Bring … Joy

Isaiah 35:1-2, 8-10

To this room … to this time … for this purpose … we bring … everything. For one hour a week (one measly hour a week) we bring it all. We’re invited to ‘bring it all” every hour of the week. But, I’ll bet a dozen donuts you don’t. I know I forget, too. But, before GOD and before one another we mustn’t forget to bring our hopes, our laments, our prayers, and our joy to this hour.

Our hopes imagine the world as GOD intends it to be so that we empowerourselves to take the necessary steps to increase the Kingdom of GOD on earth.

Our laments remind us daily that things are not the way they should be – from the private to the public, the personal to the political. We lament the absence of trust, compassion and Love so that we might mobilize all these things and more in the world.

Our prayer, we were reminded just last week, is most powerfully and provocatively understood as our very lives when are living properly and faithfully. We bring our prayer to this place and time when we bring ourselves. And we’ve brought ourselves again, our whole selves.

Now, on this fourth Sunday of July, we explore that last, the bringing of our Joy … to this place and time. Our joy … and immediately you feel a “tug”. How dare we be joyful, in the midst of so much sadness? How dare we bring our joy here when so many and so much are sad?! But … how dare we not? Be prayer with me …

Holy God, through the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts in this time together, remind us again that prayer is the life we live. May our work, our rest, our worship, and our service be a living prayer, offered with gratitude and humility. In the next few moments of our lives, may we connect even more fully to you, to the Way of our Christ, and to the Kin-dom here on earth. Living fully, our whole life is an "Amen".

That’s nice … may it be so, indeed.

So, “Joy” on this final July Sunday. That’s only one word we could have used for this day: praise, exaltation, delight, rapture, wonder, would work, as well. But, Joy it is, this time. Much more than simple happiness. True Joy is the experience we have when our relationships with GOD, with one another, and with ourselves are shaped by the vision of Peace and Justice that are not of this world as it is, but as it should be – as it shall be, says Isaiah. And joy, says the prophet, is experienced, shared and multiplied any time we gather and remember and are sent and engage the world beyond this place and this hour.

Listen for the Word of GOD … Read Isaiah 35:1-2, 8-10.  The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to GOD.

We must bring our joy to this place whenever we enter through these doors, no matter what is happening outside of them … The background of this chapter in Isaiah is the Babylonian exile, between 587 and 539 BCE. Things couldn’t have been more “wrong”, the world couldn’t have been less “right”, that during these forty-eight years for the ancient Israelites.

But, take this gift, the prophet says – Joy – and open it and share it in the midst of your reality in whatever time you live and in whatever place you inhabit.  Raise it into the light of your day. Then lift your eyes and look through it beyond the present.  There is a future which is full of life. And as Christians, because of Jesus Christ, we even say we can experience that “life-filled” future here and now. So, receive this gift, not in spite of what you are experiencing, but because you are experiencing it.  “The wilderness shall be glad … Obtain joy … and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

True Joy is the experience we have when our relationships with GOD, with one another, and with ourselves are shaped by the vision of Peace and Justice that are not of this world as it is, but as it should be, says Isaiah.  True joy is far deeper, even, than an emotion.  It is a spiritual practice and, like hope and lament and prayer, “stems from seeing the world through the lens of Love,” steadfast, covenantal Love.  How often do we truly look through that lens of Love?  We need to look at the world differently than most others do, differently than we most often do.  With this gift in hand we look through our Joy, through our relationship with Love, to see the world not as it is, but as it was created to be.  We see the world “through the vantage point of GOD’s promise.”  That is the gift that Isaiah offers. That is the gift we bring whenever we gather here. That is our gift to give the world when we leave here every week.

So … what gives you Joy?

We’ve been wondering that all week. And as this whole month has allowed, we not only wondered all week and planned to ask you rhetorically this morning. We planned for you to  answer that question this morning, and so share your joys with one another. Are you game for it? Of course you are, you have been all month, kicking and screaming or laughing all the way, you’ve been game all month!

So … take out your phones … you heard it right …

Walk through the activity of sharing responses to “What gives you Joy?” through the Word Cloud app and creation of our word cloud …

Vimeo attendance, too …

Joy is ultimately about recognizing and experiencing GOD’s presence in your life – and then sharing that Joy with others.  “Joy is trusting in the goodness of GOD in spite of the meanness of the present age.”  It is as simple as that.  We like to complicate this gift because even as we hear that we’re to look with the eyes of GOD through this lens of Joy, we say that “in the end”, GOD’s ways are not our ways.  But maybe, just perhaps, they might be if we use our gifts – of hope, of lament, of prayer and of joy – correctly.

Our whole bible – history, wisdom, prophecy, Gospel, letters, and revelation teach us how wrong we are to believe that GOD’s “good” ways are not ours to share, too.  How wrong we are to wait for someone else to cry out in the wilderness of the world. Even, how wrong we are to leave all the work to someone who lived two thousand years ago.

Our Joy is complicated only by our inability to understand it properly and our refusal to use it appropriately when we do.  Take your joy – this Joy (the Word Cloud) and express it in the midst of your reality in whatever time you live and in whatever place you inhabit.  Raise it into the light of your day. Then lift your eyes and look through Joy beyond the present. Share your Joy, here and beyond, not in spite of what you are experiencing, but because you are experiencing it. Share with those you know and those you don’t know as you move through your days. It prepares the way for salvation, itself, a gift for you to share with everyone.

May the wilderness be glad … May we receive true joy … And may sorrow and sighing flee away.  Amen.

Reverend Joel Weible, Pastor

Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church / July 26, 2026