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Have you ever noticed how people get around babies? They have a very distinctive almost universal effect. We want to look at them, make baby-talk noises, hold them, protect them. They make us smile especially if they smile. There are certain feel-good chemicals that our bodies release when we see and interact with a baby. Then there’s the thing of what happens when a baby starts laughing. A laughing baby is more apt to get a room full, maybe up to a stadium full of people laughing than the best comedian ever. If you could get the leaders of warring nations together in the same room with a couple of laughing babies, I think world peace could quite possibly result. If I had to sum up the effect that baby watching has, it would be delight, especially when the baby is happy or laughing. They just have that effect on us. They fill us with a joyful sort of pleasure.
Well, it’s easy to talk about delight as a response to babies because it’s all so innocent. The word that we translate as delight here in this passage is a bit more complicated, a bit more adult we might even say Isaiah says to the Israelites, “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married.” The LORD delights in you. Israel goes from a people being abandoned, unwanted, wholly undesirable to being a delight to God. Then the prophet brings out the bride and bridegroom…marriage imagery.
If you look at the other places in the Old Testament where this word turns up you may ask if maybe we’re talking about lust. It’s always men who feel this delight, usually when they are looking at a woman they would like for a wife. It sounds a bit like delight here means the joyful and I will say innocent pleasure a man feels when he finds himself in the company of a woman that he is smitten with. That’s the way the word is mostly used in the Old Testament. There’s an instance of a father, King Saul, delighting in David and wanting him to marry his daughter Michal. It wasn’t that Saul himself was attracted to David but rather that Saul thought David had the right qualities of character that would make him a good husband to Saul’s daughter. The word can also be used for things we very much enjoy doing like me and playing music especially in retirement communities. But for the most part it’s the joyful but innocent pleasure of a man finding himself in the company of a woman with whom he is well suited.
The second most common way the word is used in the Old Testament is for when God finds delight in someone. God feels delight in a person or in his people when they delight in walking in his ways. It gives God delight to bless those who have been faithful, to answer the prayers of those who have called upon him.
In this passage here, it is God who is delighted. The imagery is that it is God who is finding himself smitten with his people, God who is feeling that joyful but innocent pleasure with respect to his people; his people, whom the prophet is quick to mention that they were not long ago labelled Forsaken and Desolate. That’s about as close as you get to calling someone unlovable. Why the change?
Well, if you remember your Israelite history, these people were people who had just returned to the land of Israel, to Judah, to Jerusalem from being in exile in Babylon. They were at one time Forsaken and Desolate with respect to God. About eighty years prior God had kicked them off the land he had given this people, his people, and taken away their sovereignty as a nation. They had made themselves reprehensible to God. Like an adulterous wife they were worshipping other gods. The rich were abusing the poor. People, even their kings, were sacrificing their children to these foreign gods believing it would make them powerful. They were not a delight to God. They were just imitating the other nations at their worst. So, God sent the Babylonians to level Jerusalem and the Temple, and to carry the people away in exile to Babylon.
Over time, for most of the people, exile in Babylon wasn’t all that bad. In fact, they grew quite comfortable. They built nice homes and established successful businesses. But there was a small remnant among them who understood why God had exiled them and they wholeheartedly returned to God. They built synagogues to learn and worship in. Most of the Old Testament as we know it was given a final edit and “officialized” in Babylon. The argument can be made that the core practices of today’s Judaism dates back to these faithful Jews of the Babylonian Exile. They strove to be faithful while in exile rather than comfortable.
After about seventy years, the prophets among them began to say God would soon be sending them home to rebuild. Then, the Persians conquered the Babylonians and Cyrus, the Persian king decreed that the Jews could return to Judah, to Jerusalem to rebuild. He also gave them the mandate to rebuild the Temple. He even provided finances for it and also ordered that the Temple artifacts that the Babylonians had stolen be returned.
These Jews who had remained faithful amongst the comforts of Babylon, well, God vindicated them. God recognized their righteousness, which was their continued faithfulness to him throughout exile. This vindication took the form of saving them from exile and bringing them home to the Land of Israel to once again be a nation. The desire that they had to stay faithful and endure gave God that joyful yet innocent pleasure we call delight. The difficulties they faced for being faithful didn't break them. Rather, it shaped them, solidified their identity as God’s people. These faithful faced hard times and persecution simply because they were living differently than the culture around them. Remarkably, they didn’t use them as excuses to rationalize walking away from being faithful. Moreover, they didn’t give into comfort mistaking material comfort as being God’s blessing. They stayed faithful and endured and God took delight in them, this faithful remnant, and showed his delight by bringing them home.
You know, this faithful remnant reminds me of our four small gatherings (churches) and the thousands of other gatherings (churches) like us who patiently endure in North America today, who keep gathering around Jesus in the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit to love and serve and support each other, to learn together, to worship together, to be emblems of hope together in our communities. We continue to be as faithful as we can in the face of the constant threat of knowing that for a good many of these gatherings, “Hey, this year could just be our last.” Even so, we don’t give up. It is a rare child today who has had someone sing Jesus loves me to them. The media rarely if ever has anything good to say about us, the faithful remnant. Those larger false gatherings, they spew hate and condemnation while aligning themselves with political power seem to get all the attention to the extent that if the communities around had an assumption to make about us it is that we are just like what they see in the media.
But you know, growing small and growing old has taught us that the love of Christ is what matters - the unconditional, self-denying, non-judging, even sacrificial love that Jesus lived and pours into us with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Love is what matters. Love is the lesson that our exile in this culture is teaching us who continue to be faithful when we could quite easily say “I’m done.” But you know, I’m inclined to say to you, to us, what the prophet said in our reading: Our name is not Forsaken. Nor is it Desolate. Our name is “My Delight is in Her”. We are “Bride of Christ”, and a beautiful one at that. God is delighted in us. God is delighted in you. We have our warts and pimples so to speak. If you have any doubt, consider the love that you share. That is a gift from God, a blessing to the ones who give him delight. Amen.
