Anglican Church of Canada
December 13< 2020 Advent 3
Isaiah 64:1-4,8-11
Advent 3, the Sunday of Joy. It’s the day we get to light the pink candle on the wreath, if we have a pink candle. Some parishes of the more Anglo-Catholic persuasion have a separate set of pink vestments for this Sunday – the “Pepto-Bismal set” – though some of us consider that a bit vulgar. But somehow this Sunday – a Sunday at the very darkest time of the year, just a week or so before the solstice – has become the Sunday of joy. And I think that is as it should be. Especially this year. Especially this year. We could all use a bit of joy this year I think.
It is very fitting that we celebrate joy at such a dark, cold time of the year – and not just because we could use some cheering up, but because it reminds us that joy is not all about sunshine and good times, but it can exist alongside the darkness. It is not the same as happiness.
Some of you may have seen that Lynn posted on the parish facebook page a couple of days back a meditation by a local Baptist pastor, Sarah Jane, on the very topic of joy.
Joy isn’t happiness, she writes. In fact, Joy, like Peace, isn’t a feeling at all. And like Love it is both noun and verb. It’s a deeper current that runs beneath the turmoil of daily feelings that holds and supports them. Joy can flow with sadness, and irritation, and confusion. But it runs in a deeper channel. Just as Peace is not the absence of conflict. Nor I might add, is courage the absence of fear
So Joy is not the absence of sorrow.
There’s quite a bit to unpack there.
First of all, joy is not the same as happiness, a bubbly good feeling that happens to us when all is going well. It runs in a deeper channel.
Nor should we confuse joy with the modern substitution: enjoyment. The writer Francis Spufford, who some years back wrote a refreshingly combative attack on the New Atheists attack on faith – takes issue with the word. Some years back a group of New Atheists pooled their funds and took out ads on the buses in London: “There is probably no God. So stop worrying and enjoy your life.” We can admire their missionary zeal, I suppose. Now Spufford says, the offensive part of this is not “there’s probably no God,” because really, how do they know? It’s the suggestion that the point of life is to enjoy it. Nothing against enjoyment – it’s a wonderful thing, the more enjoyment the better. But as Spufford points out, the only thing that is meant to be enjoyed and only enjoyed is a product, something designed to gratify our pleasure. “Your life is not a product; you cannot expect to unwrap it and place it in an advantageous corner of your home and admire it.” Enjoyment is part of life, but only one part. There is also hope and boredom and curiosity and tenderness and exhaustion and longing and accomplishment and a hundred other aspects. The problem is that our comsumer culture tempts us to start thinking of life that way, as though its whole purpose was to enjoy it. And that is a problem for a couple of reasons. First, because it impoverishes what our life could be. And secondly, because if reality steps in and makes it hard for us to enjoy life the way we are used to, then suddenly life has no point at all. We have been talking about that in the book study – how difficult it can be for some people to come to terms with aging, because when they can’t enjoy life the same way, then life seems to have no point, and they want to end it. Whereas joy – and we have all seen this too, in rare older people who manage to live joyfully in the face of all kinds of sorrow and infirmity – joy runs in deeper channels.
What are these deeper channels? Well, for the Bible, it would seem that joy has to do with being in touch with God.
It begins at creation. Underlying the whole doctrine of creation is the idea that God created the universe out of joy, a sense of delight and play. There was no necessity, no grim duty, no slaving away to “get it done,” but a burst of that primal, generous, playful energy that is God’s essence, overflowing into the emptiness to make beauty. We don’t say this out loud often enough, we kind of take it for granted, and then we just forget it altogether. In a few places the Bible lets us glimpse this – there’s that wonderful passage in Proverbs, that talks about holy Wisdom playing like a child beside God at creation, delighting in all that was made; in Job we catch something of the exultation of creation, when the morning stars sang together for joy; in the psalm there is that wonderful line about whales: “there is the wide sea, and there is that Leviathan which you made for the sport of it.”
