Providence United Methodist Church

December 12, 1999 ~ Third Sunday of Advent

Scripture ~ Isaiah 61:1-8

Sermon ~ Surprised By Joy

Preacher ~ George Thompson

 

 

The setting was a Gothic-style United Methodist Church with a long aisle down the nave. The occasion was Advent communion. The celebrant and servers had moved to the sanctuary’s table, laden with a lovely silver chalice of wine and freshly baked loaves of bread. The congregation was well trained in the liturgy of the Eucharist. Always the senior pastor began with words of cordial invitation to the communion table and the historic blessing with the words, “The Lord be with you.” To which the people perfunctorily responded, “and with your spirit.” Since the nave was separated from the communion table by such a long distance, the church was completely dependent upon an amplifying system. On this advent Sunday, the congregation heard the opening line of the great thanksgiving  in which the pastor invited to communion all who intended to lead a new life in Christ.  But a new trainee at the sound control system inadvertently lowered the control that amplified the celebrant’s microphone. The last words of the invitation paled into a whisper. Turning to the associate pastor, the senior celebrant spoke, just as the fellow in the balcony restored the amplification, “There’s something wrong with this microphone!” His words echoed loudly through the Gothic chamber. Methodically the whole congregation replied, “and with your spirit.”

Something is wrong with our spirit during Advent and Christmas. Our nerves are on edge. We are fatigued and short of temper. Yet, the third Sunday of Advent is known as Gaudete Sunday: the celebration of joy as we anticipate the coming of the Christ Child. On this day we are reminded that joy is the hallmark of the Christian life. To say that we are joyous Christians is a tautology -- a needless repetition of words. To be in Christ, with Christ, and for Christ is a joyous reality. So we designate a specific time during advent in order to testify to a quality of joy that defines our identity.

 

For some of us, this is a terrific time. The music is superb. The food is more scrumptious than ever. Advent is an extrovert’s paradise: a party nearly every night during December. It is the best of times for many. Yet, Methodist bishop Melvin Wheatley is candid in reminding us that many wonderful Christians despise the Christmas season.  For some it is the worst of times. “The celebration gap between the happy and the sad tends to grow wider during Advent and Christmas than at any other time of the year,”1/ observes the bishop. In the midst of affluence, what do you celebrate if you are poor? In this season of family reunions, how do you discover joy if you finalized the divorce just this year? In this time of overt expressions of affection, how can you communicate with joyous participation if you are a rejected lover? How do you respond to the sparkling eyes of children when you carry the scars of an abusive childhood? How do you sing the joyous Christmas carols when you have just lost the person you love more than your own flesh? How do you express “good will on earth” when you have recently been fired by a boss whom you trusted as a friend?

 

The thing that we despise about advent is the pretension of joy. If we do not innately feel joyous, should we come to a worship service that is focused upon the theme of joy. The whole experience can result in compounding of our sense of guilt. So, Gaudete Sunday can easily become a time of pretension in the life of the church in which we masquerade our joys and pretend to be happy, hoping that no one will notice our true emotions.

 

The massive chasm between Christmas joy and seasonal melancholy widens until we immerse ourselves into the message of scripture. The biblical text is rooted in a realism. Each of today’s lessons announce the message of a coming joy that the world cannot give, nor take away. Yet, the sort of joy celebrated by these sacred readings is the antithesis of what is valued by the world: the absence of pain, the avoidance of grief, the denial of sorrow. The biblical context of joy is the arena of human suffering. The place of joy is sometimes even the valley of the shadow of death. The measure of joy that life brings to us is contingent upon what life finds within us.

In all likelihood, the synagogue at Nazareth during the time of Jesus followed a lectionary schedule. Certain Hebrew scrolls were read on appropriate days of the year. When the young adult Jesus was handed the scroll for the morning’s lesson, he read the lection for that day. This layman (a carpenter by trade) received from his home town rabbi the text of Isaiah, the sixty-first chapter. Jesus read the most joyous promise in the entire canon of sacred Hebrew writings, a lesson we have received in worship this morning. When Jesus finished the reading, he announced that this text was his own vision statement. He embodied and fulfilled its promise. Jesus merely shared the vision of Isaiah -- the belief that, when the Messiah arrives, the blind will see, the deaf will hear, and the oppressed will be liberated.

When Isaiah first articulated this vision, Jewish prisoners and slaves in Babylon had been  set free to journey back to Palestine and rebuild their beloved temple. Families that had suffered the  brutality of exile were already being reunited. The joy of these refugees was fueled by astounding economic changes. “You shall enjoy the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall glory.”2/

In the monumental year of 1776, an enlightenment philosopher named Adam Smith lifted Isaiah’s phrase out of context. He taught that, through open and free economic markets, a new era of prosperity and joy can be achieved. The Wealth of Nations  by Smith is one of the most influential statements on economics ever written. While Isaiah did not have precisely the vision of democratic capitalism in mind, he did disclose that there will be joy in Israel when the poorest and most oppressed participate in the wealth of a restored nation.

Jesus endorsed Isaiah’s vision of economic justice on behalf of the poor and oppressed. He then shocked his hometown congregation with the notion that this vision statement of Isaiah was now being fulfilled through his own ministry. Jesus came in order that the all nations might have the joy of liberation from oppression, greed, disease, and hunger.

