Jubilate

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

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Jublilate, Cantate, Rogate: These are the names of the next three Sundays beginning with today.  As the past few Sundays have been, these Sundays are named in Latin. So, here is your Latin lesson for the day. We begin with a bit of English grammar.

A sentence is made up of a subject and a predicate. The subject does the acting and the predicate tells you what the subject does. Every sentence, no matter how long it is, can be broken down into a subject and a predicate: “Frank walked” - Frank is the subject, walked is what Frank did (that’s the predicate). If one of those things is missing, the sentence is considered improper, not complete.

There is, however, one group of improper sentences that is used properly. These sentences are called imperatives. An imperative is a command in which the subject is not specifically stated but simply understood. An example of an imperative is, “Clean up that mess!” The subject is “you,” but it is not stated, it is understood:  “You, clean up that mess!”

The Latin language has imperatives, too. When you look at verbs in Latin it is easy to tell when they are an imperative because Latin imperatives end in “te.” So the Latin word jubila means “rejoicing.” Add “te” and you make the imperative: “be joyful!” In the same way Cantate is the imperative “sing!” and Rogate the imperative “ask!” Jubilate, in turn, comes from the Hebrew imperative found in our Introit from Psalm 66: “Shout for joy.” In fact, Psalm 66 is filled with imperatives: vs 1=SHOUT!; vs 2=SING!; vs 3=SAY!; vs 5-COME!; vs 8-BLESS!

If you pay attention you will see that God uses imperatives all over in the Scriptures. Why, do you think He feels it is necessary to command us to be joyful, to sing and to ask?

First, it is because of the deep-seated fear that lives within each of us. I recall talking with a young couple once who were afraid of having children because they didn’t know what the future was going to bring for them. Isn't it sad how many of our actions are dictated by our fear? We are afraid of what might happen, afraid of what people will think, afraid of how life will change, afraid we can’t live up to expectations, afraid of being cheated or not getting what is our due. Sometimes it’s hard even for the joy of the resurrection to break through that shell of fear and Christians end up living in this world like unbelievers. The Bible tells us that even the disciples were afraid, and that even when they saw the resurrected Lord standing right in front of them, which is why Jesus always said to them, “peace be with you.”

The other reason it is necessary to command us to be joyful is because of our hard, outer crust of unbelief that sometimes God has to shout to be heard through. We are by nature sinful and unclean and our sinful nature draws us always to the grave, seemingly forgetting the joy of the resurrection and the glory of eternal life, we weep and lament and mourn our loved ones who have gone ahead into glory as we wait for our own turn to lie in the dust and there is little that can comfort us because death looks so final. How many of you can stand at the grave of a loved-one and close your eyes and see with the eyes of faith the day that the graves all around you will be blown open with the power of Christ’s resurrection and your loved ones will rise in living and glorious bodies to meet the Lord in the air? That is our hope. But we so often lose it in the swamp of fear and sorrow in which we live. So, in the end, we are at heart little unbelievers filled with fear of both life and of death.

Fear, it turns out is the biggest false god we have, the biggest evidence of our inability to really trust and believe that Jesus is really risen from the dead. So God doesn't tiptoe around that unbelief and fear, but addresses it head-on. This isn’t just a suggestion, it is a Divine command: “Be joyful!” God speaks imperatives because we are cocooned in unbelief and  live in a world that sucks away all our Christian joy. It takes that insistent voice of God to break through that shell of fear and unbelief.

By the way, fear and unbelief is not the same as weeping and lamenting. It is not a contradiction to be filled with Christian joy and weep and lament at the same time. Didn’t Jesus say, “Truly I say to you, you will weep and lament?” Christian weeping and lamentation is wrung out of us when we see the misery in this world, the death and hopeless sorrow and the way the world just goes whistling into hell – the world will rejoice. A truly Christian soul does not hate the people of this world, our cultural and political leaders and all the rabble who follows them so eagerly. We don’t hate those leading us with worldly joy into the horror and death of Communism and cultural rot, nor do we hate the people who seem so eager to follow them into hell. We don’t hate them, we weep and lament for them, we weep and lament for our nation as it slides into eternal destruction, we weep and lament for our neighbors who are caught up in their own sin and despair, we weep and lament for the separation and loss that rips lives apart in death, and most of all, we weep and lament for our own sin, our own faithless fears our own unbelief and anger and despair that makes us also fully deserving of that deathly wage of sin.

But weeping and lamentation can be a Christian weeping and lamentation, when we weep and lament for the repentance of the sinners, beginning with us, when we weep and lament for the heart-wrenching disaster that sin and death bring into people’s lives. It is into that weeping and lamentation that our risen Lord Jesus Christ continues to speak His promise: “You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy!”

