Exuberance, Part 1
Psalm 126
John 12:1-8
Ken Whitt March 25, 2007
Our children, as strange as it seems, seemed to really enjoy receiving a red radish during the children’s story. Some of you seemed to be a bit nervous about that, not knowing what the children would do with a radish. The most likely possibility? Throw them at each other! As you saw, I also have this bag of carrots. You know, it would have been pretty funny if I gave you all one of these orange carrots and you were to sit there chomping on them while I preached. Bad idea. Still—red radishes and orange carrots. The colors themselves are exuberant. Brenda and Alice are wearing exuberant colors today. Thank you for bringing such radiance to our sanctuary. If you are not convinced that colors alone can express exuberance just wait until Easter Sunday.
Some of you may guess that my favorite color has been orange for a long time. Most people would say that a little bit of orange is okay. But too much orange is just outrageous, ridiculous, in fact. One of the most ridiculous things I ever did in my life--this is true, I can show you photographs--I bought an orange van, when I lived back in Rhode Island, before kids. I loved orange so the first time I got to buy a car, I bought an orange van. I mean, not like dark red orange, orange, you know, really orange, like an orange, and it even got to be too much to me. The kids in my youth group nick named it, “The Great Pumpkin.” I bought this kit of vinyl stripes, three different shades of brown, and I striped the van and it broke up the orange and it was a little more less ridiculous—a little.
I had an equally orange hat to wear when driving my orange van, and I don’t know what happened to it. I loved that hat and its gone. So yesterday, when I was thinking about doing this sermon called “Exuberance”—it will become clear why I’m calling it that fairly soon—I was sitting at a table over St. John Missionary Baptist Church. We were attending a leadership workshop yesterday morning. There was this lady at the next table and she’ was wearing a bright orange hat, and she was wearing an orange blouse. And I didn’t think it was appropriate to ask her for the blouse, but I thought, I thought and I said out loud to the folks I was sitting with, “I wonder if I could get that orange hat from her?” You know, I’ll go over to her and say, “I’m Pastor Ken Whitt, and I’m going to do a sermon on Exuberance and your hat is an exuberant color and would you consider, you know, loaning it to me?” Or, maybe she’d offer to give it to me. What do you think?
Do you think I did it?
You don’t think I did it? ( Ken reaches down and picks up an orange hat from the pew next to him.)
Just so everybody gets to read the hat, I’ll walk down the aisle. It says, “Exuberance” across it. No, I did not ask that poor lady for her hat. She probably would have given it to me. But I was going to the movies yesterday and at the mall there was this little shop and they were selling hats, and there was every imaginable color of hat, but there were no orange hats. I was so disappointed. I could buy a hat and even put it on my business expense account, you know, as a sermon illustration. (Not for real, Dick.) We walked around the counter where they were selling these hats and all of a sudden there was a rack of orange hats.
So, of course, I had to get one and then the guy told me he could write on it, and so he wrote the word “Exuberance” on it. And now I have an exuberant orange hat, and it’s a wonderful color, and its not too much, is it?
Okay, it is too much, but you know. It maybe goes, sort of, with the orange colors of this tie, which is, of course, why I wore it today. They actually match. Its been one of the miracles of my maturity that I’ve learned to buy stuff that matches, almost.
Exuberance. Lets open our Bibles. We’re going to start with Psalms 126. Now this is an astounding Psalm. I’ve really never noticed it before. It pours out exuberance. It cascades exuberance, like Niagara Falls. Someone gave Psalm 126 the title, “A Harvest of joy”.
A Harvest of Joy
1 When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,a
we were like those who dream.
2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
3 The LORD has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.
4 Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
5 May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.
a - Or brought back those who returned to Zion
A Harvest of Joy--That sounds a little more spiritual than, “an exuberance of orange”. But it’s essentially the same meaning. A harvest of joy is joy as abundant as the hundreds and thousands of sheaves being brought in from the fields at harvest time. Joy as abundant as the grapes filling dozens of giant vats. Joy pilled high like bails of hay stored in the barn, maybe two, four, or eight barns full of hay. A harvest of joy! So much joy in your heart that you must sing about it with exuberant tones and brilliant words.
The reason that the people of Israel are feeling this exuberance in Psalm 126 is that they’ve been in bondage for a couple hundred years. They were carried off because of their idolatry into Babylon. They were captives. Jerusalem was emptied and destroyed. They’d lost their homes and their religious system and were carried into captivity.
But now historical circumstances have turned and its time to go home. And it is really hard for us to understand how that would lead to exuberance, unless you’ve been captive or imprisoned like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Oppressed people and war refugees and victims of the modern slave trade lose their homes and their freedom and have little hope of finding their way back home. But what if by a miracle they do find their way home? Can you imagine the singing and the shouting and the exuberance? Can you imagine the feelings of parents of a child kidnapped for the world wide sex trade miraculously rescued and returned to her family?
Many of us can in our own relate to this exuberance. We have poured forth our tears and have been overwhelmed with grief. And in time, the season of sadness has passed and joy has returned and we can hardly believe the happiness we are able to feel again. Psalm 126 promises, “Those who go out weeping bearing the seeds for sorrow shall come home with shouts of joy carrying their sheaves!” God has kept this promise and God will keep it again and we will rejoice.
Then we read another story about exuberance from the 12th Chapter of the Gospel of John verses 1-8. The main character in this story is Mary and Mary is pouring out her love on Jesus.
“Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served and Lazarus was one of those at the table with them. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure Nard, a pound of costly perfume, approximately the wage a laborer would make in a year. She took perfume worth a year’s wages. (For some of us, that $40,000, $80,000, $20,000.) Mary took the perfume worth a year’s wages, but Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, the one who was there to betray him, said, “Why was this perfume not sold for 300 denari and the money given to the poor?” He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. He kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it. Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me with you”.
