December 11, 2011

Farm Report:

Why is This Good News?

Psalm 126

 

I hope you are enjoying today’s edition of The Good News Herald. In the previous two weeks we brought you a weather report and a traffic report. Today’s edition features a farm report. How many of you are or have ever been a farmer? (You’re a bunch of city slickers, aren’t you?)

A man moved from the city to the country planning to live a simpler life. He bought a farmhouse with some land around it. After he moved in, he bought a hundred baby chicks. They all died. The man was disappointed, but he bought another hundred baby chicks. All of these chicks died as well. The man was so confused and looking for answers. He wrote to the county agricultural extension office and explained his problem. He told how he wanted to become a successful chicken farmer and needed to know what he was doing wrong. He asked if he could possibly be planting his chicks too close together or perhaps too deep.

More than likely if you or I decided to take up farming we would be somewhat prepared for the endeavor. Few of us would start from scratch. Try to imagine, however, being forced to start from scratch. Such was the case with the Israelites in the late 6^th century B.C. As I noted last week, after several decades of exile in Babylon, the Persians conquered the Babylonians and set the Israelites and other captured peoples free. Many of the newly freed Israelites made the journey back to their Palestinian homeland. Most of them had been born in Babylonian captivity so calling it a homecoming is a little inaccurate. In reality they are settling in a place they had never been before.

In order to survive they needed food, and other than slaughtering sheep and goats they needed to farm the land. But it’s not like they were inexperienced as farmers. In the ancient world almost everyone was involved in agriculture or the production of food. These people knew what they were doing—they weren’t exactly modern day city slickers like us. However this was a new place … and starting from scratch is never easy. If you have ever been to this part of the world you may find it difficult to think of it as rich farm land, but this is exactly how this place was perceived. A good example is the description we find in Deuteronomy 8:7-9:

 

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing ...

 

Or you may remember the better known words the Lord spoke to Moses, recorded in Exodus 3:8:

 

…I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey …

 

But despite the biblical characterization of this place as a land flowing with milk and honey, they had to have had doubts about its agricultural productivity. Southern Palestine is not the greenest spot on the planet. It is a semi-desert or desert area called the “Negeb,” a word that means “dry” in Hebrew. How confident about productivity would you be if you were settling in a place that literally means “dry”? Rain was scarce, however during the rainy season the “watercourses” or dry streambeds could suddenly become rivers.

This is the prayer of Psalm 126. It is a practical petition of hope and trust, that God would give them precious rain, and that their sowing in tears would turn into reaping with shouts of joy. It is a psalm of “good news” because it reflects their hopes and dreams for a life of good fortune. Psalm 126 is a very joyful farm report. What I find amazing is that even in the midst of their hardships, even though they woke up every day with one primary thought on their minds—survival—they still managed to find joy in what they were doing. And if they could find joy, feel fortunate, dream dreams, and experience laughter in their situation, then what’s stopping us?

I realize that sometimes it feels as if you and I are just trying to survive as well. Most, if not all of us, have problems. We have hardships. It could be a physical or mental health issue with you or a loved one, financial problems, relationship problems, addiction problems, the loss of a loved one, or any number of things. Joy—true, unfiltered joy—often eludes us, even during a season like Christmas that is known for joy. But other than our problems and hardships, perhaps the biggest reason joy often eludes us is because we tend to take things for granted. We are not all that different from the Dickens’ character Ebeneezer Scrooge, but in a less exaggerated form. We are grumpy and tightfisted and we take what we have for granted.

But even Scrooge found joy on Christmas morning. Of course, it took visits from three spirits that Jacob Marley had sent him. He finally realized that he needed to change from grumpy and tightfisted to loving and generous. I’ll make the assumption than none of us will be visited by three ghosts to be shaken out of our Bah Humbug state of mind. So how will we find joy this Christmas season? Opening gifts? The actress, Charlotte Carpenter, said, “Remember, if Christmas (substitute ‘joy’) isn’t found in your heart, you won’t find it under the tree.” Joy is not something we find in tangible things like gifts. Instead, it is found in our hopes and dreams, even our imaginations. It is a state of mind, an attitude, an approach to life. Scrooge’s material life didn’t change on that Christmas morning. His heart changed.

The writer of Psalm 126 could have been a Scrooge. He could have been grumpy and tightfisted because, like his fellow Israelites, he was trying to grow crops in a dry semi-desert land. But something changed within his heart so that he could look at the dry streambeds and imagine flowing watercourses. He hoped and believed and found joy in something he couldn’t yet see—abundant crops that needed to be carried home in bundles, or sheaves.

Despite your problems and hardships this Christmas season, seek joy. If you can’t find it, let it find you. But for it to find you, you need to believe that it’s there. Be open to your dreams. Be filled with laughter. Invite God to restore your fortunes, as God restored the fortunes of the Israelites of old. Does that sound Pollyannaish? If so, this is the season for Pollyanna! I get the impression that the writer of Psalm 126 would have believed in Santa Claus because he believed in joy. Unlike some Christians who think that the Santa Claus story is in competition with the Jesus story, I see them as totally compatible. To me, Santa Claus is a personification of the joy that Christians have tried to cultivate through the centuries. To find joy we have to be open to what might bring us joy. The writer of Psalm 126 was open to the magic of flowing water in dry streambeds. You and I need to be open to the magic of Christmas.

That concludes my Farm Report this morning. But I need to add one more thing to help you find joy this Christmas season. Do you remember the famous editorial that appeared on September 21, 1897 in The New York Sun? The editorial, which included the famous reply, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” is worth hearing every year as we approach Christmas:

 

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no child-like faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and un-seeable in the world. You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

 

And that, my friends, is good news …