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In the book of Proverbs we read: "A glad heart makes a
cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is
broken." A better translation says it more plainly: "A cheerful
heart is good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the
bones." The issue is also clearly stated by the preacher in
Ecclesiastes: "For everything there is a season, and a time for
every matter under heaven: ... A time to weep and a time to
laugh." In the gospel of Matthew this very clear reminder by our
Lord: "Do not look dismal, like the hypocrites."
Webster tells us that "laugh" is the general word for the
sounds made in expressing mirth and amusement. But it seems that
religious people in particular are quite suspicious of mirth and
amusement. H. L. Mencken once defined Puritanism as "the haunting
fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." There seems to be in
many Christians a strong feeling that God is more pleased with
sorrow than with joy. Too many of us, I fear, are suspicious of
any happy piety and feel much safer among the gloomy believers.
So I am delighted that as we celebrate the joyous festival of
Easter, we do it through some of the most joy-filled words in the
Old Testament. We don't know for certain, but the words of our
text seem to be describing a coronation banquet in which God is
enthroned as ruler. This is a happy, joyful occasion.

This good news comes on the heels of some very bad news. The
prophet had been giving a graphic description of the darkness and
gloom in the lives of God's people, because of their sin. There
had been much desolation and sorrow because God's chosen ones
continued to transgress the covenant God had made with them. When
God pronounced the judgment that all must face, Isaiah tells us
that it was a time when "all joy has reached its eventide." Yes,
it was a time when all joy was ended and there were no more happy
banquets with wine and song.
But a completely different note is sounded in our Easter text.
Here the author looks forward to the return of joy in the coming
future banquet which will be for all people. At this time sorrow
will be turned into joy. Hear again some of the rich promises
contained in the menu of this great feast that ushers in God's
reign over the re-created world:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts
will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines
of rich food filled with marrow,
of well-aged wines strained clear.

It is a good thing these words are in the Bible, otherwise I
would be afraid to use them because they sound so worldly and
secular. Here Isaiah is using such earthly symbols as "rich food
and wine that is well matured" to describe the salvation in store
for the people of God. Visions of plates heaped high with broiled
shrimp chased down with wine so clear and crisp and mellow that
it is unbelievable and of course all followed by a rich, heavy,
chocolate dessert, dance before my eyes!
For salvation to be described in this fashion is still a
difficult thing for me to accept. The Christ picture that I grew
up with and the one that still has a great hold on me, is the
Lenten Christ -- Christ, "The Man of Sorrows." This, of course, is
a one-sided picture and therefore a distortion. It is very
doubtful that Jesus could have been a gloomy person, else
children

would not have come to him, because children avoid gloomy people.
Can you imagine a solemn, somber Jesus describing a camel
going through the eye of a needle, or the very serious and
respectable folk busily and soberly engaged in the very serious
and somber business of "straining out gnats and swallowing
camels?" Surely there must have been a hint of a smile about his
lips as Christ talked about feeding pearls to the hogs? As a
former hog farmer, that comes through to me as being some pretty
expensive feed, and I wonder how many necklaces it would take to
make a shovel full. Then there is that ridiculous picture of the
person with the tweezers looking for a sliver in the eye of his
brother, while all the time there is a big railroad tie sticking
out of his own eye.
In an important and useful book The Primacy of the Spoken
Word, the author has an especially delightful chapter titled
"Robust World-Joyfulness." Although he did not have this Isaiah
text in mind, these words surely capture its essence:

The whole creation, flora and fauna, human brothers and sisters,
wife and children, music, food, sex, drink, all call for us to
sing the Maker's praise. A famous verse often ascribed to Luther
encapsulates this: "Wer liebt nicht Weib, Wein, und Gesand, er
bleibt ein Naar sein Leben land" (whoever does not love wife,
wine, and song, remains a fool his whole life long).

Later on in this chapter Dr. Wietzke goes on to say: "Can we in
good conscience really accept the material order as the proper
and only sphere of godly piety, and embrace it with rejoicing?
Christ does not wish to turn our festival into carnivals but
neither does he desire that they become fasts."1
Too often the charge against Christianity has been that it
took all the light, zest and joy out of living. One fears that
too many of us see the faith as making us do all the things we
don't want to do and to give up all the things we like to do.
There is an old Rabbinic saying that is a healthy reminder

for most of us and it goes like this: "A person will have to give
an account on judgment day for every good thing that he might
have enjoyed, and did not."
Joyful hearts and the Christian faith go together. Joy gives
evidence of the security that our faith delivers. Joy and sorrow
can live together. Laughter and compassion are compatible. It has
been rightly said that "the opposite of joy is not sorrow, but
unbelief." (Weatherhead) To experience joy and to be able to
laugh means that we are able to see beyond the present, changing
events. Joy sees these events in the power of a good and gracious
God who tells us that these events are never the last word. Our
text reminds us:

... The Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged
wines ...

