Scripture:
Isaiah 35:1-10, Luke 1:46-55
James
5:7-10 Matthew 11:2-11
Today, the 3rd Sunday
in Advent, is called Gaudete Sunday.
Gaudete is a Latin word meaning ”Rejoice!”, and so on the 3rd
Sunday in Advent, we are reminded to rejoice. As part of that rejoicing, we
light, along with the two purple candles signifying penitence, the pink candle
signifying joy.
What is joy? What does it mean to rejoice? Is joy the same as happiness? Recently, I read of a country named Bhutan –
a small, landlocked country, roughly the size of Switzerland, population about
755,000, bordered by China, India, and Tibet.
There are many ways to measure and compare nations. Gross national product is a common metric, by
which the success of a government is measured on the basis of the value of the
goods produced and services provided by a country in a year, plus income from
foreign investments. Gross domestic
product is similar, except it excludes income from foreign investments. In 1972, the 4th king of Bhutan,
one Jigme Singye Wangchuck, declared “gross national happiness is more
important that gross domestic product”.
This statement recognized that the success of a nation cannot be reduced
to dollar signs, that development should take a wholistic approach and factor
in non-economic measures. The four
pillars of Gross National Happiness are (1) sustainable and equitable
socio-economic development, (2) environmental conservation, (3) preservation
and promotion of culture, and (4) good governance. The nine domains of GNH are psychological
well-being, health, time use, education, cultural diversity and resilience,
good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and
living standards. The population fills
out detailed surveys that attempt to measure how the populace measures up
against these metrics and how happy they are, even asking subjects to indicate
how often they prayed each day, as one measure of the karma they generated. Based
on their responses, people are classed as unhappy, narrowly happy, extensively
happy, and deeply happy. In the first years of implementation, the
surveys used to take hours to complete, but the government soon learned that
filling out lengthy surveys didn’t make the people happy – in fact, it
detracted from gross national happiness, and so they’ve simplified the surveys
somewhat – though the people are still asked about their frequency of prayer
and other religious practices.[1]
As I read about the distinction
between happiness and joy, it would seem that happiness is based in
circumstances. For example, being treated to a dinner at a nice restaurant may
make you feel happy, while being stuck in traffic on the way to the restaurant
may make you feel unhappy. So, depending
on your circumstances and your disposition, you could swing between happiness
and unhappiness several times a day. In
fact, according to the country of Bhutan, you need four pillars and nine
domains of circumstances in order to experience happiness. Joy, by contrast, seems to be more internally
based, more of an inward quality, less subject to circumstances. It may be significant that Paul’s letter to
the Galatians lists joy as one of the fruits of the Spirit, while happiness is
not. So while joy and happiness may look
and feel similar, they come from different places.
Our texts this morning give us a
variety of lenses through which to understand joy. Our text from Isaiah, similar to the other
texts from Isaiah that we’ve read during Advent, once again gives us a vision
of God’s reign. Repeatedly throughout the first 39 chapters of Isaiah, the
prophet again and condemned his people for their unfaithfulness. But
interspersed with these condemnations, he also provided an alternative vision,
in effect saying, “Our people don’t have to continue on their current doomed
course. If you repent, here’s how wonderful your lives will be. “ And let’s
revisit part of Isaiah’s vision:
Then the eyes
of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame
shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. (Isaiah 35:5-6)
As we read this verse, this may
remind us of Jesus’ miracles – these are among the healings that Jesus
did. And I’ve often wondered why those
in power found Jesus to be such a threat.
After all, he went about doing good, healing people, teaching people to
care for one another. Those are bad
things? Who could object to any of
this? But as we read from Isaiah and
consider Jesus’ ministry, we can see that Jesus’ miracles had a significance
beyond themselves. Beyond the immediate healings of the ill, Jesus’ miracles
pointed to this passage and to the reign of God that Jesus both proclaimed and
embodied – the reign of God which didn’t include the reign of Caesar, and
didn’t include the religious leaders who had sold out to Caesar. These healings, these miracles, were of course
a blessing to those who benefitted directly – but they were at the same time
subversive to the powers that were, the powers that were who were powerless to
replicate what Jesus did. And so the
representatives of Caesar, political and religious, those who benefitted from
the power of Caesar, felt threatened. And so we even as we experience the joy of the
Lord, we need to recognize that not everyone may share in our joy, that some
may even feel threatened that our joy comes from a different place and is not
dependent on their whims.
Together, we read responsively
Mary’s Magnificat, Mary’s great hymn to the liberating power of God. Given that
Mary was “with child” – a child not fathered by her fiancé Joseph, a child who
would be whispered about all the days of Mary’s life – she had any number of
reasons to be anxious about the present and fearful for her future. “Blessed”
would be the very last word those neighbors with their salacious whispers would
use to describe Mary. And yet Mary
could sing, “My soul rejoices in God my Savior.” Mary
knew that as God provided her with a son, God would also provide a way
forward. Like Hannah before her, who
similarly rejoiced as she dedicated her son Samuel to God’s service (I Samuel
2), Mary knew that her son’s life would be a game changer, that his life would
be a cause of rejoicing for the poor and humble, but a threat to the proud and
powerful. Mary’s faith in God’s
provision and protection brought her a joy that, through the words of the Magnificat,
has echoed down the centuries for some two thousand years.
In our reading from Matthew’s
Gospel, John the Baptist is having second thoughts. Having confidently prepared
the way for Jesus, John was arrested for having condemned Herod’s marriage to
the wife of his brother Philip. While in prison, John heard accounts of Jesus’
ministry – and John wasn’t sure what to make of what he heard. John
preached that the one to come would separate the wheat from the chaff and burn
the chaff with unquenchable fire. Jesus’
welcome of the outcasts was so different from John’s message of “turn or burn”.
So John sent messengers to ask Jesus,
“Are you the One, or are we to wait for another?” Perhaps John’s unstated message to Jesus was
something like, “OK, Jesus, when are you going to get busy with the fire and
start burning away the chaff, start getting rid of all the bad people?” Jesus reassured John with words that reminded
him of our reading from Isaiah, saying "Go and tell John what you hear and
see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the
deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to
them.” And Jesus told the John’s
emissaries to ask John to keep an open mind, saying “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at
me.” John’s limited perspective had for
a time replaced his faith, hope, and joy with doubt, but Jesus’ words reconnected John to the
deepest meaning of John’s own proclamation – restoration, not damnation - and gave
him cause for joy even in prison.
Happiness is dependent on
circumstance and can come and go, but joy does not depend on
circumstances. At the end of his
ministry, at his last supper with the disciples, Jesus told them, “Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will
rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. When
a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her
child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having
brought a human being into the world. So you have pain now;
but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take
your joy from you.” (John 16:20-22)
The German
mystic Meister Eckert had an interesting take on this idea of labor and birth,
of pain turning into joy. Eckert wrote:
“We are all meant to be mothers of
God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place
unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me
if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me
for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in
my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of
Man is begotten in us.”[2]
The idea of giving birth to God in ourselves sounds a bit
mind-blowing, dangerous, even heretical.
And yet, our last hymn is the familiar carol “O Little Town of
Bethlehem”, the last verse of which contains these words:
“O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray.
Cast our our sin, and enter in: be born in us today.” (E&R
#108)
May the joy of the Lord be born in us, live in us, grow in us, until
our lives become windows through which the joy and light of Christ become
visible to all around us. Amen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness,
https://ophi.org.uk/policy/national-policy/gross-national-happiness-index/
[2] http://www.catholicstoreroom.com/category/quotes/quote-author/meister-eckhart-1260-1328/
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