Scriptural Focus: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
5:16 Rejoice always,
5:17 pray without ceasing,
5:18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
5:19 Do not quench the Spirit.
5:20 Do not despise the words of prophets,
5:21 but test everything; hold fast to what is good;
5:22 abstain from every form of evil.
5:23 May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
5:24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.
This has been a tough year. Many people who can least afford it have lost jobs because of the coronavirus and now can’t pay the rent. There’s never enough rent assistance or utility assistance to go around, but this year the calls to nonprofits such as the Salvation Army and our United Way have doubled, even as contributions have been cut in half. I hate telling people that there’s just nothing there for them, but that’s the reality. This is one of those years when needs are greatest and fundraising for the helping agencies is hardest – the hardest I have ever seen in my career.
And then there was the record-breaking hurricane season. Watching and waiting for hurricanes is stressful in itself, even if they take a different path in the end.. Louisiana found itself in the “cone of uncertainty” for six storms this year: Cristobal got us watching the skies in early June. Marco and Laura threatened to cross paths over our heads in mid-August, and of course Laura’s high winds knocked down countless trees here. We held our breath when Sally and Beta looked threatening in mid-September. They gave us a pass, but then Delta flooded a lot of us in early October.
And here we are in the third Sunday in Advent, celebrating joy. I can imagine that some folks might find themselves feeling a bit doubtful this week: “Lord, I’m feeling a lot of things at the end of 2020, but expecting joy is a bit of a stretch.”
And yet joy is expected of us in following Christ. The word ‘rejoice’ occurs 31 times in the New Testament. Paul tells us to “rejoice always” in his letter to the Thessalonians. He gave the same command to the Philippians (Philippians 4:4): “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice!” In the Beatitudes, Jesus tells his followers, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven…” Luke even has Jesus saying, “Rejoice and leap for joy…”
At the end of such a difficult year, it’s good to ask ourselves what we mean by joy. Our mental image of joy matters, I think, in much the same way that our image of God matters. I suspect that the picture of joy for many people is jumping up and down, screaming in the bleachers to celebrate an LSU touchdown. We think we’re not completely joyful unless we’re screaming and waving in ecstasy. But ecstasy is not the same thing as joy.
I attended a weekend seminar once, led by a young Hindu friend; it was called “The Art of Happiness.” This is actually a movement within Hinduism; it teaches quiet meditation and breathing techniques. I remember that one woman, a friend of mine, had a revelation there. She had thought of happiness as ecstasy – when we’re “beside ourselves” with good feelings and pleasure. She had an unspoken expectation that her life was falling short if she didn’t experience a constant, unbroken feeling of ecstasy. She thought something was wrong with her because that wasn’t the case.
At the workshop, she realized that happiness and ecstasy are two different things. Ecstasy is great, but it’s momentary. Happiness and joy are different; because they are grounded in what is real, they can be ongoing.
There is such a thing as fake joy. It’s far less satisfying than the real thing. It takes place when our egos or false selves get what they want, because our false selves can only produce false good. Demagogues know how to stir up the ego-based counterfeit of joy. Thomas Merton wrote:
“We can no longer afford to equate faith with the acceptance of myths about our nation, our society, or our technology; to equate hope with a naive confidence in our image of ourselves as the good guys against whom all the villains in the world are leagued in conspiracy; to equate love with a mindlessly compliant togetherness, a dimly lived and semi-radiant compulsiveness in work and play, invested by commercial artists with an aura of spurious joy.”
Richard Rohr was granted the privilege to live in Thomas Merton’s hermitage for a month, living by himself with no contact from the outside world. He said that at first, even though he had nowhere to go and no deadlines to meet, he kept looking nervously at his watch. But gradually he was able to be still and pray. He wrote:
“I tried to keep a journal of what was happening to me. Back then, I found it particularly hard to cry. But one evening I laid my finger on my cheek and found to my surprise that it was wet. I wondered what those tears meant. What was I crying for? I wasn’t consciously sad or consciously happy. I noticed at that moment that behind it all there was a joy, deeper than any private joy. It was a joy in the face of the beauty of being, a joy at all the wonderful and lovable people I had already met in my life. Cosmic or spiritual joy is something we participate in; it comes from elsewhere and flows through us. It has little or nothing to do with things going well in our own life at that moment. I remember thinking that this must be why the saints could rejoice in the midst of suffering.”
I think real joy is found when we take the time to be real. It’s not something we achieve or earn; it’s an awakening, having the courage to step away from our egos.
Right after telling us to rejoice, Paul tells us in our passage today to “test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.” Joy is what happens when we plug into what is good. We may have grown up with a transactional view of life that tells us if we behave, we get a reward. If we misbehave, we get punished. It’s easy to transfer that misunderstanding to the gospel, and many people do.
But we follow a God of grace. God does not operate on a transactional basis. He invites us to be still and accept his love. When we do that, we participate in the flow of the universe. We are at home. There is a peace there, a comfort, that is perhaps the best definition of joy that I know. Joy is the natural result of living faith.
Julian of Norwich was born in 1343. She was an anchoress, which means that as an adult, she lived a life of prayer in a small room attached to the church. She once had visions of Christ, which she called showings, and she wrote about them later. She experienced God as loving, “nearer to us than our own soul.” Contrary to much theology of her day or ours, she wrote that Jesus told her,
“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ … This was said so tenderly, without blame of any kind toward me or anybody else.”
We can have joy in part because we can have hope. The life of faith is the expectation that all shall be well, regardless of our personal circumstances. In the present, we are called and invited to open ourselves to the presence of God’s Spirit, which is a Spirit of love.
Joy flows from the presence of faith, hope, and love in our lives. It forms the ground on which we stand. We may feel ecstasy at the moment; we may feel grief; we may feel troubled over current events. But underlying it all for the person of faith is a sense of joy at the awareness of a God who loves us and invites us to participate in that love.
Reminding ourselves of God’s loving presence is an opportunity to re-joice, to become aware once more of the joy of living in Christ. We do that in prayer, so let’s pray together now.
Lord, forgive us for the times that we take your joy for granted. Help us to open ourselves to your loving presence so that we might truly rejoice always. Give us the courage to turn away from the unthinking shallowness of popular culture. We long for the joy that flows from the awareness of your love. Help us to live lives of faith, rooted in that joy. Amen.
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