. 7, 2007), in an article titled “Happiness 101.” The course described at length in that article is taught at George Mason University, so it especially caught my eye (as most of you know, that is my former workplace). It’s officially called “The Science of Well Being”, and it comes out of a new specialization in psychology called “positive psychology”—a field devoted to the study of happiness. One exercise in that class invites students to explore for themselves the difference between “feeling good” and “doing good.” They’re assigned first to go and do something that makes them feel good. Now these are college students, mostly in their late teens and early twenties, so I leave you to imagine the kinds of things that they did for their homework on this assignment, or, if you want to know the details, you can read the article. Then, they were assigned to go and “do good”—and students did things like give blood and collect clothes to donate to a battered women’s shelter. The point the instructor was trying to demonstrate was that the pursuit of happiness turns into a treadmill if you are doing it only through indulging in self-gratification—and that kind of pleasure brings happiness only for the moment. By contrast, “doing good”—the pursuit of happiness through helping others—gives more lasting satisfaction. Maybe you’re thinking, “Hey, I knew that, and I didn’t learn it in college.” Other topics on the syllabus include gratitude and forgiveness, close relationships and love, spirituality and well being, and finally, “meaning and purpose in life.” This sounds like what you learned in Sunday school, right? Gratitude, forgiveness, relationship, love, meaning and purpose—these are all core concerns of Christian life and faith—but with one big difference. Positive psychology is a do-it-yourself program—follow these rules, adopt this program, and you’ll make yourself happy. In our life together, God does the heavy lifting—and invites us into a community of mutual delight. In today’s reading, God’s delight brings hope and new life to a poised between exile and homecoming. This part of Isaiah, we think, was written at the end of the Babylonian exile, more than 500 years before Christ was born—the temple had been destroyed, the Jews driven out, in exile for two generations. Now, they are coming home—back to Jerusalem. But it seems that they’re still thinking like exiles, still feeling desolate and forsaken. Maybe they can’t quite believe the good news, after all those years of longing for home, or, for the younger people, all those years of hearing stories of the good old days they never had known. They’re back in Jerusalem, back home, but without the energy and courage and vision to re-inhabit their city, rebuild their temple. So Isaiah speaks the word of God to them—and it’s such good news he can’t, he won’t, keep silent. “For Zion’s sake”—your sake, Israel—“I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest…” The people will have a new name—that powerful symbol of a new beginning, a new mission, a new life. They’ll leave behind those old names that shame and confine them—“desolate”, “forsaken.” Now, “you shall be called My Delight Is In Her”—that is, God’s delight is in you.” Delight—God who meets us as a bridegroom meets his bride—God, our lover. God who says to each of us, “My delight is in you.” God who says to us as a congregation, “My delight is in you.” God, who invites us to drink from the river of his delights. God, who turns water into wine, whose abundance fills the wedding guests at Cana with delight. You can see God’s delight in us, when we delight in each other. You can see that here at Salem. I think of our baptisms—those joyful occasions when we welcome a new member into the body of Christ. I certainly looked forward to baptisms when I was preparing to be a pastor, but I had no idea how wildly happy I would be to be pouring water on somebody’s head. And I see your joy in baptism too when I carry a new baby around to introduce our new member, and see your delight—smiles breaking out all over, hands reaching out in welcome. That delight is a light drawing others to us. It was one of the things that brought me back to church, myself. I remember one Christmas season when I was invited to a party at the home of one of my graduate students, a woman about my age named Hazel. When I got there I saw a few other professors that I knew and some other students. But most of the guests, I realized as I went around and talked with people, were people from her church—a high-spirited crowd spilling over with affection and love and laughter. They enjoyed one another thoroughly—listening, laughing, talking together, and sharing a kind of friendship that didn’t leave an outsider feeling left out—they were delighted to meet Hazel’s teachers and fellow students. I went home thinking to myself, “I want to be in a community like that.” We at Salem delight in one another too, as you can see on our Mar-Lu Ridge trip and if you hang around the kitchen when that wild and crazy Kitchen Crew is at work. I’m wondering about doing more to share that delight with visitors and newcomers—maybe figuring out a way to have coffee hour together more often, like we did on New Year’s Eve, and working with social ministry to spend some of that money we have been given for “Neighbor to Neighbor”—offering hospitality to our neighbors, and sharing our delight. People around us are hungry and thirsty for meaning. They are longing for what we have to offer—not just happiness, but delight. For their sake we ought not to keep silent. But maybe one reason we don’t tell people what w have to offer is that we don’t realize it ourselves—or that when we get discouraged, we forget and need to be reminded. So--Hear the good news of Isaiah—that God our lover delights in us. Hear the good news of psalm 36, and drink from the river of God’s delights. Hear the good news of John, where God’s abundance is revealed in overflowing jars of wine. Come to the table, and drink from the river of God’s delight. And then go out and share the good news—that God delights in us, and God’s delight is in us.
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