Luke 1:57-66
Psalm 126
“How Does A Weary World Rejoice?: We Allow Ourselves to Be Amazed” preached on Sunday, December 10, 2023
“A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.”
This is a line from the Christmas carol, “O Holy Night” and the basis of our Advent & Christmas worship. We are asking, “How does a weary world rejoice?” So far we have talked about acknowledging our weariness and finding joy in connecting with others. Today we will answer “How does a weary world rejoice?” with “We allow ourselves to be amazed.”
Today, I want to invite us to open ourselves up to the connections between awe, amazement, pondering, wondering, dreaming, and rejoicing. All these concepts are connected, inter-related, and essential to how God calls us to live in this world.
So let us start with awe.
Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, defines awe as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.” In 1972, anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear and sadness were identified as the 6 primary emotions and all other emotions are some form of those. Think of the Pixar movie “Inside Out” that is based on this concept. But recent research on human emotions and awe posits that awe is a primary seventh emotion. Awe has a different effect on our bodies, our nerves, our inner being than any of these other emotions. It slows out hearts, helps with digestion, deepens our breathing - and psychologically, awe quiets the negative and criticizing voices in our heads.
In our weary world, we need more awe. Awe is not only good for our health - mental and physical - awe has the ability to override our weariness, help us see the world anew, help us see the world through the loving eyes of a God that delights in God’s own creation.
And the good news is, we can practice awe. We practice awe by simply paying attention. By noticing things, by being curious, by wondering at the world around us. In her book “World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments,” author Aimee (and I am probably going to butcher this last name) Nezhukumatathil spends chapter after chapter wondering about plants and animals, strange and incomprehensible, and all endangered. She says wonder takes practice and patience and putting aside distractions. But when we open ourselves up to wonder - we open ourselves up to the whole world. She talks about how wondering at a single firefly - which, if you didn’t know, are an endangered species with 18 varieties on the brink of extinction and significantly less of them for every generation of children - she talks about how wondering at a single firefly, opens herself up tp all the memories in her life that are connected to fireflies, to summer nights, to joy, and all the way our world is interconnected, and all the ways we wonder about the future and want to protect our world for future generations. I quote, “Did you see that? A single firefly... Such a tiny light, for such a considerable task. Its luminescence could very well be the spark that reminds us to make a most necessary turn- a shift and a swing and a switch- toward cherishing this magnificent and wondrous planet…”
When was the last time you were truly in awe? In wonder of something? And being in awe, being in wonder, is vastly different from being shocked, scandalized, or horrified - things that happen to us every day in our weary world as we hear the news and the going-ons that break our hearts. No, not the last time you were shocked but the last time you were in awe - where you noticed something that opened you up to the vastness and wonderfulness of our world, the vastness and wonderfulness of our God?
And what was it that amazed you? Was it the light of a single firefly in your backyward; was it the Grand Canyon or the last time you traveled to a National Park and saw beauty almost too big to comprehend; was it a particularly stunning display of fall foliage; or the quiet and understated beauty of the first flakes of falling snow? Was it when you saw a stranger moved to kindness? Jumping up to hold the door open; taking the hand of an elderly woman, helping her safely to her car; or holding the door ope with a smile and a nod? Was it staring at your child or grandchild, a niece or nephew - hearing their first laugh; falling into a giggle fit together; marveling at how fast they have grown? Or was it marveling at the unabashed wonderment of a child. Children are great models of practicing awe and wonder - the weariness of the world has not yet hindered them from seeing beauty and magic everywhere. How they notice rainbows reflected through glass, the first delicious bite of a cookie, how a snuggle and a kiss can solve almost any problem. This is all awe. This is all wonder. When were you last in awe - and what was it that amazed you?
We are called as children of God to practice awe. To pay attention. To pray to view people and the world through the eyes of God. I have this early memory from middle school when we could give presentations on any topic that excited us. And as I watched my classmates speak on topics they were passionate about, I remember being in awe. I remember thinking how beautiful each of them was. I remember thinking, “I am seeing my classmates, I am seeing them as God sees them - as beautiful, beloved children of God.” It was an experience of awe. I wonder…what would our world be like if we could see each other like this every day and in every interaction?
With a more established understanding of awe and wonder - let us now turn to our Scripture lessons from this morning, searching for awe and wonder in the text.
In our Gospel reading we are finally at the birth and circumcision of John who will come to be known as John the Baptist. Two weeks ago we heard about how Zechariah did not trust that the angel was answering his prayers when he was told that he would have a child and how he was subsequently silenced. Last week we heard how Elizabeth isolated herself for 5 months, maybe fearing to trust that Good thing that God was doing - and how her joy was made complete when her and Mary connected, holding joy for one another. And this week, we are at the birth and circumcision of John. And while the last two weeks we talked about Zechariah and Elizabeth, this week I would like to talk about the crowd, the neighbors, present with them. They were rejoicing at this wonderful child, this amazing thing that God had done - and yet there was a little issue over the naming and when Zechariah confirmed via writing on a tablet - not an iPad - but a tablet, when he confirmed the name they had been given by God - John, his mouth was opened, his tongue was freed, and praises for God poured forth. And all who saw this miracle, who heard Zechariah’s praises of God, they were amazed. They were in awe. And our reading this morning said “all who heard them pondered…” Another translation says “wonder fell upon the whole neighborhood.” They were pondering, wondering, “What will this child become?” It is the question every parent asks in their hearts when holding a newborn child - what will this child become? It reminds us of what Mary will think at the birth of Jesus when Scripture says she pondered all these things in her heart.
