"Rejoice"

So…

What is the most exciting experience or event you have ever been a part of? A wedding perhaps? Or a birthday party? 

How about a Superbowl win of an underdog team?

Our maybe it was something less public and more private. Like a personal best in a half marathon, or mini-triathlon. Or finishing your college or graduate degree?

Maybe you were just a person in the crowd when something amazing happened, but it just seemed amazing, like Neil Armstrong on the moon.

I remember the pictures of the folks in NYC celebrating VE day, the celebration of the ending of World War 2 in Europe. 

There was joy, relief, hope, a new era begun with all of its possibilities!

For me there have been lots of joyous occasions: graduations, meeting Sue, our engagement and marriage, Brian’s birth and then Katie’s, and coming to this amazing congregation.

But for whatever reason one of the joyous occasions that immediately comes to mind is the old Memorial Day Parade in my hometown.

I grew up in the Village of Kenmore in the Town of Tonawanda! With a population of 110,000 people, it had a parade down Delaware Avenue that was amazing!
The town had five fire companies with their fire trucks in the parade, plus the Shriners, the Elks, the Moose, Boy and Girl scout troops of all kinds! 

And Drum and Bugle Corps, Veterans and active military, and even the two high school marching bands from the town, each with between 100-150 marchers.

Talk about 76 trombones with 110 coronets right behind, oh my! (That’s from the Broadway show “The Music Man” BTW!)

For a kid it was thrilling! And two hours long!

But I suspect it wouldn’t hold a candle to the celebrations in the Temple that Psalm 150 suggests. 

The psalmist imagines not only trumpets, all kinds of harps, tambourines, dancing, stringed instruments, woodwinds, and cymbals, loud clashing cymbals -

But every living creature as well! Almost as if Noah’s Ark emptied a celebration onto the top of Mount Ararat!

The Psalmist sees God’s people as a people of joy, of thankfulness, of celebration! 

We gather to sing praise to the one who has created us, sustains us, loves us, heals us, helps us and saves us!

So, we get our praise on!

How we do that is really optional as long as it is authentic!
You can stand in the aisles and dance your heart out, or sit in the pews and offer the praises welling up in your heart in the whispered prayers of the truly grateful!

Rejoicing over a miraculous healing! Or someone walking away from a wicked car accident unscathed!

I love watching the online stories about people getting cochlear implants and hearing and seeing them burst into tears of joy and amazement as they hear their loved ones for the first time.

One of the best of those kind of stories is the infant/toddler who the medical staff are trying to put on a set of glasses that has a strap in the back, all while the child struggles and wiggles to not have put on her head whatever they are trying to fit her with.

And then finally in place, she looks through the glasses and the wonder that fills her face is beyond amazing. She can see a world she has never seen before. Joy indescribable! 

A reaction that ought to be ours each time we think of what God has done on our behalf. 

So excited that we literally can’t help but sing and shout and play those loud clashing cymbals as a declaration to all that can hear that God has got us!

What is it that gets your joy going? Rejoice! 

Amen