I was drawn to the first reading this morning.  For one thing, when I read that Ezra had read from the book of the law, the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, he read from morning until midday.  He was a little bit like that pastor at that service.  Just imagine it…listening to Scripture being read from morning until midday.  We Lutherans start looking at our watches when the clock creeps toward the hour mark.  These assembled Israelites, the text says there were both men and women, were eager to hear the word of the LORD.  They wanted to know what was in Scripture.  This was the place where they turned to be reminded of God’s faithfulness.  This was where they heard how they were to live.  This was where they heard both reproach and promise. 

 The Hebrew Bible was written in the Hebrew language.  You might be thinking “well, duh, Pastor Julie”.  But this is a significant point.  The gathered people spoke in Aramaic.  They could not read Hebrew, and even if they could there was no Barnes and Noble bookseller in that square before the Water Gate. 

 And so they listened to the word being read aloud.  They listened for many hours.  Then the text says that Ezra blessed the Lord and the people answered “Amen, Amen”, lifting up their hands.  Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground.  And then we hear that the people were weeping, weeping after hearing the words of Scripture.  And a short look at the context of this story, at what the people had endured, tells us why they were weeping. 

 The people of God had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the pagan Babylonians.  How, they asked, could the people whom God had chosen not be protected by the very God who chose them?  After many years, a demoralized remnant struggled to rebuild the ruins of Jerusalem.  Nehemiah was a faithful prophet who supported this effort in both practical ways and with great spiritual support.  And so, once the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt, the people gathered in to hear the reading of Scripture by the prophet Ezra.  They must have been overcome with emotion as they stood in that place and wept bittersweet tears.

 As life goes, there is much to mourn.  Like the Israelites, we sometimes mourn the loss of physical place.  In the 1930’s this congregation mourned the loss of the building after it burned.  I am betting there were bittersweet tears when they heard Scripture read in these walls for the first time after it was rebuilt.  Other times, we mourn other losses in life.  Broken relationships, mental illness, eating disorders, cancer, suicide, involuntary unemployment, Alzheimer’s Disease, children who wander far from what we have tried to teach them, friends who betray us or turn their backs on us or shut us out,  educational systems that do not meet the basic needs of the students, legal systems that are dysfunctional or corrupt.  The list goes on and it is a daunting one.  If these disappointments, disasters, failures, tragedies and brokenness are so present in our lives, it is no wonder that we weep, even upon hearing Scripture. 

 But Nehemiah and Ezra were quick to say to those weeping: “This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep.  Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”  And the people went away to eat, to drink, to send portions and to celebrate a great festival.

 Nehemiah and Ezra knew that there was a time to grieve over what had been lost.  But there was also a time to move ahead, to celebrate and rejoice in the blessings of the moment and in the promise of Holy Scripture. There was a time to eat the fat and drink the sweet wine, for the joy of the LORD was their strength.

 Joy is an indistinct term at best.   Some use it as a synonym to happiness, attaching it to some external satisfaction or accomplishment.  They are filled with joy over health or success or fame or pleasure.  But if joy is dependent on those external sources, then it is fleeting.  Can we be joyful in the face of suffering or in the face of hardship?  Can we be joyful in the brokenness of life?  Not if our joy is attached to worldly deeds. 

 Because don’t we all know people who have much?  Who are successful by the world’s standards and yet still lack joy?  They may have the best job and the biggest house and perfect children and a marriage worthy of greeting card poetry but they have no joy.

 And then we all, I think, know people who are struggling and wrestling and are filled with joy.  I once heard a choir of young orphaned boys from Liberia.  Their signature song was “We Still Have Joy”.  After losing parents, homeland, after torture and hunger and disease and death of family and friends in numbers that would make some people crumble they could sing: “We still have joy, we still have joy.  After all the things we’ve been through we still have joy”. 

 My friends, joy is a divine gift.  It is given to us by the God who loves us and created us.  It is what we radiate in our happiness and cling to in our brokenness.  The people gathered around the word in the square that day wept bittersweet tears and then went out to eat, to drink, to share what they had and to enjoy a great festival. 

 We who have gathered here this day gather with joy.  Joy in the midst of life’s celebrations…of new babies and loving grandparents and great grandparents, of loving families, of good diagnoses, of recoveries from illness, of dreams and plans realized.  And we gather in the midst of brokenness as well.  But we gather to praise and thank the God who created us and Jesus our Savior who said to us “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11).  Jesus said those words in the midst of brokenness surrounding him, at a supper that he knew was the last one he would share with those he loved.  But because of those words, because of the promises of a faithful God, because of words of Scripture, because of a Savior sent to us,  we  know, as those Israelites knew in the square that day, and as those boys in the Liberian choir knew and sang, that in the LORD, no matter what we experience, we still have joy, we still have joy, after all the things we’ve been through, we still have joy.
Thanks be to God.  Amen.