Sermon:  “Impossible Joy”

When I saw Maddie and Kristina’s dance for the first time yesterday, I told them how well I thought they were able to capture the spirit of today’s Gospel lesson from the first chapter of Luke.  Their choreography echoes its ups and downs, its joy and its deep longing for a brighter and better future.  I can’t thank you enough, girls, for sharing your amazing gifts with us, and for being willing to literally take this “leap of faith” and try something new for us in worship.  Seeing you dance this story is a powerful reminder of exactly how young and vulnerable, and yet courageous and strong, Mary was when she took her own “leap of faith” and said “yes” to the Angel Gabriel – calling her to be the mother of Jesus.  We always knew Mary was a teenager, but your physical presence helps us to see the miracle of the incarnation – what it means, literally, for the Spirit to become flesh.  Here we see the beginnings of new life in a young woman – new life that in Jesus Christ, would be born and would live and move among us with grace and power. 

Last week, Pastor Jen talked about how brave Mary was when she heard the news from the angel that she was chosen to become an unwed teenage mother, in a time and place that was far less accepting of that kind of thing than people are today.  We look back on the angel’s annunciation through the rose-colored glasses of 2,000 years of faith history, through the many layers of what I’ve called “Bible varnish” over the portraits of Mary we each carry in our heads and hearts.  We forget how she was literally risking her life by having a baby in what she calls her “lowliness.”  That simple word “low” doesn’t begin to describe how she would have been treated in her culture – she could have been cast aside by Joseph, and if he had chosen to make a public example of her, even her parents may not have been able to save her from being stoned to death in the town square. 

So this dance, for me, put living flesh onto a girl’s harsh reality.  It helped me appreciate Mary’s reaction to her pregnancy – I felt her joy, bittersweet joy.  Did it also evoke for you a deep, impossible yearning – how our souls aspire to know and to somehow be a part of something much greater than ourselves?  That continues to be the call of Christmas, for faithful Christians around the world – to dance with joy not just in the sunshine of springtime, but in the cold and sparkling darkness of a desert night.  That was the call of the angels to Mary and Elizabeth, and later to shepherds and kings, and to us.

The great philosopher psychologist, Rollo May, had this to say about the difference between simple happiness and true joy.  I thought it was important enough to post it on the bulletin board of my office for years, when I was doing ministry with teenagers. “Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity.”  Joy comes from not from the pursuit of happiness, and not from the things the tyrants of this world would have us believe are valuable – social status and wealth and power – but from fulfilling our sacred callings as children of God.  We know joy when we know our own natures as divinely created beings, servants of God helping not just ourselves, but all of God’s children, find lives of worth and dignity. 

Mary and Elizabeth must have instinctively known this truth about joy.  We don’t really know how Elizabeth was related to Mary, but Catholic tradition says she was “cousin Elizabeth,” the daughter of a sister of St. Anne, Mary’s mother.  Luke just calls her a “kinswoman.”  Whatever their relation, Mary must’ve needed to get away from home long enough to figure out what to do about the baby.  And clearly, Elizabeth was an older relative Mary knew she could trust to give good advice and comfort.  Both of them must have known they had a rough road ahead – as one mother dangerously old and another dangerously young – but neither of them could have know fully what dangers their sons would face.  Those two boys would grow up to lead a prophetic rebellion against the religious hypocrisy of their own nation, and against the dictatorship of the mighty Roman Empire.  Think about what impossible hope these mothers must have passed on to John and Jesus, to inspire them to be such leaders of their people.  They must have been remarkable women, brimming over with faith, to be able to inspire their sons with the angels’ vision for a just and joyful future for the world, in the Kingdom of God.

Joy is very subtle – but it shines bright as starlight in the darkness of a windy desert sky.  Happiness is more obvious, like the glare of Christmas lights in a shopping mall.  Happiness goes on sale, don’t you know, every year about this time.  You know how in those glossy flyers that come in the mail, you can see it – all those happy children bundled up in bright new Christmas sweaters, all those happy husbands with new plaid jackets and massive snow-blowers, all those happy housewives with colorful new bathrobes and fluffy new slippers, sipping hot cocoa in giant new Santa Claus mugs.  That’s what happiness is supposed to look like – or so says the retail industry.  But the kind of happiness you can buy with a credit card in a store is just so much wrapping paper to the world’s great sorrow.  It protects us no better against the raging storms that life sends us.  What we need when the real winds of fate begin to blow is the solid and eternal, impossible joy that grows deep inside the soul that has come to know the love of God in Jesus Christ. 

If you don’t know what impossible joy looks like, you don’t know enough 100-year-olds.  It’s been one of the greatest joys in my life to get to know a few of these saints in church, in addition to my own Uncle Jake, whose 100^th birthday we celebrated last weekend.  But one of these ladies in my last church, Lou, was someone who, during the sharing of prayer concerns in worship, if there was anyone in her 90-something age group who was dying, would defiantly stand up to say:  “I have a JOY to share about so-and-so.  Soon they will get to go home and be with the Lord!”  First-time visitors never quite knew whether they were supposed to laugh or cry.  But everyone else knew she was just speaking the truth in love.  She was preaching the Good News. 

I’ve been thinking about Lou a lot this weekend as we got the call from California that we’ve been dreading for a long time.  It was from my husband John’s family, from his big sister Mona, that his mother, our Grandma Lucy, appears to be in her last days of life.  The rules of this world’s happiness say it’s going to be a rotten Christmas at the Garcia’s.  But according to the Good News of God’s “impossible joy,” we have been trying to celebrate with her, because she is finally getting her wish to get to join Grandpa Henry in Heaven.  He left us, you might remember, just this past spring.  And now, we try to be happy for her that she’s “going home,” to be held safe in the arms of the One who loves her best, her Lord Jesus Christ.

That’s the miracle of our life of faith:  we don’t have to wait until we are 100 to find this kind of “impossible joy.”  Christians are so blessed to have the resources of scripture, song, and worship tradition to teach us what is most important in this life – the joy that comes from knowing ourselves to be cherished children of God, beings of true worth and dignity.  This is our calling as Christians, to call the world from the glare of empty happiness and vain pleasures into the joy of eternal life in the glory of God’s gracious love.  Mary and Elizabeth show us, through the joy they found in the midst of the hardship they faced in their world, that we too can do it.

Let us continue to sing joy to the world’s despair, giving thanks for the Good News of Jesus – that with God, nothing is impossible.  Amen.

 

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Luke 1:39-49

³⁹In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, ⁴⁰where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ⁴²and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. ⁴³And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? ⁴⁴For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

⁴⁶And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”