If joy is the origin of creation, it is its goal and purpose as well. All those visions of us joining with the heavenly hosts and all creation in the praise of God – maybe they have been spoiled for us a bit by those old-fashioned pictures of angels on clouds where it all seems a bit dreary. Because of course what those visions are trying to convey is a fullness of joy that words cannot express. It is an experience we can only occasionally glimpse in this life: in the fresh smell of the garden glistening in dew, perhaps, or being stirred by a truly sublime piece of music, or making love to our beloved at its best. These are glimpses of what our purpose is: to tune into that groundswell of joy that runs through all creation, from the glory of the galaxies to each creature rejoicing to be alive, a joy that finds voice in praise and thanksgiving.
Joy runs through our world as a deep channel, because that is who God is, a energy of boundless delight and beauty and rejoicing. The mystics knew this, in every age. But how often we have lost sight of that, and made God out to be stern or remote or grumpy. God really needs to get a better PR firm to represent him, because the church has done a terrible job.
Joy is where we come from, and where we are bound, but of course it is not the dominant reality of where we are now. Sometimes you will meet Christians, particularly in the first enthusiasm of having found Christ in their lives, who think that being a good Christian means being happy all the time. It usually wears thin fast, because no one is happy and cheerful all the time, and if we try to be we just end up pretending. As well, as Christians we are called to be fully acquainted with the sorrows of this world, to take the sorrows of others on us in prayer. We just can’t be happy all the time. But we can keep ourselves grounded in joy – because sorrow and joy can exist together. And indeed we must keep grounded in joy, or the sorrows will quickly overwhelm and discourage us.
In this life we are occupied by busyness, and responsibility and cares and anxiety. We get caught up in the moment, we may even be distracted by enjoyment. And sometimes the black hand of depression can catch hold of us, and we just can’t feel the joy at all. At best joy comes to us in glimpses. But it is there always, because God is always present in our lives. It is there as the deep springs of water, buried deep down within us. We don’t often pay attention to it; and at times it is hidden beneath the weight of arid sand. And when we send down our roots in prayer, we may, by God’s grace, feel that life-giving water oozing up to refresh us, and to remind us what we have truly been created for: praise and service and delight in God, one another, and God’s creation.
But there are times when I need to be reminded of that. Perhaps particularly at this time of year; perhaps particularly this awful year. There’s a wonderful line in the first reading today that I will leave you with. Remember, this is the passage Jesus quotes as his mission statement. Alongside all the wonderful things the prophet is anointed to do – proclaiming good news to the poor, releasing the captives, comforting those who mourn, there is one that we often miss: he is to give them “the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.” As we prepare once more for Christ’s coming into this world, may the Spirit within us rise up to greet him with joy, and may he bring us a mantle of praise instead of our faint spirit. Amen.
It is very fitting that we celebrate joy at such a dark, cold time of the year – and not just because we could use some cheering up, but because it reminds us that joy is not all about sunshine and good times, but it can exist alongside the darkness. It is not the same as happiness.
Some of you may have seen that Lynn posted on the parish facebook page a couple of days back a meditation by a local Baptist pastor, Sarah Jane, on the very topic of joy.
Joy isn’t happiness, she writes. In fact, Joy, like Peace, isn’t a feeling at all. And like Love it is both noun and verb. It’s a deeper current that runs beneath the turmoil of daily feelings that holds and supports them. Joy can flow with sadness, and irritation, and confusion. But it runs in a deeper channel. Just as Peace is not the absence of conflict. Nor I might add, is courage the absence of fear
So Joy is not the absence of sorrow.
There’s quite a bit to unpack there.
First of all, joy is not the same as happiness, a bubbly good feeling that happens to us when all is going well. It runs in a deeper channel.
Nor should we confuse joy with the modern substitution: enjoyment. The writer Francis Spufford, who some years back wrote a refreshingly combative attack on the New Atheists attack on faith – takes issue with the word. Some years back a group of New Atheists pooled their funds and took out ads on the buses in London: “There is probably no God. So stop worrying and enjoy your life.” We can admire their missionary zeal, I suppose. Now Spufford says, the offensive part of this is not “there’s probably no God,” because really, how do they know? It’s the suggestion that the point of life is to enjoy it. Nothing against enjoyment – it’s a wonderful thing, the more enjoyment the better. But as Spufford points out, the only thing that is meant to be enjoyed and only enjoyed is a product, something designed to gratify our pleasure. “Your life is not a product; you cannot expect to unwrap it and place it in an advantageous corner of your home and admire it.” Enjoyment is part of life, but only one part. There is also hope and boredom and curiosity and tenderness and exhaustion and longing and accomplishment and a hundred other aspects. The problem is that our comsumer culture tempts us to start thinking of life that way, as though its whole purpose was to enjoy it. And that is a problem for a couple of reasons. First, because it impoverishes what our life could be. And secondly, because if reality steps in and makes it hard for us to enjoy life the way we are used to, then suddenly life has no point at all. We have been talking about that in the book study – how difficult it can be for some people to come to terms with aging, because when they can’t enjoy life the same way, then life seems to have no point, and they want to end it. Whereas joy – and we have all seen this too, in rare older people who manage to live joyfully in the face of all kinds of sorrow and infirmity – joy runs in deeper channels.
