sermon

INTRODUCTION: Were you to go to your computer and Google the words, “Joy to the World,” you would find there are two such songs: one, by Hoyt Axton, recorded by Three Dog Night back in 1971 – also known as Jeremiah was a bullfrog. Sorry, that’s not the Joy to the World I’m going to be talking about!

The other, to which I’m referring, was written almost 300 years ago. I submit that in addition to its magnificent hymnody, there is a correlation its author, Isaac Watts.

He was born while his father Thomas was in prison. In fact, his father was not only sent to prison twice, but had to hide for two years to keep from being arrested a third time. It was not because of any criminal acts, but because of his religious viewpoints. The Watts were Dissenters – they dissented from the teachings of the “established” Church of England. They didn’t agree with or believe in some of the things that the Church of England believed in and taught. And neither did the Pilgrims, the Puritans, the Quakers or the Unitarians.

So when we hear the name Isaac Watts, let us remember that part of his way of seeing, the gifts that informed his world view, came from his father, who went to prison, rather than compromise his religious beliefs.

And his mother was no shrinking violet either. Can you believe that each day while her husband was in prison for his religious beliefs, she publicly protested? She traveled from her home to the prison with her baby in her arms and nursed Isaac on a giant stone in front of the prison – every day!

So when singing Joy to the World, let’s not only think about the uniqueness of its author, but also the bravery profiled for him by his mother and father. They cared not only about each other, but they also supported each other in dissent from the status quo.

By age four, their son Isaac was studying Latin, and by age 13 he had mastered Latin, Greek, French and Hebrew. He was so obviously brilliant that a wealthy physician offered to pay his way to Oxford University. The only requirement was that he would have to “conform” to the Church of England – in other words, agree to its beliefs. Isaac Watts declined for the same reasons his father had been twice imprisoned and his mother protested daily at the prison: They did not believe what the Church of England proclaimed as truth, and Isaac was not willing to compromise his beliefs just to get into a great university.

So when Isaac Watts penned his magnificent Joy to the World, it did not make the music charts of the 18^th century, as Hoyt Axton’s did three centuries later. In fact, when Watts cited Psalm 98 as the source of his inspiration, one Church of England divine sarcastically noted, “How dare he take the Psalms and try to improve on them.”

But there’s also a poignant and personal note about this carol’s author. His hymns became so popular in England that a young woman wrote and asked to marry Watts, sight unseen. She had fallen in love with him from his writings. So the planned meeting was set, at which time they were set a date for their marriage.

But when she saw him in person she took back the offer. She wrote later that Isaac Watts was "only five feet tall, with a shallow face, hooked nose, prominent cheek bones, small eyes, and deathlike color…. I admired the jewel but not the casket that contained the jewel.”

That’s humorous at first, but painful on reflection. In fact, rejection can be one of the most painful experiences any of us can have. Ralph Keyes, in his book Is There Life after High School?, writes that Mia Farrow never forgot the high school dance, where every girl but she was asked to dance. Nor did the late Charles Schulz of "Peanuts" cartoon fame ever forget that his high school yearbook staff rejected every single cartoon he submitted. Movie actress Ali McGraw confesses she still remembers that she never had one date in all of high school. Henry Kissinger is best remembered by his classmates as the kid that no one wanted to eat lunch with.

That’s rejection…painful still to remember. In Watts’ case, he lived alone the rest of his life, and wrote not only 100s of hymns, but also several books on logic and theology. Some of which were used in universities for more than 100 years. And his hymnody survives to this day in Christian churches around the world.

Benjamin Franklin printed the first American edition of Watts’ hymns. And then a banker, Lowell Mason, who was also a student of Handel, composed the music that we use since.

Later, when we sing this carol, I hope we will not think of it as just words and notes on a page. Rather, think of a woman nursing her baby in front of a prison, where her husband has been placed because of his religious views. Think of a very short, five-foot man, rejected in love, looked on with disdain by the established church, and even criticized for his music. Yet despite all of that, this was the man who wrote of joy: Joy to the World.

So how does any of that apply to us today, Dec. 23^rd, 2007, here in Ft. Myers, Florida, USA?

What if you have been living your life as best you can…what if you have gone out of your way to help others…what if you’ve sought to be the kind of person that others would emulate…what if you’ve given, risked and encouraged…and then in the midst of doing good, everything goes to hell in a hand basket?

So much so that your breath is taken away. So much so that you can’t concentrate. So much so that in the deepest corners of your being, you ache. You want so much for things to be the way they were. If you could just have another chance. If you could just erase what happened and start over.

Yes, absolutely. And you know why? Because joy comes in parts and pieces; sometimes it’s even wrapped in pain, and stuffed with hurt. For example, we can rejoice for our family even when we personally are suffering. We can work for justice even when injustice reigns. We can struggle for peace when war is touted as the real way to peace.

