A Hard-Bitten Joy

     

Midweek Evensong

Third Week of Advent, AD 2022 A

A Reading from the 146th Psalm:

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
  whose hope is in the Lord their God,
who made heaven and earth,
  the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
  who executes justice for the oppressed;
  who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
  the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
  the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the strangers;
  he upholds the orphan and the widow,
  but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

The Lord will reign forever,
  your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord!

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“Rejoice in the Lord always,” writes St Paul to the Christians of Philippi, “and again I say rejoice.” Such is our theme for this third week of Advent, the reason why our recent candle is a gentle, joyful rose. We as Christians are to be joyful even in the midst of our waiting, even in the midst of our penitence. And I have to be honest with you—that sounds utterly exhausting.

Who can possibly be joyful all of the time? Who has the energy, the optimism? Even the sunniest amongst must us have bad days, or perhaps just low blood sugar.

But, see, in a theological context, a churchy context, joy might not mean what we assume it to mean. For starters joy, indeed, might not be an emotion, just as Christian love or charity is not an emotion. We think everything in life is all about feelings. Yet deeper truths are matters of the spirit, not of the passions. And this is not me being a killjoy; to the contrary, this is a word of liberation, of Good News.

Love, theologically, is not an emotion, not the same thing as feeling in love. Love is to put the good of another, the good of our beloved, even before our own. Not me, but you. Or better yet, us, together. Love your neighbor as yourself, after all. Love, then, is something that we do, that we will. It is a work of love, a labor of love. And that, of course, is why love hurts. It entails giving of ourselves, sacrificing of ourselves, and of necessity that hurts. But that’s what’s so great about it; that’s how you know that it’s real.

And this truly is good news. Because emotions are flighty, smoky, wispy things, ephemeral, mercurial. A little disturbance affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach can make them cheat. Emotions come and go, but love does not. Love is chosen. Love is devoted. God does not love you because He feels like it. God loves you because it is His very nature to give of Himself, to create, to redeem, and to sanctify endlessly. Isn’t that good to know, that He chooses love and does not, indeed cannot, change His mind?

I think to the words of C.S. Lewis, who, in response to an inquiry about our inability to love one another, wrote: “Fake it.” Pretend that you love them. Act like you love them. Soon enough you’ll realize that this in fact is love, for joy shall follow after. Joy, then, is the fruit of love, the result and even reward of love. It is not the same thing as happiness, nor ecstasy, nor pleasure. It is its own beast.

Happiness most generally is fleeting, and relies upon external factors. Happiness is happenstance, something that happens to you; while joy is long lasting, steadfast and dependable; because it grows from within, from an ember in your soul.

When a man or woman works hard all day, comes home to a chaotic house, feels overwhelmed by the magnitude of the tasks before them and the endless needs of their children, yet thinks, “This I do for love”—that’s joy. When you toil, when you suffer, when you endure, so that your beloved may flourish—that’s joy. Pain, stress, disappointment, trouble, nothing can take that from you.

You can be poor and sick and lonely and struggling and still have joy. Not ecstasy, not happiness, but something else altogether; something that can lead to those, something that can kindle laughter and celebration, but which runs far deeper. A Man can be stripped, whipped, tortured, humiliated, nailed to a Cross and murdered, yet still have joy, because He suffers out of love, for the ones He loves, and that is His victory. That is His triumph, His Kingdom, and His crown.

Joy! The joy of love that can’t stay dead. The joy of love that fills up hell until it bursts. The joy of love that rises victorious from the grave with all the ransomed dead resplendent in His train. Joy will sustain you. Joy will revivify you. Joy will resurrect you! Christians sang in catacombs and offered up thanksgivings from the Colosseum floor. Was this because they were fools? Fools for Christ, perhaps. They witnessed to a joy that even death can’t take away, and that astonished the world.

Joy doesn’t mean that nothing bad will ever happen to you, any more than love means that nothing bad will ever happen to you. Love actually makes us more vulnerable, more open to the slings and arrows of fate. The other fruit of love is sorrow, after all.

Yet there’s a difference between invulnerable and invincible. Invulnerable means that you cannot be harmed, and clearly Christ does not offer us that. Quite the contrary. But invincible means that we cannot be conquered, and that—that is the promise of Christ, that as He is risen so we shall arise.

And so we can sing when we suffer. So we give thanks when we die. For there is true joy in our hearts, the joy of God’s own love, filling us up as the Holy Spirit until She overflows out from us into all the world around us. Joy is the reward of love, strong and true, unbowed and indefatigable, resolute, redoubtable, and resolved. Joy is an endless well of endurance, of power and of peace. It is a fragment of eternity now planted here in time.

Faith. Love. Joy. These are the Kingdom of Christ. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against them even once. Come, Lord Jesus. Come and fulfill all our joy.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.