What are these deeper channels? Well, for the Bible, it would seem that joy has to do with being in touch with God.
It begins at creation. Underlying the whole doctrine of creation is the idea that God created the universe out of joy, a sense of delight and play. There was no necessity, no grim duty, no slaving away to “get it done,” but a burst of that primal, generous, playful energy that is God’s essence, overflowing into the emptiness to make beauty. We don’t say this out loud often enough, we kind of take it for granted, and then we just forget it altogether. In a few places the Bible lets us glimpse this – there’s that wonderful passage in Proverbs, that talks about holy Wisdom playing like a child beside God at creation, delighting in all that was made; in Job we catch something of the exultation of creation, when the morning stars sang together for joy; in the psalm there is that wonderful line about whales: “there is the wide sea, and there is that Leviathan which you made for the sport of it.”
If joy is the origin of creation, it is its goal and purpose as well. All those visions of us joining with the heavenly hosts and all creation in the praise of God – maybe they have been spoiled for us a bit by those old-fashioned pictures of angels on clouds where it all seems a bit dreary. Because of course what those visions are trying to convey is a fullness of joy that words cannot express. It is an experience we can only occasionally glimpse in this life: in the fresh smell of the garden glistening in dew, perhaps, or being stirred by a truly sublime piece of music, or making love to our beloved at its best. These are glimpses of what our purpose is: to tune into that groundswell of joy that runs through all creation, from the glory of the galaxies to each creature rejoicing to be alive, a joy that finds voice in praise and thanksgiving.
Joy runs through our world as a deep channel, because that is who God is, a energy of boundless delight and beauty and rejoicing. The mystics knew this, in every age. But how often we have lost sight of that, and made God out to be stern or remote or grumpy. God really needs to get a better PR firm to represent him, because the church has done a terrible job.
Joy is where we come from, and where we are bound, but of course it is not the dominant reality of where we are now. Sometimes you will meet Christians, particularly in the first enthusiasm of having found Christ in their lives, who think that being a good Christian means being happy all the time. It usually wears thin fast, because no one is happy and cheerful all the time, and if we try to be we just end up pretending. As well, as Christians we are called to be fully acquainted with the sorrows of this world, to take the sorrows of others on us in prayer. We just can’t be happy all the time. But we can keep ourselves grounded in joy – because sorrow and joy can exist together. And indeed we must keep grounded in joy, or the sorrows will quickly overwhelm and discourage us.
In this life we are occupied by busyness, and responsibility and cares and anxiety. We get caught up in the moment, we may even be distracted by enjoyment. And sometimes the black hand of depression can catch hold of us, and we just can’t feel the joy at all. At best joy comes to us in glimpses. But it is there always, because God is always present in our lives. It is there as the deep springs of water, buried deep down within us. We don’t often pay attention to it; and at times it is hidden beneath the weight of arid sand. And when we send down our roots in prayer, we may, by God’s grace, feel that life-giving water oozing up to refresh us, and to remind us what we have truly been created for: praise and service and delight in God, one another, and God’s creation.
But there are times when I need to be reminded of that. Perhaps particularly at this time of year; perhaps particularly this awful year. There’s a wonderful line in the first reading today that I will leave you with. Remember, this is the passage Jesus quotes as his mission statement. Alongside all the wonderful things the prophet is anointed to do – proclaiming good news to the poor, releasing the captives, comforting those who mourn, there is one that we often miss: he is to give them “the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.” As we prepare once more for Christ’s coming into this world, may the Spirit within us rise up to greet him with joy, and may he bring us a mantle of praise instead of our faint spirit. Amen.