Joy to the World:
Choosing to be Joyful
Twenty-Sixth Sunday After Pentecost • November 24, 2019
Reading: Luke 1:26-56 (adapted from The Inclusive Bible)
Pastor Jeff Wells
In the view of many, the U.S. has a demonstrably corrupt and immoral president who regularly cheats, lies, and uses his position to enrich himself. In spite of this, only 48 percent of those polled believe he should be removed from office for his actions around Ukraine. I think these sad affairs of state are a sad state of affairs! It’s depressing. But here is my response this morning: “Joy to the world!” With the news around impeachment, white supremacists plotting violence, immigrants at the border being caged and refused basic medical care, that phrase – joy to the world – may seem jarring or discordant. And yet, I say again my friends, joy to the world!
There is so much need for joy in the face of so much suffering in the world. In New York City, the wealthiest city in the world, 114,000 or 10 percent of public school children are homeless. That’s a 70 percent increase in ten years. That is a sin. Meanwhile, the rich continue to accumulate wealth and inequality grows exponentially.
So why do we insist on focusing on joy this morning and not on how we might go about repairing the horrors of our social and political system. For me, joy has the power to change people’s lives and the potential to change the world. And when we can learn to experience joy more and allow our joy to shine outward, it blesses not only us, but everyone around us.
C.S. Lewis famously wrote about his experience of being surprised by joy. This sense of wonder and surprise was captured in an essay written in the early 1940s by Alfred Delp, a German Jesuit priest imprisoned for his opposition to the Nazis. From his prison cell, Delp wrote this:
“Even under these circumstances…every now and then, my whole being is flooded with pulsating life and my heart can scarcely contain the delirious joy there is in it. Suddenly, without any cause that I can perceive, without knowing why or by what right, my spirits soar again and there is not a doubt in my mind that all the promises hold good.
There are times when one is curiously uplifted by a sense of inner exaltation and comfort. Outwardly nothing has changed. The hopelessness of the situation remains only too obvious; yet one can face it undismayed.”
Clearly, Delp believed the source of his joy was his faith in God. But you don’t have to be a religious person to experience joy. I know plenty of agnostics, “spiritual but not religious” folks, and atheists who glow with the joy of being an expectant mother, who know the joy of deeply loving intimate relationship, who grow in the joy of belonging to a compassionate, caring, and committed community.
Joy can surprise us, but it does not occur by chance or accident. There are specific sources of joy that we can cultivate to increase our ability to experience joy. I do believe the ability to experience joy is a gift from God. God created a capacity for joy within us. Yet, like most gifts from God, we need to intentionally and consciously choose and nurture the gift.
I am not saying it is easy. So much can get in the way of our joy. Our lives are plagued by physical and emotional pain. On top of that, we humans are very adept at harming one another and often we seem intent on doing so. So I want to help us think about some of the sources of joy and how we can intentionally grow joy in our lives.
The story of Elizabeth and Mary that we just heard is full of joy. Did you feel that? Just before the part Sam read, the angel declares to Mary, “Rejoice! Highly favored one, God is with you!” Then, little John the baptizer, growing in Elizabeth’s womb, leaps for joy at the sound of Mary’s voice. And finally, Mary herself proclaims her joy that God has chosen her. In spite of her challenging circumstances, she asserts, “You, almighty God, have done great things for me” and for all who struggle in this life. For both Mary and Elizabeth, their choice to devote themselves to God is a tremendous source of joy for them.
But let’s think for a moment about the joy hidden in plain sight in this passage – joy that the Gospel writer does not mention. I imagine that most of you who have been pregnant could attest to the joy you experienced in being expectant mothers – accompanied by worry, stress, and morning sickness, perhaps, but joy nonetheless. And, imagine the joy Mary and Elizabeth felt in their shared experience of looking forward to being first-time moms. This is layered on top of the joy of their loving relationship with each other. They were facing big challenges. Mary was an unwed teenager. Elizabeth was in her old age and facing the prospect of raising a toddler. Yet, the experience of joy is separate from our circumstances. Joy is a matter of attitude, openness, and the choices we make over time. Both Mary and Elizabeth chose joy in the face of the challenges and suffering in their lives. And they had been opening themselves to joy for a long time through their commitments to God, to their communities, and to one another.
In 2015, Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and the Dalai Lama met in India to celebrate a birthday and to have an extended dialogue about joy. The product of this meeting of two friends is an account called, The Book of Joy. One of the themes that comes through repeatedly is that joy is not primarily something that arises in us as isolated individuals. Rather, it finds its source and strength in relationships and in community. Here is a powerful quote from the Dalai Lama:
“People think about money or fame or power. From the point of view of one’s own personal happiness, these are short-sighted. The reality, as the Archbishop mentioned, is that human beings are social animals. One individual, no matter how powerful, how clever, cannot survive without other human beings. So the best way to fulfill your wishes, to reach your goals, is to help others, to make more friends.”
Archbishop tutu interjected:
“God is community, fellowship. Being created by this God, we are created in order to flourish. And we flourish in community. When we become self-centered, turning in on ourselves, as sure as anything, we are going to find one day a deep, deep, deep frustration.” [1]
The quote we used on the flyer for this worship series is by the spiritual writer Henri Nouwen. He wrote, “Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.” I take Nouwen’s comment to mean that, if we want to experience joy, we have to choose to participate in and practice those things that can be sources of joy: loving relationships, devotion to a cause, service to others, sharing in community. The common denominator of all of these things is giving ourselves to something greater than ourselves. Our joy flows from these things.
Joy can surprise us in a given moment because of something happening to us or around us. But I find that most often joy comes from having developed a skill or a relationship or a sense of community over time. For example, I felt joy yesterday when I was in the woods and I heard a bird calling overhead. When I looked up I saw far above me a yellow-bellied woodpecker in one tree and a sharp-shinned hawk sitting on a branch in a tree nearby. This was a joy-filled moment for me, but only because I have been an avid birdwatcher since I was a teenager. If not for that, I would not have been able to identify these birds or understand how unusual it is to see them so close together. The moment would not have had such joyful meaning for me.
I experience this truth in my relationship with Diane. The longer we are together, the more I am able to feel joy in our daily life together. That is in spite of the personal challenges we face. Or, maybe, because of those challenges, we come to cherish one another even more and that cherishing produces joy.
All of us have the opportunity to make powerful, joy-producing choices all the time. Instead of getting depressed about the news of the day, the tragedy and turmoil in our own lives, and the multiple reasons to despair of a better humanity, we can choose joy and keep choosing it every day. We can choose to actively learn, explore nature, build relationships, build communities, serve others, and love God. This doesn’t mean we ignore the bad stuff happening to us or around us. It does not mean we stop working for a better world, for a more just and equitable political system, for compassionate care of those around us. It means that we promote joy’s growth in the face of the world’s seeming hopelessness. We embrace joy as a bold declaration that injustice and suffering will not have the final word.
It’s never too late for joy. And you can never have too much of it. Moreover, it grows best in the midst of relationship and community. So I encourage you to embrace and develop sources of joy in your life. Cherish and nurture long-term friendships, intimate relationships, and communities of care and belonging. Enjoy beauty whenever possible in nature, in art, in music, in poetry and literature. And while you don’t have to be a person of faith to find joy, I do think the values, culture, and faith we participate in together in this place help to strengthen our ability to develop joy in our lives. Perhaps we can all learn, like Mary and Elizabeth, to live in joyful expectation and loving companionship. Joy to you, beloved, and joy to the world!
Copyright © 2019 by Jeff Wells
All rights reserved.
[1] Lama, Dalai, The Book of Joy. Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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