Advent 3 - Joy

 Isaiah 35 December 15, 2019 Advent 3 – Joy

 

Are you happy? Do you feel joy?

We ask this question of ourselves and others a lot.

We take our emotional temperature often.

 

I don’t know that this would have been a question in Isaiah’s time.
It probably would have seemed foreign to everyone.
People were joyful at times, of course, and they expressed joy.

It shows up in scripture often.
But the idea of contemplating joy and pursuing joy

feels more like a modern construct.
Maybe just of the 21st century.

 

My educated guess is they were more pragmatic about things.
The questions would have been:
Are you dead? Are you starving? Are you in pain?
If not, then great—you have joy.
Kind of sounds like my grandmother, actually.

 

But now, joy seems to be a bit of an obsession,

at least for many middle-class American people.
Once we have a place to live

and our basic needs met, then we want to know:
Do I feel joy? How can I get more joy?

 

People have joy workshops, retreats, classes.

One gives a certificate in joy.

Which means that you’re certified joyful.

 

And we often find ourselves looking for joy in things.

Cars and houses and possessions.

Sears once had a Christmas campaign

called Real Joy Guaranteed.
There’s so much wrong with that,

I’m not sure where to begin.

 

A few years ago Marie Kondo, was the rage,

she was the decluttering expert, so she found joy in not having things.

She told us to look at every object we own and ask,
“Does this spark joy?”
If not, she says, get rid of it.
I don’t know if a box of Band-Aids sparks joy,

but I still think I should keep it around.

 

There was a study showing that a lot of

young adults struggle with depression and anxiety

because their parents created an environment

too comfortable, too manufactured.

They were so focused on curating their children’s joy,

that the children never learned how to experience

joy on their own without someone doing it for them.

 

We want to pursue joy, achieve it, certify it, purchase it.
We want to give it to our children.
We want joy in our homes, our families, our churches, our worship.
We’d like to experience it all the time.
We want to own joy.

 

But I’m not sure that’s how it works.

This week in Advent, our focus is joy.
It’s called Gaudete Sunday – which is Latin for Rejoice.
It has been the theme for the third Sunday in Advent

since at least the ninth century.

Yet historically, joy hasn’t been what Christianity was known for.

We’ve been known more for seriousness,

stoicism, guilt, and solemnity.
One of my former members told me

that as a young woman, her pastor scolded her

for smiling as she walked back from communion.

 

Today some people still wonder,
Can we laugh in church?
Is it okay to be joyful in God’s presence?

Should we be more serious for God.

 

And then there are other branches of

Christianity where the only acceptable emotion

is joy—where you have to feel blessed all the time.

 

Joy becomes a requirement,

and any negative emotion like sadness

or sorrow or depression, or anger

is seen as a lack of faith.

Christian joy becomes a commodity.

 

So many ideas about joy.
And none of them seem to hit the real mark.

 

In my first congregation, I visited a member

who had been in the hospital

for weeks after a spinal injury.

She hadn’t walked since that time.

When I first saw here,

She was pretty depressed and hopeless and angry

which I completely understood.

 

Then the next time I saw her, she was changed.

She said that week during physical therapy,

she managed to stand—just for a moment—

supported on both sides.

When she told me about it, her face lit up.

“It was only three seconds,” she said,

“but I felt like I was flying.”

 

Three seconds wasn’t much,
But to her, those three seconds were pure joy.

the kind that can only be understood

when you’ve known pain, fear, helplessness.
That joy was not born not from ease,

and not from constantly pursuing joy

or even from self-care. It was found in endurance.

That joy is probably more what Isaiah was talking about.

 

Isaiah tells the people:

The desert will bloom.
The dry land will gush with water.
Weak hands will grow strong.
Blind eyes will open, deaf ears will hear,
and those who cannot walk will run and leap.

 

This is joy, but it is joy that comes through suffering.

The water is amazing

because it falls on dry ground.
The crocuses are beautiful

because they bloom in a wasteland.

Seeing and hearing are miracles,

only if you have been unable to see or hear.
Walking is ordinary until the time you

wondered if you might never walk again.

 

The joy that comes from God

is not something we can pursue.
Not something we can buy or learn.
Not something we can manufacture

for ourselves or our children.
It is the joy that rises from

what is broken, what hurts, what feels lost.

 

Part of the lessons of Christ and of Easter is that

real joy comes through suffering.

Something that so many people

want to avoid completely.

 

Now no one should pursue suffering,

But as Christians, when it does happen,

we can see our own suffering as

and opportunity for God to work in us.

 

And we are also called to not

shy away from the suffering of others.

If you aren’t suffering yourself

then suffer with someone else.
Compassion produces joy.
Generosity produces joy.
Solidarity produces joy.

 

So yes—in Christ there is joy.
But the joy Christ gives is not a mood.
It is not a personality trait.
It is not a demand placed on you during the holidays.
It is not a decoration you have to hang on your heart.

It is a promise.

 

A promise that the desert places

in our lives are not wasted places.
A promise that dry seasons

will not stay dry forever.

A promise that God can take the very things

that break us and turn them into

places of surprising, impossible life.

 

And here is another deeper thing:
Joy is not the opposite of sorrow.
Joy is what God grows in the soil of sorrow.
Joy is the first light breaking into the long night.
Joy is what happens when God enters

the world and refuses to leave us alone in the dark.

 That’s why , even at the darkest time,

Isaiah can see crocuses

blooming where no flower should bloom.
That’s why the weak become strong,
and the blind see,
and the lame leap,
and the fearful find courage again.
Because God has entered the story.

 

So if you are not feeling joy right now—
if you’re weary, worried, stretched thin, or grieving—
hear this good news:

Christ does not wait for you to feel joyful before he comes.

He comes to you in the desert.
He walks with you through it.
And he will not stop until joy blooms again.

 This is the promise of Advent:

that even now, even here,
God is preparing a way in the wilderness,
a holy road where sorrow will not have the last word.

 So take heart. Hold on.

Stay awake and watch.

 Because the one who brings joy out of sorrow,

life out of death,
and flowers out of barren ground
is already on the way.