Time  magazine recently established an ad hoc board of economists in order to get some analysis of this nation’s economic health. These six experts did not reach consensus regarding the scope of the nation’s economic recovery. But all agreed that the turnaround is staggering. As recently as 1992 the government spent  $290 billion more than it took in. During this concluding fiscal year, Uncle Sam rolled up a surplus of $123 billion. If these prudent policies stay in place, within ten years the national government will accumulate a one trillion dollar overage. Any way you cut the figures we citizens of this nation are collectively the wealthiest people who have ever lived in the span of five thousand years of recorded history. Isaiah’s dream of enjoying “the wealth of the nations” has been fulfilled in the USA during the final stanza of the Twentieth Century.

But are we a people who exude with the abundance of joy? Jesus comprehended the deeper meaning of Isaiah’s vision statement. Jesus disclosed that joy comes not through what we achieve. It come through what God provides. Joy arrives by indirection. It is a gift, not an accomplishment. It arrives, as did Jesus,  when people least expect it, even during the worst of times.

Joy came to the Hebrews while they were slaves in Babylon. Cyrus of Persia allowed the Jews to return to the pathetic remains of Jerusalem. By the time of the writing of Trito-Isaiah, these poor returning refugees were given permission to rebuild their beloved Temple. They began construction on something that paled in comparison to Solomon’s edifice; but their new sanctuary was the source of a joy beyond measure for them.

On an ordinary night when Emperor Augustus controlled the wealth of all nations and every Jew was virtually a tax slave to the empire and any person’s life was expendable; peasant Mary from Nazareth had a baby. Isaiah’s vision became a reality through this child who was the Messiah.

In these times when we also hunger for hope, we may be surprised by a joy that transcends the fleeting pleasure of economic fortune. Authentic joy is God’s gift that comes when we least expect it. On the night of a fire that consumed nearly every material possession of the Yadells, Will said to me, “Everything is replaceable: the furniture, the clothing, the house. I am a blessed man. We are all safe. We shall begin again.”

C. S. Lewis wanted his readers to know how he, an ardent atheist, had moved toward the fervor of a professing Orthodox Christian. Lewis, taking his title from a Wordsworth line, composed Surprised By Joy.  The book is a spiritual autobiography. Clive Staples (or “Jack”) used the term “joy” to refer to his encounter with holiness. Joy, for Jack, was not something on tap, like refreshing water from a spigot. “Joy,” may invade our soul suddenly in a worship service amidst the grandeur of an anthem or beneath the light of a dancing advent candle’s flame. Lewis insisted, “It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still >about to be.’”3/

C. S. Lewis, a confirmed bachelor,  did not know at the time of his writing this autobiographical analysis of “joy”  that his real joy would come later, in the personhood of a woman named Joy Davidman. This American intellectual was a spiritual seeker who was Lewis’ equal in intellectual inquiry, and she transcended Jack’s capacity for expressing the emotion of personal belief. He grew in his love for Joy. Then the love of his life was diagnosed with an advancing cancer.  C. S. Lewis experienced vicariously her pain. He endured the horror of her physical demise. In a hospital room, he married this dying woman who had taught an intractable academician things he had never learned at the Oxford University Library. When Lewis’ awesomely candid companion died, he renounced his faith. His grief was severe. He recognized the enormous gulf between an intellectual grasp of the Christian faith and the actual experience of God. He thought that when he lost his wife,  he no longer had a capacity for joy. But his rejection of faith was short lived. As he reflected upon the words of his wife and the meaning of her remarkable life, he suddenly realized that the pain of his loss was inextricably entangled with the joy of their love for each other. Death had not destroyed his love. Neither adversity nor tragic circumstance, could rob C. S. Lewis of the joy that God had intended for him.

The joy of which I speak is never oblivious to life’s sorrows. Joy is not the possession of the protected. It may even invade our souls during the trauma of personal tragedy. Joy abides in the same household as does grief. Joy even invades advent anxiety. It visits hospital rooms and the soft sod of cemeteries. Once we have experienced this joy, we shall never forget it. Thus, we shall return to that memory again and again. A mystical moment in worship, the touch of a compassionate friend, the sound of a heavenly anthem during advent. God was within the joy, and we knew it. Even though we cannot forever remain in the aura of that mystical moment which transported us to the realm of joy, its memory will never depart.

So today you may be surprised by joy.  You may want to remove your shoes; for your will stand on holy ground. True joy, not diluted happiness, may visit you this morning. Authentic joy comes as the gift of an indomitable hope; and your life will never be the same again. 

Therefore, our advent prayer is the final petition of the biblical text from the Book of Revelation: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”4  Come as joy.

 

Footnotes:

 

1. Melvin Wheatley, “The Recovery of Celebration,” A Book of Christmas: Readings for Reflection During Advent and Christmas  (Nashville, Tennessee: The Upper Room, 1988), p. 71. 

2. Isaiah 61:6b  NRSV

3. C. S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy: the Shape of My Early Life  (New York: A Harvest Book by Harcort, Brace & World, Inc., 1955), p. 78.

4. Revelation 22:20  KJV