Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her king;
let every heart prepare him room
and heav’n and nature sing,
and heav’n and nature sing,
and heav’n, and heav’n and nature sing.
I miss our singing together, and my heart rejoices imagining our singing the carols together with at least twice the joy next Christmas. I love how the words of Joy to the World by Isaac Watts and the tune attributed to Handel come together just right: the opening line happily hops down the scale, step by step, like our little ones come down the stairs on Christmas morning, and then the whole earth leaps back up to the opening note to receive the newborn king. We invite each other to let our hearts be his abode before letting this praise reach cosmic scale in the singing of heaven and nature, and listening as fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy.
Isaac Watts was looking at Psalm 98 when he wrote Joy to the World, but the theme of all creation coming together in praise of our Creator is even stronger in Psalm 148, the Psalm for the First Sunday after Christmas. Saint Francis of Assisi composed his Canticle of the Sun based on Psalm 148, calling to brother sun and sister moon, brother fire and sister water, brother wind and sister earth, and all of us to praise our Maker by being who and what we were made to be. And of course it was Francis who first built a nativity scene that included the baby in the manger, surrounded by Mary and Joseph, angels and shepherds, ox and ass and sheep and royal visitors from distant lands — all of creation coming together in praising God and welcoming the newborn king of peace.
The Book of Psalms begins with a strong emphasis on laments — prayers of God’s people from times of trouble. The composition of the book as a whole indicates an increasing emphasis on praise, coming to a climax with Psalms 146-150. Each of these five Psalms begins and ends with Hallelujah, a joyful call to praise God, and the arrangement itself is an affirmation of confident hope: in the end, all of creation is united in its praise of God the creator and redeemer of all.
In its songs of praise, Israel regularly invites an extraordinarily expansive congregation to praise God — including “all the earth;”[1] “the peoples” and “nations;”[2] “heavenly beings” and “all God’s works.”[3] This joyful inclusivity reaches its climax in Psalm 150:6, the final verse of the entire Book of Psalms, “Let everything that breathes praise the LORD!” But there’s actually an earlier culmination in Psalm 148, where the poet issues an invitation that is even more expansive: this Psalm invites not just “everything that breathes,” but rather everything that is to praise God!
In verses 1-6 the inhabitants of the heavenly realm are called upon: angels and heavenly hosts, sun and moon, stars, the heaven of heavens and the waters above the heavens. And unlike among many of Israel’s neighbors, in this poetry of praise sun and moon and stars are not themselves gods, but are part of God’s creation, moving and shining according to a law that cannot pass away. In the vision of this poetry, the awesome constellations of the night sky are not hard-to-read maps of frightful fate, but wondrous creations of God, praising their creator with their motion and light.
In verses 7-14, the focus shifts to the earthly realm below the dome. Now the poet calls on the inhabitants of sea and air and land to join in the praise: sea monsters, fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind, mountains and hills, fruit trees and cedars, wild animals and cattle, creeping things and birds of the air.
Perhaps you noticed, the praise does not begin with people, but with sea creatures. It begins with all things that entered the great symphony of life long before human beings appeared. It begins with all things that serve and praise God simply by being what they were created to be: fire being fire and snow being snow; fruit trees being fruit trees and fruit bats being fruit bats; lilies being lilies and ravens being ravens.
On several occasions this past few days, I watched a squirrel in our backyard praise God. I had put out some goodies for the birds — sunflower seeds, millet, peanuts and such — and I presented them in a feeder designed to keep large birds and squirrels out. I hung the caged feeder from a pole with a squirrel cone, and since the pole had two hooks, I tied a wire around a couple of pine cones and stuffed them with peanut butter and more seeds, for the larger birds. The birds came to feed, and I loved watching them fly in and out or hop around on the ground and pick up what picky or sloppy eaters had dropped. But then I watched the squirrel climb up the pole. As intended, the squirrel guard presented a major frustration for the little guy. But it didn’t take long before the squirrel climbed up the pole just high enough to leap up and out to the bottom of the feeder cage, grab it and pull itself up. It couldn’t get to the feeder itself, but the cage provided a perfect squirrel ladder to the top of the pole. Now it sat up there, eyeing the pine cones below. The wire was too thin for squirrel paws to get a grip. But soon the little guy was hanging upside down, with its hind paws grabbing the hook and its entire body stretched just enough for the front paws to reach the top of one of the cones, grab it, and pull it up enough to get busy eating.
It was marvelous, this repeated display of perfect squirrelness. “You go, Buddy,” I said quietly. “You finish that cone, you worked hard for it. And when you’re done, I’ll make you another one.”
Praise the Lord, Chickadees and Cardinals, Bluejays and Carolina Wrens, and you, Eastern Gray Squirrel, acrobat of the backyard and planter of oaks! Praise the Lord, all of you that serve and praise the Lord simply by being what you were created to be!
In the Hallelujah poetry of Psalm 148, people aren’t called to join the chorus until verse 11, and perhaps that’s because we are late arrivals in the story of creation. Or perhaps it’s because we struggle with being who we were created to be. Perhaps it’s because we struggle with simply being human beings, made in the image of God. We’re called upon to join the chorus as kings and peoples, rulers and judges, men and women, old and young together. Each of the terms describes segments of our diversity, and each pairing also highlights relationships where our differences easily become pyramids of status and privilege. Humans have trouble finding our place as creatures made in the image of God because we’d rather be like God on our own terms, as lords and masters of creation.
Yet angels and shepherds and royal visitors, ox and ass and sheep, sun and moon and stars, and all of us with all our wondrous and difficult differences come together around a manger in Bethlehem, because this child is our salvation. This child was sent to us to redeem us — to free us from sin’s perverse reign and to bring us back into the household of God as kin and as heirs of the promise.
We celebrate the incarnation of the Word of God, “born of a woman” as Paul puts it in utmost simplicity. This is how we all enter the miracle of life, born of a woman, whether we be male or female or fitting neither category, whether we be kings or people, rulers, judges, or tired healthcare workers, and regardless of where on this beautiful planet our DNA has been knit together.
Together with all of creation we praise God for the birth of this child, because in love that knows no end, he makes us one – one with ourselves, one with each other across all that divides us, and one with the beloved community God created life to be.
Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!
Let all their songs employ!
[1] Psalm 66:1; 96:1; 98:4; 100:1
[2] Psalm 67:3-5; 96:7; 117:1
[3] Psalm 29:1 and 103:20-21