The joy of a Christian does not mean we deny the tears that go
with living, but our joy is a way of affirming something that is
deeper than tears.
The words of Isaiah go on to tell us that all will be joy
because:

God will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheep that is spread over all nations;
He will swallow up death forever. (v. 7)

We are told that God will take away death, that veil of mourning
that covers the whole world. Death swallows up people in the
grave, but will in turn be swallowed up. Here is the real reason
for sorrow being turned into joy. The curse of Genesis is
reversed:

By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread
until you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
you are dust
and to dust you shall return. (3:19)

Death is all around us. We are living today, tomorrow death
may overtake us. There is a familiar symbol of the hourglass with
its sand slowly trickling out. That is our life, slowly ebbing
away till it ends in death.
Remember the familiar prayer that most of us learned at our
mother's knee -- the ending of it goes like this: "If I should die
before I wake ..." this should be changed to: "When I die ..."
That would be a more realistic version, because the highway for
death is the busiest highway in the world:

If ... all the dying were done in the open with the dead to be
looked at, we would never have it out of our minds ... We get no
grasp of the enormity of scale. There are three billion of us on
the earth, and all three billion must be dead on schedule, within
this lifetime. The vast majority, involving something over 50
million of us each year, takes place in relative secrecy ... Less
than half a century from now, our replacements will have more
than doubled the numbers. It is hard to see how we can continue
to keep the secret, with such multitudes doing the dying.2

Death is not some kind of flaw which we are ultimately going
to repair via heart transplants, or get around via the quick-
freeze method. Death is not some kind of puzzle we are ultimately
going to solve. Neither is death pretty. I have seen noble
deaths, but I could never describe death as being beautiful.
Death remains the dreaded enemy. I think it is the visible
evidence of the evil we are all caught up in, and eventually we
become its victim. The psalmist writes, "In the midst of life we
are in death." So the first prayer many of us learned is a very
realistic prayer.
The reason death is such a well-kept secret is because of our
fear of it. We don't like to talk about unpleasant things so the
subject of death is taboo in too many of our churches. It seems
that the more affluent and prosperous we become, the more fearful
we are of death. Death means the end of all the toys we have
accumulated. Others fear death because it may not be the end, but
rather the beginning -- the beginning

of judgment. Others of us may not fear death so much as we do the
process of dying.
I was a parish pastor for nearly 20 years. I have probably
preached at least 300 funeral sermons. One of the fringe benefits
of being a parish pastor is having the opportunity to rehearse
one's own death many, many times. I have had a lot of personal
contact with the aging and the dying process. It helps some to
joke about it -- to tell funny stories. But not much! One can't
laugh away the matter of dying. I have been with too many people
who haven't handled the dying business very well so it is hard
for me to avoid the big question: "How will I handle it?" For
these reasons many psychiatrists believe that death is at the
bottom of all human anxieties. The poet paints a picture of these
human apprehensions of death in these moving words, "... crazed
we come and coarsened we go our wobbling way; there's a white
silence of antiseptics and instruments at both ends, but a babble
between and a shame surely. O show us the route of hope ..."
(Auden)
That is why Easter is the festival of joy. It shows us the way
of hope. In our Old Testament text we already have a hint of the
great hope in the promise that "God will swallow up death." This
is an amazing insight because for the greater part of their
history the people of God had no real hope in life after death.
But here we have an inspired prophet who has the vision and
daring to proclaim a time when this great enemy of death will be
defeated.
We are told in words that we have heard at many a funeral,
"Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces." This
has been called a "tear-drenched" world and so it is. We can't
begin to comprehend the tears that have been shed. Who can
imagine a time and a place when:

He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
Mourning and crying and pain
will be no more,
For the first things have passed away. (Revelation 21:3-4)

Christians see this Old Testament vision of the future fulfilled
in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. With Christ's resurrection
we believe with the apostle Paul that "the last enemy to be
destroyed is death."
"Roll up the curtain and let the light shine in" said an old
man as he lay dying in a darkened room surrounded by his
children. They did and as the light filtered into the room, the
old saint began to sing:

I know that my Redeemer lives,
What comfort this sweet sentence gives!
He lives, He lives, who once was dead;
He lives the ever-living head!
He lives, all glory to his name
He lives, my Savior, still the same;
What joy this blest assurance gives;
I know that my Redeemer lives!3

Yes, Easter is the festival of joy. That is why an unhappy
Christian is a contradiction in terms. Easter tells us there is
life and where there is life there is hope. Where there is hope,
there is joy and laughter. We can keep celebration alive in our
lives and our congregations. We don't have to become cynical and
depressed in the face of the many problems of our time. We can
throw ourselves into the thick of life with exuberance and great
expectations knowing that we are sustained by the power and
presence of God. We have something to live for. We can share in
Christ's risen life. That Divine energy which at first took
Christ out of the grave, is available still -- available not only
at our journey's end to save us in the hour of death, but
available here and now to help us live -- to live meaningfully and
joyfully. This is the day of joy. We have something to live for.
Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord,
Jesus Christ. Amen.

1-Walter R. Wietzke, The Primacy of the Spoken Word, Augsburg,
1988, p. 159.

2-Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell, Bantam, 1980, pp. 113-116.

3-"I Know That My Redeemer Lives," Lutheran Book of Worship,
Augsburg, 1978, #352.