UU theologian Sharon Welch has written eloquently on recognizing what we have, rather than dismissing the possible because we don’t have the impossible. She states:

"The wellspring of decency is loving this life in which people die, people suffer, there are limits, and we make mistakes. The wellspring of moral action is not seeking utopia, not a declaration that the world could and should be otherwise. Rather, it is a deep affirmation of the joy, richness, and blessing that the world is.

The ground of challenging exploitation, injustice, and oppression is not a vision of how the world could be or will be in the future…after the election. The ground of challenging injustice is gratitude – please let me repeat that again – The ground of challenging injustice is gratitude…the heartfelt desire to honor the wonder of that which is; to cherish, to celebrate, to delight in the many gifts and joys of life."

And may I also add…despite the fact that not every part of our life is joyous, nor every part of our congregation, our community and state, our nation and world. Joy is not to be content with injustice, but to be grateful for the possibilities of the moment and the small blessings that can come our way.

One Christmas Eve morning while living in Norman, Oklahoma, where the University of Oklahoma is located, I had to make an emergency trip to Kingfisher, Oklahoma. And instead of returning home the shortest route, I drove instead to Guthrie, Oklahoma, where my mother had been living for several years in a nursing home.

The reason for her being there was she had experienced a severe stroke, with one of the side effects being aphasia. That meant not only was her entire right side paralyzed, but it also affected her ability to walk, talk, read, and even to watch television.

I had already told her I would drive up to see her on Christmas Day, but I knew that showing up unannounced on Christmas Eve would be a neat surprise.

So I walked in to her room anticipating her surprise and smile. I was not prepared for what I saw: The sides of her bed were pulled up, and her hands and arms were tied to the bed. She could not move.

I immediately untied her, put the sides down and put my arms around her as she cried. I learned later in talking to the staff that they had been unable to stop her from scratching a rash she had developed. A promised skin medicine had not been forthcoming from the pharmacy, due to its being Christmas time. To keep her from scratching, the staff chose to tie her hands and arms.

After awhile, Mother recovered from the trauma, and she communicated in her almost incomprehensible way that she wanted me to get the Cassio keyboard we kids had purchased for her to play on, even though she only had the use of her left hand. Mother had at one time played the guitar, the accordion and the piano, and had even played the pump organ starting at age 12 in the Methodist Episcopal Church South of Wagoner, Oklahoma.

But even though we bought the keyboard for Mother, when any of we children came, she wanted us to play and to sing.

So I pulled it off the shelf and began to chord and Mother and I to sing. She could no longer sing on key, nor come close to saying the right words, but as the snow began to fall outside the window of her room, we created one of the most beautiful duets of Christmas music heard anywhere in the world.

We had just finished singing, “Joy to the World,” when in one of those rare moments for patients suffering from aphasia, she said as clear as a bell, “Oh son. God’s so good to us.’”

I almost dropped the keyboard. I looked at her for a moment. I wanted to say, “Why, Mother! You can’t walk, you can hardly talk, you can’t even go to the bathroom by yourself. Only moments ago, you were tied to the bed like a dog. How can you possibly say, ‘Oh, son. God’s so good to us.’”

Instead, I put my arms around her. I hugged her, and told her how much I loved her, and how lucky I was to have a mother like she was.

Later, as I drove back to Norman, the snow falling on the windshield forced me to drive slowly. For the first time in my life, I was going to be alone that Christmas Eve night. In preparation, I had been planning a pity party for poor pitiful Wayne.

But as the snow fell, I realized that I had just seen a marvelous reenactment of the Christmas story. Instead of me uplifting my Mother, she had lifted me up. The light had shone in our darkness.

I know very well this morning that there are some of you here for whom the joy of the season is tempered by the loss of the past. The experience of the present is very painful, and the prospects of the future are not that bright.

In no way, would I want to diminish what you are going through. All of our difficulties are real, and sometimes incredibly heavy. Regardless, we still have to find a way through the difficulty, a way through the darkness.

The theology by which we do so is not the issue. The theologies of the great religions are ways of talking about reality. Creeds and beliefs are not reality but religious poetry in response to the questions which life poses every moment of every day. Sometimes life is more a living of the questions than it is having the answers.

I remember reading of a university professor whose colleagues had protested to their dean that one of their colleagues was still giving the exact same test he had given 20 years ago.

The dean called him in, voiced the complaints, and then said, “Dr. Jones, is this true?”

The dean was flabbergasted and said, “Man, how can you do that? Don’t you realize how much the world has changed in these past 20 years?”

Dr. Jones answered, “Oh, yes, I agree. My test is the same, but the answers have changed.”

So it is at Christmas. We sing the same songs and hear the same stories. But how we apply it to our lives is always different, because our lives continue to change.

Please join us now as we sing the marvelous Christmas poetry of Isaac Watts, Joy to the World.

[1] Given Sunday, December 23, 2007, at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1904 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.