With Shouts of Joy

Worship Planning Notes

Focus text: Psalm 126

One of the challenges of focusing on the Psalms for a whole series is that we lose the element of story or narrative. The gospels and many of our Old Testament texts are full of stories that invite us to explore different characters, settings, and meanings. Even when we struggle with a story, there is something inviting and familiar about a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. But in the Psalms, sometimes it feels like being dropped in and pulled out right in the middle of a story. In Psalm 126, we don’t know much about the beginning of the story, and we don’t know for sure how the story ends. All we really have is the song the people sing during an inciting incident or other critical moment in the story. It’s the song of a people remembering a time when a crisis was over, and they were crying out for God to restore them again.

Think about your congregation’s story over the last year. What has God been doing? When did you experience joy together? Are you experiencing joy now, or does it feel like you are waiting for joy to come again? How is God restoring joy among you right now?

I love when the third Sunday of Advent in Year B comes around, because it means I have the perfect excuse to sing one of my favorite hymns, “When God Restored Our Common Life” (The Faith We Sing 2182). Written by Ruth Duck, this hymn is a retelling of Psalm 126 that takes the singers through it as if we are singing the story of our community—past, present, and future—the way the ancient Israelites would have understood this psalm in their own context. One of the beautiful things Ruth Duck did in this hymn was to note that joy was present in past experiences with God, but also that laughter can go hand in hand with the toil we experience now, all in the context of God’s restorative grace. Whether you sing this hymn or simply go to it for inspiration, I encourage you to consider how Duck’s setting of Psalm 126 might inform the way you plan worship for this third Sunday in Advent.

Consider, too, how the story of your community might be a text, of sorts, you bring into conversation with Psalm 126. In other words, the psalm might not be a story, but it may very well illuminate the story your people are living now or have lived in the recent past. Use witness, stories, pictures, and more to enliven this text and to create connections between the ancient and contemporary peoples who remember God’s work with joy and seek to faithfully discover joy through and in God once again.

Dr. Lisa Hancock, Director of Worship Arts Ministries, served as an organist and music minister in United Methodist congregations in the legacy Northwest Texas and North Texas Annual Conferences, as well as the New Day Amani/Upendo house churches in Dallas. After receiving her Master of Sacred Music and Master of Theological Studies degrees from Perkins School of Theology, Lisa earned her PhD in Religious Studies from Southern Methodist University, where she researched and wrote on the doctrine of Christ, disability, and atonement.