One of the reasons that Mary anointed Jesus and no one else did is that somehow or other, Mary was one of the few followers of Jesus who got the message, who understood that he would be dying soon, that they were living with Jesus in the last days of His life on earth. Almost everybody else refused to believe it. Mary got the message, so she bought the perfume, a very large quantity, very expensive, and poured it out on the feet of Jesus. The aroma of the perfume filled the room and it was extravagant. It was outrageous, it was super-abundant, it was exuberant.
Others around her didn’t like it. They criticized her super-abundant exuberance, but there are times when there is nothing in the world that can stop us from pouring out that kind of thanksgiving, that kind of gratitude to God for what God has done for us.
The reason I’m preaching on exuberance today has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I like the color orange or that I had some good stories I wanted to tell on the theme of exuberance. I’m preaching the sermon because I started thinking that we’ve got a couple weeks before Easter and my call as preacher is to prepare everyone for Holy week, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter morning, and so I went to the Lectionary texts which are designed help us to prepare. They’re chosen specifically to paint pictures, establish themes and suggest Bible texts for today. All four of these assigned texts for today paint pictures of exuberance, of people pouring out their thanksgiving to God.
So what did Mary do that made her love Jesus with such exuberance? She wasn’t a fragrant sinner. The forgiveness that she experienced from Jesus was just like the forgiveness Jesus offers to all of us. And she hadn’t gone off into Babylon in captivity. Mary had not lost everything. On the contrary, she and Martha had a wonderful home, a fairly large home. They were able to invite many guests, they had a pretty good living. So, Jesus didn’t help her in that way. How did Jesus help Mary in such a way that Mary would be compelled to pour out her life in thanksgiving. I think it’s a simple matter.
Mary lived in a culture where women were treated as inferior; where men thanked God in their daily prayers that they had not been born as women, where they were not allowed to learn, just like slaves were not allowed to learn and to read and wrrite in the Americas of the 18th and 19th centuries. Jesus lifted Mary out of that oppression and taught her to become the very best person that Mary could be.
That possibility exists for all us. None of us are stuck where we are. Paul calls upon all of us to grow into the greater measure of the fullness of Christ everyday of our lives, that we don’t stop growing no matter how old we become or how many difficulties we’ve been through, that Jesus has a way of lifting us and making our lives brand new. Jesus continually sets in front of us opportunities for learning and for service that will make our lives far more exciting than they’ve ever been.
Jesus did that for Mary. And Mary’s exuberance was a response to that love.
There are many great stories in the Bible about exuberance. The people of Israel, at the end of their wilderness travels, decided to build a tabernacle to God. It was a tent of meetings. It was a tent but it was also an incredibly extravagant structure and it required the wealth of a nation to build it. The nation was so grateful that their wilderness journey was coming to an end that everybody came forward with their offering and some who didn’t have a lot of money came forward with their labors. The story about it in the Book of Exodus is really buoyant because at the end of the story so much has been given, so much excitement and love for God has been expressed, that Moses has to plead with the people to stop bringing the offering and to take some of it back. Exuberance ushers in a super abundance of generosity. And then when they arrive in the Promised Land, oh my goodness! I get into this story by imagining what it would have been like with my three teenagers if I tried to put manna on the table day after day, year after year. Manna, that’s what the people of Israel ate in the wilderness journey for 40 years. They ate manna! Boring! They ate manna and drank water. The word “manna” means, “What is it?” What is it? Boring, that ‘s what it is, its boring. Forty years of manna. Boring!
But when they crossed the Jordan they got a flood of exuberance. In the land flowing with milk and honey there were also dates and pomegranates and barley and every other imaginable delicacy of God’s earth and they were exuberant in their thanksgiving. You will find this celebration of food described in Deuteronomy 8:7-10.
So we head towards Holy Week. A few of us here have some sins that are pretty serious and we would just like to hide them or deny their importance. But if we pay attention to them and ask for forgiveness, we will be forgiven. Then we too will celebrate with an exuberant expression of gratitude. Others of us need big time change in our lives, a new beginning, hope that springs forth from the despair of our lives. The possibility of such transformation is one part of the meaning of Holy Week. God has ways of transforming our lives. You can go on a mission trip or you can work among people who are very needy and in that work and in the suffering that you experience with them, you can also see God’s love and power. But you don’t have the experience of exuberance if you’re just trying to keep your life simple and safe.
You won’t know why Christ died if you aren’t conscious of your sins. You won’t know what God can do for you if you don’t stretch out your life and try to be more the person that God calls you to be, just like Mary in our story.
So, we are drawing close to Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter. Your pastor and others in this church family have been preparing really wonderful services that set the mood and prepare the ground and create opportunities for you to experience what Holy week is all about. To experience forgiveness, if that’s what you need. To know God’s healing, if that’s what you need. To set a fire under your seat, if your life is limited to the routine. Maybe your life has been simmering on the stove for too long. Maybe God wants to turn up the heat. A rolling boil has a lot of energy. Maybe we need to be reenergized for the rest of our lives.
We all need an orange hat, or something equally brilliant, like a lively anthem, a stirring hymn or vibrant praise chorus, to remind us that God is looking for an exuberant response from us in our worship, in our giving, in our living, in our enjoyment of God’s abundant gifts to us. In your preparations for Holy Week, I invite you to give thought to the reasons for exuberance in your life. I, for example, cannot hold back the tears of Joy when I think of the upcoming birth of my third grandchild, Eleina, on May 1. Love has been birthed in my life in a variety of ways. Such love calls for exuberance. What is calling forth such exuberance from you? Amen.
