Sermons Online ...
Sermon - Third Sunday of Advent (C) - 13th December 2009
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7 & 8 am
Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20 A Song of Isaiah, Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-18
The first three readings today call us to be joyful. Today in the Church’s calendar is called “Gaudete Sunday” and it is when we light the pink candle in the Advent wreath, to remind ourselves that the repentance, confession and turning away from sin in our Advent preparation is something to be celebrated. It is probably fair to say that after love, joy is the uncommon quality most commonly associated with Christian life. "Joy," wrote one writer "is more conspicuous in Christianity than in any other religion”.
When in the 18th century Jonathan Edwards proposed signs to separate true religious experience from its counterfeits, the Puritan preacher recommended that we look for joy. It was, he held, the dead giveaway that God was present in someone's life. The Roman Catholic spiritual director Friedrich von Hugel reminds us that the canonization process in his tradition required that we find joy in the lives of candidates for sainthood, or their causes would be poked full of holes. He quoted St. Philip Neri's observation: "There is no such thing as a sad saint."
The Protestant theologian Emil Brunner wrote, "Joy is the feeling we have when we really are ourselves". Paul Tillich said, "Joy is nothing else than an awareness of being fulfilled in our true being". Karl Rahner has placed joy at the heart of the mysticism of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order.
One of the first things we learn about joy is that it is easy to confuse it with excitement, pleasure, fun and happiness. It is not at all like these, except that, as C S Lewis says, once we taste any of them, we will want more. In addition to the fact that we can produce and to some degree control, our fun and pleasure, these are in comparison to joy surface qualities.
Joy sinks far deeper into one's being and dwells there much like the easy purring of a reliable car engine, aware of but unperturbed by bad weather. Joy anchors itself deeply, establishes roots and endures in the worst circumstances alongside an unconquerable gladness that no barrier can confine.
Prior to being surprised by joy, we can easily restrict its possibilities to Christmas, Easter and special occasions in between. Weddings counted and babies being born were proper causes of celebration, however we are not always prepared for the many times that call for rejoicing once joy has been hooked into one's heart.
When joy connects with a capacity to wonder at the extravagant detail of God's doings in and around one's life, consciousness is raised. Wonder's appeal is that it opens up a world to stun and dazzle us and it offers us as its prime insight that joy is to be had and done not in some future time when good finally triumphs. Even in the middle of calamity, crisis, unfinished business, brokenness, pain and indifference, rejoicing is to be. Such was the Apostle Paul's experience: he was in Christ, a new creature and he had begun to experience the salvation of God. If there was a better reason to rejoice than that, Paul does not seem to have been aware of one, even in prison under persecution.
Paul and Luke emerge, hands down, as the uncontested ambassadors of joy in the New Testament. It is Luke who first shows us the link between joy and the Holy Spirit. When someone witnesses to joy in Luke and Acts, the Holy Spirit cannot be far away. Mary, for example, exclaimed, "My spirit rejoices" shortly after the Holy Spirit was proclaimed. Elizabeth was "filled with the Holy Spirit" with the resultant "leaping for joy" in her womb. The book of Acts neatly sums up the connection: "the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit".
Paul's joy rested with the cross in which he "gloried", the resurrection whose first fruits he had seen, and the gift of the Spirit that was at work in him and the church. For Paul, these things were actual happenings that had taken place in real history. They were not merely matters of religious experience, but also matters of historical fact. Thus, Paul could claim some objectivity about his bedrock advice to rejoice always.
Paul became the great example of one who could be suffering yet always rejoicing, for he was convinced that his misfortunes and those of others were God's medium for blessings and materials for thanksgiving. Because his joy had its source beyond mere earthly human joy, it was indestructible by outward circumstances. Some causes of Paul's joy, of course, were vulnerable because they were dependent on the fortunes of other believers, but even then he was convinced that the One who had begun a good work in them would complete it on the Day of Christ.
The paradox that Christian joy is to be found in the midst of sadness, affliction and care is precisely where it gives proof of its power. The poor, deprived of so many of life's pleasures, are not without joy. Joy is, repeatedly, the characteristic description of the martyrs as they went off to their deaths. "They raised their voices in songs and with great rejoicing, surrendered their lives," St. Cyprian wrote of a band of Christians facing execution in the third century.
This would all sound perverse and morbid were it not for the pattern of normalcy that accompanies joy. Joy is not the sentiment of people who have lost their marbles and their hold on reality. Nor is it a pious wish, but rather a permanent, all-pervasive character of the Christian, irrepressibly active, filled with inward satisfaction and the knowledge of God’s blessing. Joy is contagious. It spreads like wildfire.
However, here is the power of joy's opposite: depression and despair. The early church, too, was alert to the crises caused by this plague. The early Christian communities understood themselves as post-Pentecost communities of joy and anything that deflected that joy warranted a red-alert warning. The community did what it could to reinforce and reclaim the Pentecost ardour and to banish debilitating despondency from its midst. There are however always those who delight in chipping away at another's joy. Killjoys are skilful in undermining the faith from which joy springs and of tossing it off balance. It may be well to keep in mind that we cannot deflect the strategy of killjoys single-handedly. Joy needs the human contact with community and the support of others to keep it alive: we need each other.
Reflecting on joy, however, may inspire us to alter the status quo and to cover each other with the oil of gladness with more readiness, consistency and regularity than before. Maybe we owe it to each other to do just that. Maybe we owe it to ourselves to survey our culpability as squelchers of joy in others and of being part of systems and institutions that do not tolerate, let alone encourage, joy. Maybe we need to redress the balance of sombreness by gladdening others with support, kind words, encouragement, laughter, hope, time and the simple gift of self. It wouldn't hurt. It could heal. It would point to that kingdom first heralded by angels who proclaimed the "good tidings of great joy" that went hand-in-hand with "peace on earth”.
This sermon based upon Doris Donnelly’s book Dark Lightning: The Theological Validation of Christian Religious Experience.