Joy!

Psalm 98, Acts 10:44-48, John 15:9-17

May 17, 2009

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

I woke up this morning, and it was raining. I’d gotten home late last night after visiting my son in New York, and I was tired. Then it thundered in the night (did you hear it?), and so I woke up and couldn’t got back to sleep because it was one of those nights my brain would not turn off. Big morning at church: bring a guest Sunday so I need to make sure everything runs smoothly, Inquirer’s Class after church and tonight the Confirmands meet with the Deacons for their last meeting of the year. And I have a baptism this morning, too. Then I woke up and it’s raining and I think no one is going to come because it’s raining and I am grouchy and I as thought of Shane’s baptism, I found myself feeling like those posters for the recent movie Wolverine where Hugh Jackman is rising up out of a tub of water or something with bared teeth and claws. I didn’t want to be wadin’ in the water, children, this morning, for I feared that the Wolverine in me was coming out. And I knew I was preaching on the topic of “joy,” and that the original version of this sermon had me beginning by singing “Happiness is two kinds of ice cream, knowing a secret, climbing a tree.” I wasn’t there.

Then I thought about all the people I know or know about who would not be at joy or happiness this morning for much better reasons than I had, and in my work, I meet a lot of them. The woman who stopped by the church seeking help this week because her electricity had just been shut off, the family of a soldier who died this week in Iraq, a friend in the deepest down part of chronic depression, a nursing home resident who has no family, early stage Alzheimer’s, and doesn’t understand why she just can’t go home, a man whose unemployment is about to stop and who has no prospects for a job, the teenager whose boyfriend just dumped her. If you think the Swine flu is bad, let me tell you about the epidemic of unhappiness in our society, unhappiness which results in things like mass shootings and a skyrocketing divorce rate among other things, a human virus that is much more destructive than any influenza.

What word does the church have to say to those of us who are simply grumpy and those of us whose unhappiness is not weather or weariness dependent but a result of the deep damage life sometimes renders us? Well, the word is not happiness, but rather, joy.

I want you to notice something about two of our scripture readings this morning. The Psalm does not say “Make a happy noise to the Lord,” nor does Jesus say to his disciples the day before he would be arrested and killed, “I have said these things to you so that you may be happy.” Jesus knew those disciples were not going to be happy about his death and about the threats to their own lives. The word he and the Psalmist use is “Joy.” And this is something else altogether.

Joy is not about the presence of stuff or even people. It’s not about happy endings. It’s not about a lack of suffering or pain. It’s not a denial of evil or hurt or sorrow. It doesn’t mean pasting a smiley face to our lives and pretending everything is always all right.

There are people who are not in churches today because somewhere along the line they were promised that God would ensure their now and forever happiness, and something happened that made them unhappy, and so they called it all a deception and left. There are people who have been told by Christians that if something bad happens to them it must mean God is testing them and they should be happy about that, or that their faith is not strong enough. There are people who think that every time they come to worship, they have to “put on a happy face,” and that if they cannot, then they need to stay away with their sadness, their tears, their struggles, their failures, their hurt.

The church, my friends, is not a happy face factory, and being in a relationship with God in Jesus does not guarantee smiles and laughter day by day. What Jesus offered his disciples, however, is continually offered to all of us, and that is joy.

Where does joy come from? It comes from being immersed in a bath of God’s love, the kind of bath that does not produce Wolverine, but a baptismal bath that drenches us in mercy, forgiveness, trust and hope. It comes from being immersed in a bath of God’s love, where that love gets into our very pores, a love that is not dependent on how we look or how we act or think or succeed or fail. As the scripture says, it is the perfect love that casts out fear.

Dan Clendenin, in a very thoughtful blog on joy, notes that the opposite of joy is not sadness (that’s the opposite of happiness), but rather anxiety and fear. When we are anxious or afraid, we focus on what is lacking, not on what is present. We fill our minds and spirits with an endless litany of “what ifs” or “why me’s.” Perfect love quiets those voices and opens a space in us for joy.

Why is it so hard for us to believe that we and everyone around us are perfectly loved by God? What is the key to unlocking that joy within us?

Jesus gave it to us in these words from John’s gospel. He said, “Abide in my love,” and then “love one another as I have loved you.” Joy is not about having stuff or winning the lottery or growing stock portfolios or even 52 kinds of ice cream. That may bring happiness for a time, but it can never bring a joy which is deep and abiding. Stay connected with God and connected with other people, says Jesus, and you can know joy even when the trappings of your life would send you unhappiness. It’s all about relationships which feed and nurture joy, and that begins with God, but it doesn’t end there.

I heard a story a number of years ago that came out of the Pacific Northwest and a Special Olympics event for teenagers. The teens were lined up at the blocks for a hundred meter dash. The start was called, and they ran with all their hearts, except for one boy who tripped as he started and fell. The girl who was in the lead and would easily have won the race and the gold medal realized that others had stopped, distraught about the boy, who was crying. She stopped, too, and went back to him, picked him up, and told everyone to link arms with her and with him. Together, the 8 racers walked to the finish line. Together, they won.

“Love one another as I have loved you.” That’s the secret to living joy. The apostle Peter learned it that day in the house of Cornelius, where he figured out that all the things he thought should keep Cornelius and him apart were human constructions that interfered with God’s joy building activity. Perfect love, he discovered, casts out fear of the “other.” And when the fear is gone, the relationships are built on baptismal waters, and the joy that only God’s Spirit can engender absolutely bursts out in praise and wonder. Make a joyful noise, indeed!

So to those of you who got up grumpy, and to those of you whose worry, anxiety, despair or fear goes very deep indeed for very good reasons, what the church offers this morning is the hope of abiding in God’s perfect love offered to you, and the possibility of being here in a place where we try to practice the kind of loving one another that the teenager in that race exhibited. We don’t always get it right, but we keep trying to find out what perfect love means, a love which builds up, a love in which we weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, a love which can move all of us to cast out fear and anxiety and despair.

Monday morning’s coming, and we all have our races to run. Today, let’s practice what it feels like to run together. Joy. Amen.