You will go out with joy
and be led out in peace.
The mountains and the hills
will break into shouts of joy before you,
and all the trees in the field will happily applaud.

                               —Isaiah 55:12 (trans. by William F. Beck)
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  When will I go out with joy?
  When will all the trees applaud my coming?
  When?

     Our God declares a party today for you, for me, with wine and candles, song and laughter. Your favorite foods and closest friends will all be there. The vases filled with roses, laughter everywhere! The air perfumed with sweetest scents which roll off greenest mountain sides.

     The invitation comes to you today. It reads:

“You will go out with joy,
       and peace will grace your path;
            the mountains shout their alleluias
                 and all the trees applaud your coming.”

This is the Christian life.

                     Not just the life to come.
                     But life today.
                     And life tomorrow.
                     And tomorrow.
                     Forever.

* * *

  Where are those greenest mountain sides?
  Where are those trees that
           clap their hands for me?
  Where?

     Where you stand, where you sit, where you are, is the place where our God and his children are meant to rejoice.

     In your office or classroom, Safeway or fireside, when your checkbook has gotten as thin as your waist ought to be, in the midst of the flu and surrounded by screaming intractable kids, in the dawn’s early light with a cold cup of coffee diluted with tears, it is there where God’s party shall be.

Wesley wrote:
                                  In want my plentiful supply,
                                  In weakness my almighty power,
                                  In bonds my perfect liberty,
                                  My light in Satan’s darkest hour,
                                  In grief my joy unspeakable,
                                  My life in death, my heaven in hell.1

     God is holding his party in hell! Your hell. Your place of anguish, pain and utter loneliness is where almighty God is setting up the tables,
                                             hiring the band,
                                    inviting the trees to come and clap for you.

     The voice of God does not abolish hell. At least, not yet. The pain remains.

     Instead our Jesus comes to be with us,
          to dwell with us,
               to sing and dance with us.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “The only God worth believing in is a dancing God.” 2

     A button I saw in Berkeley read, “Those who dance are seen as mad by those who hear no music.” God is where the music can be found, and God is here with us.

     Isaiah speaks of the redemption of nature: “All the trees will clap their hands and cypress grows instead of thorns; the myrtle where a brier was.” 3 But you don’t have to walk in the woods to experience this prophecy of peace. Is our God so restricted that only in holiest places—of sanctuary, nature or heaven above—is the Lord to be found? Who can think that they stop the Almighty by doors to their homes? Or exclude the Eternal when they drive on the road?

     Have you been at the bedside of one who is frightfully ill? All the hospital paraphernalia—plastic tubes, charts and the ever-present needles—are ornaments hell might have brought for its mass—the Black Mass of the Obdurate Pain. As you sat by their bedside and were thinking how glum they must feel, a tender loving smile told you that though that body lay locked in pain, that friend in Christ was dancing in the fields and hearing the trees applaud. In shame you thought of how a stall in traffic destroyed your day while here at death’s chaotic crossing, is one who journeys forth in peace.

* * *

  How?
  How shall I go out with joy?
  How can I be led in peace and hear the trees                    applaud my coming?
  How?

     The “When?” was now; the “Where?” was here. The “How?” is God.

     Sober men with lips as tight and straight as gray steel rulers never hear the mountains shout with joy. Instead, on Pentecost the wine from God intoxicated Peter, James and John. They spoke of

                      “wonders in the sky
                        and signs on earth below,
                        of blood and fire
                        and clouds of smoke.” 4

     Intoxicated by God, they heard the mountains sing. And that’s the key, for God provides the wine.

That wine—his blood, his love, his song—transforms the silent land.

The silent land,
      the life devoid of sense,
           the grave too early dug,
                are all unreal.

       Deaf ears hear the silent land.
       Darkened minds discern no sense to life.
       Blind eyes will see a grave as final.

The deaf and blind—those unintoxicated modern-thinking souls—will try to scoop some blessings from off the top of Scripture and come up empty-handed. They try to substitute their cotton-candy meals for banquets spread by God of meat and bread and wine. Discouraged, they claim that God’s at fault. They’ve never heard a tree applaud. So they’re the ones who miss reality!

     That wine of God—his blood, his love, his song—transforms the silent land.

               Intoxicated we see the truth:
           The hills will shout for joy.
      Our lives are full of meaning.
Our graves are but a cloakroom—not a final resting place.

As C.S. Lewis was so fond of saying: Christians never have to say Goodbye!5

* * *

Let’s ask again the question,

  How can I find this wine from God?
  How can I get the trees to clap for me?
  The world to sing when all I see is common,                          ordinary life around me?

     You want it straight, like learning math? You want it laid out one-two-three like cooking peaches into jam?

     It doesn’t come that way. The path to God resides in poetry and myth, in song and parable. Jesus taught in parables: simple, earthly stories with transcendent meaning.

 Give me one, a parable I haven’t heard before.

A certain woman fell in love.
His house was down the forest path from hers.
She spent the morning bathing, dressing,
and placed a flower in her hair.
And on the path she heard the trees applaud.

 But what’s that mean?

     The woman is the church of God, its people one-by-one. His house the dwelling place of God.
      The forest path the road we walk in life. Had she not spent the morning working, trying on this dress and that, the path she walked would not be filled with joyful sounds.

It’s one-two-three:

      his love,
           her love,
                her work.

Her hours of toil are gladly done and life’s long pathway to his house is quickly run.

     His love is here; his love is now poured out for you. The party table spread. The vases filled with blood-red roses and the air perfumed with sweetest scents. The invitation comes. Let’s take our baths, and do the work of love. The trees will clap their hands for us as we journey to his house.