Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
July 16, 2006

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Thirty years ago my late wife Francie, our son Matt (who was two at the time), and I were living in a very unhappy place, Moscow, and I don’t mean the home of the University of Idaho. I mean Moscow, Russia, then the capital city of the world’s great Communist superpower, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Moscow is a truly great city. It is full of awe-inspiring cultural treasures. I’ve been a lot of places in my life, but the most awesome place I’ve ever been, the one place where I said to myself "I can’t believe I’m really here," is Moscow’s Red Square, especially at night in the snow. The fanciful flood lit onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral, the towering, majestic spire of the Spaskii Gate in the Kremlin wall with a big red star on top, the Lenin Mausoleum with it precision-marching military honor guard, and the towers and domes of the ancient churches inside the Kremlin--even the Victorian ornateness of the big department store on the east side of the square--combined to create an aura of beauty and power unlike anything else I have ever experienced.

Yet as great a city as Moscow is, as decent and creative as the people of the city are, Moscow in the 1970s was a very unhappy place. Life was hard. For most people just acquiring the necessities of daily life, food, housing, clothing, was a constant struggle. Life was tightly controlled by the Communist Party, and freedom as we know it was something of which people did not even dare to dream. To get ahead in any field people had to engage in the hypocrisy, as it was for most of them, of mouthing the platitudes and lies of the Party line. The great city and her people were gray, drab, colorless. People’s manner was depressed--except when they were drunk, which a lot of them were a lot of the time. Indeed, we were living in a very unhappy place. Joy was the last emotion we were likely to feel.

In the midst of all that unhappiness Francie, Matt, and I began attending the Anglo-American Church that was attached to the American and British Embassies. For a while we were attending a Bible study group that met in the Embassy apartment of an American Embassy big shot, one of the military attaches as I recall. The pastor, an American Presbyterian named Mike Spangler, had gotten to know a young Russian who was exploring Christianity. He would ride with us in the pastor’s Zhiguli--a Russian Fiat--to the Bible study sessions at that Embassy apartment. We had to hide him on the floor in the back seat so the Soviet guards posted at the gates to the Embassy--nominally police there to protect the Americans from the righteous indignation of the Soviet people but actually KGB officers there to intimidate any Soviet person who tried to enter--wouldn’t see him. At one of those Bible study sessions this young Russian said to us: The thing that I find so attractive about you Christians is that you are always so happy.

Although I don’t usually think of myself as an overly happy person, I knew what he meant. There was in that little Christian community meeting in the Western enclaves of the British and American Embassies a sense of happiness, of contentment, even of joy that was totally lacking in the grim Soviet reality all around us. I still vividly remember leaving church services on Sunday mornings and coming out onto the cold, gray streets of Moscow and being powerfully struck by the contrast between the warmth and high spirits of the people in church and the depressed, unhappy demeanor of the people on the street and in the subway on the way back to our home in the rather sad and depressing dormitory of Moscow State University. I don’t think the difference was only the familiarity of the American culture of the church and the foreignness of the Russian culture on the street, although that may have been part of it. I’m sure was more to it than that. I believe that I was experiencing for the first time in my life the joy of faith.

Certainly the sadness of Soviet life all around made the joy of faith stand out in bolder relief for me than it otherwise might. Still, I think we have a lot to learn here, so far removed from that sad Soviet reality, about the joy of faith. We Congregationalists aren’t by and large a demonstrably joyful lot. Manny calls us "God’s frozen chosen," and he has a point. We tend to be so proper. So polite. So reserved. There’s nothing wrong with any of that per se, but I think we tend to miss an important dimension of the life of faith. We tend to miss the joy. We tend to miss the irrepressible glee that we ought to feel from the amazing truth that we celebrate here. God loves us! God really loves us! Not only us of course, but God loves even us! God loves you. God loves even sinful, limited, deeply fallible me. Why aren’t we, why aren’t I, jumping out of our pews, out from behind this pulpit, shouting and dancing for joy? It’s the greatest news there ever was or ever could be! God loves us, and our joy should know no bounds!

But we’re too proper for that. We live too much in our heads for that. Our New England Puritan roots are too much with us for that. Maybe the Baptists can shout Amen from the pews, but not us. Maybe the Pentecostalists can get up and dance in the aisles at the calling of the Holy Spirit, but not us. No. We’re above all that. It isn’t seemly. It just isn’t done my dear, as my recently departed mother, at least culturally Congregationalist to the core, would have said.

Well, maybe we can’t do it, but one of our great ancestors in the faith could. Our Hebrew Scripture lesson this morning shows us King David, the great, powerful, revered and feared King David, dancing with joy before the presence of the Lord. He’s leading the procession that is bringing the Ark of the Covenant, the throne of the Lord God, to his new capital city of Jerusalem. The Ark represented for him the very presence of God, and in the presence of God he couldn’t help but dance for joy. Now if we were inclined to be skeptical, or maybe cynical is a better word for it (and I tend to be), we might think he was so happy because in bringing the Ark to Jerusalem he was consolidating his political and religious power. That’s all true of course, but I like to think that there’s more to it than that. Like the rest of us, David was a thoroughly fallible human being, but he was also a man of faith; and he knew the joy of the presence of God. And so he danced. The great king danced before all the people in joy at the presence of the Lord his God. He didn’t care about propriety, or dignity, or decorum. He only cared that God was present with him and the people, and so he danced for joy. It was the only thing he could do.

Really, it’s the only thing we can do too, but my head keeps asking: Why? Should faith really produce joy? My head can give you lots of reasons why it should. Faith gives life meaning. Faith gives solace in times of sorrow. Faith gives courage in times of peril. Faith gives peace in times of trouble. Faith gets us through the night when the night seems too dark and too long. Faith gets us out of bed in the morning when getting up seems too hard and too pointless. Faith just makes life easier and better. I could do a logical analysis and conclude that I should be happy, even joyful, about all that.

But joy comes from the heart not the head. We can’t think ourselves into joy, which is maybe why a lot of us, myself included, aren’t very good at it. Joy wells up from deep inside, from our hearts, from our souls. Joy wells up not from any rational calculation but from our gut. It wells up in response to the knowledge--heart knowledge not just head knowledge--that God loves us. Joy is our soul’s response to the touch of God deep within. Our souls respond with joy when we discover that God isn’t out there, or not only out there, but in here, in our hearts, in the depths of our psyches, Soul touching soul, Spirit touching spirit deep within us. If we will just let ourselves connect with that most profound reality, we will join King David in his dance of joy before God.

So let’s do it. As that great old Broadway musical number has it:

Forget your troubles, come on get happy,
The Lord is waiting to take your hand.
Forget your troubles, come on get happy,
We’re headin’ for the promised land.

Let’s take a cue from King David and dance for joy. Let’s take a cue from that young Russian so many years ago and really be happy because we’re Christians. As we sing the next hymn, sing it like you really mean it. Let the music move you, and move like you really mean it. In God, in Christ Jesus, we really can lay our burdens down and revel in the joy of faith. Thanks be to God. Amen.