The whole community, by being in awe, by wondering and pondering, they were now paying attention to the awesome things that God had done, was doing, will do. Every birth, every newborn, every child, is a thing of awe. But this one - there was something else happening here. Something truly awe-some. How many of these neighbors allowed their wonder to continue through the years as John grew and grew into who God called him to be? How many of them allowed their wonder to draw them to the shore of the Jordan and tp be baptized by John? How many of them then followed Jesus, taking the path that John laid out for them. How many of them continued to be in wonder of how God was acting in the world through this now 8-day-old child?
We have seen awe and wonder and pondering and rejoicing in this text from our Gospel lesson. Let us now turn toward our Psalm, looking for awe, looking for wonder.
“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream…”
Dreaming is a form of awe, of wonder, and certainly of hope.
I recently saw the new Disney movie, Wish. While critics didn’t universally love it, my family did. In the movie, all the people in the magical kingdom of Rosas give their wishes, their hearts’ deepest desires, their dreams - when they turn 18, they give them to the sorcerer king for safe-keeping. The King will then arbitrarily choose to grant a wish once a month. And in giving their wish away, the people forget what their wish was, they forget what they dreamed of. They say they give it without regret but find that without their wishes, without their dreams - they are less than they were before. They are sad, listless, lost.
Because dreaming, wishing, is so closely related to hope, to wonder, to awe, to joy.
When we allow ourselves to hope, to dream, to imagine, to pray to God for a future that we wish for… we also start paying attention to how God is working, how God is creating a future of hope, our futures, in the here and now.
The Psalmist says that they, the Israelites just coming out of Babylonian captivity, how they were like those who dream again! And in dreaming, they are filled with laughter, with shouts and songs of joy, and they rejoice in all that God has done for them. For many years, they may not have allowed themselves to dream. The weariness of the world, of their captivity, they were reluctant to allow themselves to hope, to dream - for anything else. And in doing so - they shut themselves off to what God was doing.
The famous line of this Psalm reminds us of their hardship and weariness. “May those who sow in tears…” There is no doubt of the tears that were shed. Shed by the Israelities in the Psalm who had been in exile for so long. And also the tears that are shed here and now, the tears we sow in our weary world…
Yet even in a weary world - we can sow tears, and reap in joy.
The Psalm references “the watercourses of the Negeb.” For most of us, this is a line we quickly brush over. For the liturgist who read our Psalm, maybe it was a stumbling block of pronunciation - but the watercourses in the Negeb were a seasonal river. Dry and then when the rainy season came, filled, overflowing, flooding, and then the lush vegetation growing in its wake, along its shoreline.
When we think of deserts, we often think of life-less, dry, desolate places. But for anyone who has seen enough nature documentaries, or encountered the beauty of a desert after a rain - we know this is not the case. Even in the hottest place on earth, like Death Valley, a small amount of rain can awaken seeds that have been there for decades, creating beautiful desert blooms. And then there is the saguaro cactus and its beautiful flowers, found in the desert of Arizona. The largest cactus in the world that can grow up to 40 feet tall, live 100 to 200 years, and soak up and store 200 gallons of water at a time. Its flowers bloom at night for four weeks out of the year. Take for example the Atacama desert in Chile which is the driest desert in the world. On average, it only has one significant rainfall once a century. So how in the world can life survive and thrive here? The desert’s coast runs parallel to a cold sea that creates a dense, thick fog, that rolls over the desert. Within minutes the landscape and vegetation are drenched in mist, giving life to all, flowers, cacti, birds, and animals of all kinds…
Even in places that we tend to think of as lifeless - there are seeds sown, ready for the smallest amount of rain, to burst forth in blooms of color and life, blooms and life that we can wonder at, be amazed at, be in awe of how our God works.
Even in the driest, weariest places in our world - there is beauty to be found. And I am not talking about ecosystems anymore. I am talking about weary places of our souls, places of conflict and brokenness, places where tears are sown in abundance. Even there, yes, even there - we can practice awe, see goodness and beauty, be amazed, give thanks and praise God.
Even there we can see blooms of joy sprouting up, giving color to our weary world.
Without wonder, we may just see the dry, desert-like, weary places in our world. But when we practice awe, when we practice and pray to see the world through the eyes of God, we see color, flowers, blooms, fireflies, beauty, love, hope - popping up everywhere, yes, even in our weary world.
And in that wonder, in that awe, we give thanks to God - we rejoice: a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.
May we all be in awe and rejoice.
Amen.
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