[Isaiah 12:1-6 / James 1:16-21 / John 16:5-15]
“Sing praises to the Lord,” says Isaiah, “for He has done gloriously. Let this be made known in all the earth.” The Church sings; it’s just a fact. She sings and what she sings is not her warm and fuzzy emotions. Oh, there are times that her heart swells with joy as she sings. But there are other times – and maybe they are the majority – when her heart feels parched and empty. And yet she sings. She doesn’t sing because she feels happy. If you’re singing with the Church and as the Church, you sing whether you are happy or not. You sing in sadness and joy, in disappointments and in grief, in every emotional state that a human can experience. The Church sings through them all. And why? “For He has done gloriously. Let this be made known in all the earth.”
The Church sings in response to the great and mighty acts of God. She sings to make them known – to remind those who already know them, lest they forget; - to announce to those who have not yet heard of them, that they may join us in thanksgiving and grateful song. That they may be saved – which means, to join in the Church’s song with heart and voice.
The Lord has done gloriously. Believe that and you will sing! If your singing’s been a bit weak, you might want to ask yourself whether you’ve been focusing on the glorious deeds of the Lord or has your attention been on something else – something as vain and self-absorbed as how you think you sound?
Jesus gives us much to sing about in today’s Gospel. He is “going to the Father.” Have you ever thought of His suffering and dying that way? He did! “For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, scorning its shame.” You want something to sing about? How about this: Jesus has made all of our suffering and dying to be like His own: for those who trust that His cross was His going to the Father on our behalf, our suffering and dying become nothing less than our going to the Father too. That’s a joy to sing about, but there’s more.
Jesus says that His going to the Father was to send to us the Holy Spirit. He embraces the cross laden with our sin, He enters into our death, He rises from the grave, and He ascends to the right hand of the Father, in order to pour out upon us the most precious gift that could ever be ours: the Holy Spirit Himself.
Without the Holy Spirit, you see, you’ll never know what sin is, what righteousness is, or what judgment is. You’ll be caught up, thinking like the world that sin is all about doing and leaving undone, about rules and regulations. And you’ll think that righteousness is when you don’t sin, when you do all the stuff God tells you to do. And you’ll swear up and down that judgment is when you show up before God on the last day and he rewards you and all the good people for trying your best and doing what you could with what you had.
But along comes the Holy Spirit and He shows all of that to be balderdash. He shows us the depths of our sin – that its not just a matter of doing and leaving undone, of those rules and regulations. He shows us what we could never see without Him: that all our sinful actions flow from the one sin of our being: the sin of unbelief. He shows us that by nature we do not trust in God. We don’t believe His promises. We wonder if things are governed by chance, if God really hears our prayer, and if the sufferings that come our way are happenstance. The Spirit unveils that evil in our heart and suddenly we realize: how utterly spoiled are all the doings and not doings. Even our keeping of the law is sullied and sour. Filthy rags, as Isaiah said by the same Spirit long ago. Is that anything to sing about? Yes. It inspires us to sing: Create in me a clean heart, O God!
Ah, but see, the same Spirit then rejoices to reveal to us righteousness. Righteousness is not first about us. Righteousness is not our keeping of the law – we never live up to any of the demands of the law. In the best of our deeds, selfishness and doubt and fear and unbelief stain and ruin them. But see, righteousness, says the Spirit is this: Your Savior goes to the Father. He takes His perfect obedience through sufferings untold upon the cross, through the darkness of death and then rises from the grave and ascends into heaven to appear for you before the Father as Your Advocate. HE is righteousness. HE is perfect fulfillment of the Law on your behalf. And HE stands before the Father as the Righteous One. The Holy Spirit reveals that you were tucked into Him in your Baptism, and that His holiness clothes you entirely and begins to transform you even now – a transformation He won’t finish up until the Resurrection. And so He urges you always to hold tight to the Righteous One. In Him, your Jesus, you stand before the Father, holy and without stain. Now THAT is something to sing about. What wondrous love is this? But there’s more.
The Spirit of holiness reveals to you that judgment means that the ruler of this world is judged, condemned, thrown down. Satan, the Accuser of the Brothers, is rendered silent and he can bring no charge against those who are in Christ Jesus. The Spirit shows all this and even more. He keeps guiding you into all truth and showing you all that is yours in Jesus and it’s more than you can imagine and a lot more than I can fit into one sermon. And that’s why you sing and keep on singing.
James rejoices in today’s epistle that all goodies come down to us from the Father of lights and He never changes – He’s always the Giver God. By His will brought us forth by the word of truth – He spoke His Gospel and we became the firstfruits of a new creation. Here’s reason to sing: by the gift of rebirth through Baptism we get to live in this world already the joys of the Age that is to come. We get to practice now for eternity. And that’s why we have to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. We know that our getting all hot and bothered never produces righteousness like God requires. What produces THAT is the humble hearing and holding to the Word God plants within us – a Word that has the power to save our souls.
And so we sing that Word. We sing it that it might be planted deep within us and save our souls. The Church of Jesus Christ sings. She sings the wondrous things God has done and is doing still in her midst. She can’t stop singing without ceasing to be who she is: the Church of the living God. “Shout and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.” With singing, let us go forth to His Table to meet Him. Amen.
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