Joy
On this, the third Sunday of Advent, we take as our theme Joy.
What is Joy?
Joy is not really an idea or a concept.
Joy is a feeling.
I think of Joy as a more intense version of happiness. Happiness is certainly related to joy. Maybe happiness is a pleasure that you can feel, but that you can still manage to sit still.
Joy, maybe is a pleasure that is so great that you can’t sit still.
Joy seems to want to overflow.
These are not scientific explanations of Joy. They are just the ideas that happen to be appearing as I think about Joy.
But what if we thought about Joy as a spiritual principle – a feeling that in some way reveals how we relate to the divine – or the divine relates to us.
There can be little doubt that, when we encounter the divine in our lives, one way we can respond is by feeling joy.
Those of you who were here in this sanctuary yesterday – most of you I think – will remember that I took this same idea as my theme then – this idea that, in the midst of our daily lives we can, sometimes, catch glimpses of the divine.
Yesterday – like today – I connected that idea with the phrase that I borrowed from a hymn… The hymn, “Beams of Heaven” gave me a phrase to describe moments in our lives when we catch glimpses of the divine.
Such moments are beams of heaven.
Today, I offer this idea again – that Beams of Heaven sometimes happen to us. Allow me to add onto that notion by connecting it to joy. Beams of Heaven can inspire a feeling of joy.
Don’t you think?
I think so!
**
Before I went to Divinity School, I took a job as a personal care attendant.
I was placed with a man who was paralyzed from the waist down and was, for the most part, home bound.
I had never done this kind of work before, but I was a competent and physically capable man in my early forties. I knew how to care for people, but I wasn’t sure how he wanted to be cared for…
As I cooked for him, we talked about things.
We soon discovered that we were not that far apart in age. We’d grown up listening to the same music, and making the same kind of mischief.
As I cleaned the place, he’d sit nearby. He’d point out the places I’d missed with the vacuum or the mop.
At first I got a little bent out of shape. But then I realized that this was a kind of on-the-job training. I realized that this man had been home bound for almost a decade, but he was still a highly intelligent guy, and he’d focused his nimble mind on getting the small details of his life perfectly tuned.
So why not just allow him to dictate how I should do things.
He told me when to put the laundry detergent into the washing machine. He told me how to open and close the dishwasher, and how to load it. He told me which head to use on the vacuum cleaner for which application. He taught me how to fold towels, and how to place them on the shelf. He taught me how to clip coupons, and which grocery stores had the best deal on sliced ham.
I did everything exactly in the way he wanted it done.
This, it turned out, made him very happy.
It was really amazing how delighted he was with me.
He had to sit still, because he couldn’t get up – but I think if he could have gotten up and danced a jig, he might have.
And I was learning too. It’s not that I didn’t know how to fold towels before. It’s not that I didn’t understand how grocery coupons worked. I was in my mid-forties. I’d been around the block a few times.
I wasn’t learning the things he was teaching me.
I was learning something else…
It was a beautiful, simple thing.
That job, which might have been a horrible, menial job, became something that both of us looked forward to.
Why?
Because I was learning how to bring about joy.
Joy.
In that improbable place I encountered the Beams of Heaven.
**
Hear the words of the Apostle Paul, which, many centuries ago, he wrote to the faithful in Phillipi:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. (Paul wrote) Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.
I love the way Paul repeats himself. He does it, even though he knows that he has made his meaning clear:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
This sounds like what I said earlier when I was rambling about joy…
Joy, I said, is a kind of happiness that can’t sit still.
Paul sounds to me like he can’t sit still:
… again I will say, Rejoice!
What comes next is also interesting. What is it that Paul can’t sit still about?
Is he enjoying some disco music?
Is he dancing a jig?
No.
Let your gentleness be known to everyone… he says.
Your gentleness? Is this what Paul can’t sit still about? About gentleness?
How funny!
Paul’s next words are: “The LORD is near.”
Now that sounds like something to get excited about!
But Paul seems to suggest that “The Lord is near” when we are gentle!
By being gentle, we bring God.
Is that what he is saying?
Gentleness brings us into contact with God… and with a feeling of joy that is irrepressible?
How completely fascinating!
Gentleness, apparently, is a kind of key to God…
**
My father died rather quickly.
But my mother’s decline took about two years.
So I experienced both kinds of loss – the shocking, sudden loss of my father, followed by the gradual, long goodbye, of my mother.
After Dad died, my mother became a kind of shadow of herself. All of her life she had played the piano – she played beautifully – sublime Chopin Ballades, Reveries by Grieg, Debussy’s Arabesques. But now the piano sat neglected. This, to me, was the clear sign that she had lost herself.
I would find her, sitting in the dark.
“Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“Oh,” she said, as if waking up… “I was sitting here, and it got dark.”
One day, I found her sitting on the edge of her bed, apparently conscious, but unresponsive.
This was the first of her seizures.
Fortunately, I had been laid off from a job teaching writing at UMASS – so I was able to collect unemployment checks and take care of her.
I became her nurse. I was with her 24/7.
When I took her out – either to a doctors visit, or to get her hair cut, or to go to the pharmacy – or maybe to get some groceries, I often said this phrase:
“Don’t forget your Cane”
To me, these four words encompass that whole period of my life.
There is a straightforwardness about these words. And yet they are words of care.
Straightforward words of care.
When you are caring for someone 24/7, there comes a straightforwardness that is both necessary and beautiful.
You have to get things done. And the thing that you are getting done, is care.
And the care is getting done because of love.
And this love is about the realest thing that exists in the world.
And this – this straightforward realness of love – this is a peculiar, centering kind of love.
When I cared for my mother at the end of her life, I learned this new way to love – this real, straightforward “don’t forget your cane” love.
Yes, it was a kind of gentleness…
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. (Paul wrote) Let your gentleness be known
That period of my life was hard. It was draining. But it made me straightforwardly gentle, and so, it brought God’s presence into my life..
What a strange, improbable way to think about joy!
**
When God became incarnate in the world, God came to a poor woman who lived in a small backwater town in Galilee.
The woman’s new husband must have been puzzled that his wife, who was a virgin, was pregnant.
How strange.
The two of them were forced, by a decree that came from Caesar Augustus – the Roman emperor – that everyone had to go to their hometown to be counted in a census.
So this poor pregnant girl got on a donkey and travelled all the way to Bethlehem.
Her husband, Joseph, must have loved her a great deal, because he cared for her the whole way – despite being puzzled.
I think he was a gentle man.
Caring for her made him a gentle man.
When they arrived in Bethlehem it was already after dark, and when they went to an inn, they were turned away…
“There is no room here,” the innkeeper said. “You can go sleep in the barn, if you want.”
So they went to the barn.
And that was where God was born…
In a barn.
What a strange story!
What an improbable place to encounter beams of heaven.
But there he was…
And this is where you and me – and the whole world – encountered God.
Found the child Jesus.
Discovered the Beautiful,
most gentle
and most Divine joy.
Amen