Luke 3:7-18
MESSAGE I (Marta Fioriti)
To be honest, the idea of joy is challenging for me, especially in light of how hard our lives are. What occurs to me with the candles of hope, peace, and joy is that they are responses to humanity’s harrowing experiences. There is nothing easy about Advent.
Who is sad? Okay, I want you to think about that grief. I want you to think about where it lands in your body. When we talk about it- the sadness often lands right around our throat and heart- like a shelf that spreads across our chest. Now, I want you to think of something that brings you joy. It can even be the same event or person holding your grief. Most of us can feel that in our hearts, so the joy sits side by side next to sadness on the shelf across our chest.
Now, look around at each other. We are gathered in this space together, praying for griefs, and celebrating joys.
In this text, John the Baptist says I want you to fully show up and be there for each other (share your tunics and food and wages). And, it doesn’t matter if you are from the lineage of Abraham. Nobody cares. Gathering together and sharing yourself is a form of repentance and what God asks of us.
I want to offer a different way to understand repentance, and it’s not about shame or sin. It’s about sharing our very human selves. For contemporary people, that can feel like sharing sins, but it’s not.
Repentance is about moving toward anger, fear, anxiety instead of bottling it up or running from it—repentance is about making room for the Holy. Repentance is pouring out all that is exhausting you so that joy can sit with it, side-by-side.
Repentance is often known to be an individual practice. I did not learn: repent to God in the quiet corners of my bedroom and you will be saved. Repenting all by myself does not seem practical. I could repent, and then there would be no accountability. The idea of joy was also not a value. We were hard workers and strivers and very serious. Being focused was our value. So, even if confession and joy sat on our shelves, they were not shared in the community. There is something lost in our faith, when it is not shared.
As I look at this text, I don’t think repentance intends to be a solo job, and I also don’t think it was about being a bad person. I believe that John invited whole droves of people to the waters of the Jordan so that they could gather in community, show their true selves, and find joy in humble repentance and communal rejoicing for the coming of the lord. Their salvation was bound up in their shared humanity- together, not separately. And, doing together would make the hardships of their lives lighter and joyful.
Breath deeply, my friends; we are here for you. Come to the waters -joy is about sharing all of who you are.
Message II (Russ Ware)
When I was growing up, I learned a little song about what “JOY” meant, and it went like this…
J-O-Y, J-O-Y this is what it means… Jesus first, yourself last and others in between.
(tune of jingle bells – fitting to the season)
In this jingle, joy has a formula--a particular order of priority for myself and those around me that was key to having joy. Follow the formula and experience joy, get the order wrong, and miss it.
I was also told it was very important to understand that joy and happiness are not the same thing.
And, there was also a song that went like this…
I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart
Down in my heart
Down in my heart
I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart
Down in my heart
Down in my heart to stay
And I’m so happy, so very happy
I’ve got the love of Jesus in my heart
And I’m so happy, so very happy
I’ve got the love of Jesus in my heart
So… Joy down in my heart, and I’m so happy because of the love of Jesus in my heart. But joy and happiness aren’t the same thing.
And all of this was somewhat confusing to me as a kid say to least. In fact, at worst, it could be deeply demoralizing. At times it led to self-doubt and even condemnation.
Because I wasn’t always happy, so very happy. And I didn’t always, or even often, feel the love of Jesus down in my heart. And that made me wonder if Jesus was in my heart at all.
And yet, at least in my observation, it’s children, when they are content and happy and secure, who seem to best exude a simple joy that we adults often long to find.
And it doesn’t come from theology or knowing whether or not Jesus is down in their heart. And it certainly doesn’t come from some formula… J—O—Y, this is what it means. It seems to come far more naturally than that.
And that’s interesting, isn’t it. Because if you are a parent, or perhaps even if you aren’t, you know that, to be honest, children tend to be inherently self-focused.
Which kind of blows the whole formula of the little jingle.
You see Jesus taught us to “Love others as much as we love ourselves.” Matthew 22.39
So the song has it wrong. It’s not ourselves last. In fact, it’s our love of ourselves that serves as the benchmark--the goal of how much we should learn to love others.
This suggests joy is not rooted in self-denial after all, but rather loving ourselves. But not just our love of self, but experiencing the love of others. And it is that love, which is so tangible and rooted in community, that affirms for us the love of God, which is so intangible.
And that, for me at least, is where true joy seems to be found. It’s that circle of community, where your love of self serves as the benchmark for your love for me, and then that love I feel from you affirms for me the love of God and helps me love myself more, which raises the benchmark for how much I can love you. And so on, and so on, and so on.
After all, Matthew 1:23 tells us that his name will be called Emmanuel, which means “God with me?” No, God with us.
And so maybe the JOY jingle just needs a slight adjustment from “others in between,” second on a priority to list, to simply “others in the very center.” For that is where God is. God with us, Emmanuel. May we experience that joy together.
Message III (Robin Stretch-Crocker)
Joy is hard for many people right now. While some love to belt out “Joy to the World” and dance to the Christmas tunes in the grocery store, others want to cover their ears and hide out at home until January. Both are valid responses to a season that on the surface seems to demand busyness and consumption, while at a deeper level invites us into stillness, silence, and reflection on the coming of Christ. I know many are experiencing serious life situations, making an internal sense of joy nearly impossible to detect. Yet I wonder if it is our definitions and expectations of joy that make it difficult for us to experience it.
So often we confuse joy with happiness. Happiness is an emotion that is transitory. We can appreciate and enjoy happiness as it occurs, but we cannot hang onto it.
Joy is different in that it is not a fleeting emotion. Joy itself is within us although it can appear to be buried at times. I like to think of joy as the soul’s response of awe to its inner acceptance of what is. Joy isn’t about our life being different than what it is, but about being in awe of our life in its entirety and wholeness.
Joy doesn’t dismiss, mock, or bypass our suffering. That would be cruel and wouldn’t honor our stories. But rather, joy comes alongside of us to remind us that we are being held in love by God, giving us the ability to love in return. Joy invites life and living and receiving and acceptance and a noticing of all that life is. The beautiful and the messy, the joy and the sorrow. We cannot have one without the other.
Joy manifests in friendship and community, meals shared together, hearts being tended to in words of comfort, and moments of silent reflection and rest. Joy is an inner conviction that “all shall be well” as the mystic Saint Julian of Norwich so famously said. Not that life won’t be difficult or even feel unbearable, but that ultimately all shall be well. Joy is in the Spirit that whispers to us that we are not alone. Joy is in the remembrance that God is with us. . . Emmanuel.
In this season of Advent, may moments of joy catch you by surprise, and may you allow yourself to receive them as the gifts they truly are.