But sometimes our flesh is just too distracted by the things the devil and our own weak flesh throw up. Sometimes we stand at the grave and weep in despair, like Mary. I have often wondered how to inflect Jesus’ words when I read the section from John’s Gospel where Mary is weeping in despair outside of Jesus’ tomb. How did Jesus say her name? I was uncertain about that until I read just this last week that Jesus is using Mary’s name there as an imperative and I said to myself, “Wow! Ok. That makes a lot of sense.”

Mary had closed herself into a shell of sorrow and unbelief – she didn’t believe the angel, did she, she didn’t believe Jesus had risen from the dead. Her life was so filled with worldly weeping and lamenting that she didn’t even recognize Jesus when He stood right there in front of her. So what did Jesus do, He slapped her across the face with her name – in a good way, a Gospel slap, to get her attention. MARY! He said. His voice broke through her hard shell and crushed her unbelief and filled her with joy in the resurrection even while her eyes were still wet with the tears of despair.

God uses Gospel imperatives to get our attention and us back to His promises. “REJOICE!” “SING!” “ASK!” Why should we rejoice and sing and ask? Because of the Promises that fill us with hope and Christian joy that wipes out our despair and turns our heart and mind toward Jesus even as we stand at the grave and weep.

So gentle is your Lord Jesus that has not told you to stop weeping and lamenting. Certainly there is a place for that even in the life of a Christian and it is godly weeping and lamenting that throws us to our knees in prayer for our leaders, our nation, our neighbors, and especially for ourselves, as we struggle not only with our sin, but with our own weakness of faith and of flesh, our own relentless walk to the grave.

Then comes one word: “REJOICE!” The  imperative breaks through the shell of doubt and unbelief and gets our attention so we hear the Promise again that fills weeping and lamenting hearts with joy: "Truly, truly I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.  You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. . . I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you."

The day is soon coming, my friends in Christ, when the joy of the people of this world will turn to weeping and lamentation when they see the Son of Man returning in His glory with all the holy angels.  In Revelation, John describes this day: “I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth . . .The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?’” 

Who can stand?  On that day, our sorrow and lamentation will turn to joy, on that day, when our Lord returns in His glory, we will stand and smile and laugh and jump as calves released from the stall, as Malachi describes us. All those things that cause us weeping and lamentation will be gone forever as we share for eternity in the glory of the Lamb of God who has taken away the sin of the world.

And so God speaks to us in imperatives.  "You, rejoice!"; "You, sing!"; "You, ask!" These are not words of condemnation as if to say we will be condemned if we don't rejoice or sing or ask.  These are “joyful imperatives.” The joy you already have in your risen Lord will on that Day break through and erase all of your weeping and lamentation in the light of the eternal Easter Day when all tears and crying and pain will be gone forever, all reason to weep and lament will be swallowed up in the glory of the Resurrection Morning. That joy and certainty is yours right now, too, given to you in all the Gospel promises your Lord Jesus continues to speak to you; so grab hold of it now, claim it now because Jesus has given it to you by His blood, His righteous death to forgive your sins, His glorious resurrection to seal your eternal life. Even in your tears be joyful!  Even in your weeping sing!  Even in your fear, ask!

It is the living Lord, the one Who was dead, but behold! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! It is this God and Savior, whose blood has paid for and forgiven all of our faithless fear and unbelief, Who now comes to us through His Word and holy Sacraments, and through the lives of our fellow-Christians to support us in our times of sorrow and lamentation, He is the one who dries our tears and gives us reason to be joyful even in times of sorrow, in fact He even redeems and makes holy by His blood our weeping and lamentation. He is the one who is coming again and we will see Him with our eyes and then no one will ever be able to take our joy away from us again.

So, you, be joyful! Hear God’s Gospel imperative of joy cutting through the shell of fear and unbelief that surrounds you. MARY! Then lift up your eyes and see your Joy — see Jesus, your Lord and Savior who shed His blood to forgive you standing before you alive again to save you.

“Truly, truly I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.  You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy. . . I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” 

So be joyful! Jesus has died and risen again for you, He has forgiven all your sins, He has made you right with God by His sacrifice, He has washed away your guilt and given you a new life, He has prepared heaven for you, He guards and keeps you safe now from all of Satan's attacks, and He will come at last to take you into the eternal joy and glory of the presence of the Father when He returns to judge the living and the dead.  Rejoice!

Now through His Son doth shine The Father’s grace divine. Death was reigning o’er us Through sin and vanity “Till He opened for us A bright eternity. May we praise Him there! May we praise Him there!

In Jesus' name.  Amen.