1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.
May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.
Today is a special Sunday in the season of Advent known as Gaudate Sunday -- gaudate, from the Latin word for “rejoice.” In other words today is “Rejoice Sunday” -- a day to be filled with joy. And so we have scripture including the final part of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians in which he writes, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
So, go ahead, be joyful. Show that you’re joyful. No one else can see you, so go ahead and do a fist-bump with a family member, raise the roof, hoot and holler, do the wave...go on, I’ll wait.
It wasn’t so long ago that we were together worshipping in the sanctuary, so I can imagine how that would have gone if we were in-person today. I think a good number of you would have played along. It’s not entirely out of the question that we could have gotten a wave going in the sanctuary!
But things just feel different this year. Joy isn’t the first emotion that has been saturating my heart or expressed in my behavior. Gaudate Sunday or not, I don’t think it feels like a day to rejoice. I know I’m not alone. I’ve listened to you share of your pain and frustration over these last few months. I know you’re mourning loved ones, missing the way things used to be, and anxious about the future. I feel that way too, and I know I’m not the only pastor who feels this way. Pastor Mark and I serve as leaders for Indianapolis-area pastors. We gathered online for our monthly meeting this week and noticed a heaviness as pastors shared their pain, frustration, and exhaustion. And we know we’re not the only profession who is struggling...not even close! I don’t know if we want to get into ranking what professions have it worse these days, but healthcare workers and teachers are definitely towards the top of that list.
So, where is joy in our world today? Where is joy when a loved one is struggling or has died? Where is joy when the world seems dangerous? Where is joy when your work is unfulfilling, or you can’t find work at all? Where is joy when the financial, emotional, and physical demands of life seem to be more oppressive than ever? Where is joy in the midst of a global pandemic?
In order to answer that we need to understand what we’re talking about when we’re talking about joy.
Joy is not necessarily a huge smile or a loud cheer. Those are expressions of happiness. We tend to conflate joy with happiness. Despite happiness having primacy in the United States’ Declaration of Independence (as in, “the pursuit of…”), happiness is a very small, limited, and conditional emotion. It’s only possible to be happy if you are not sad.
Joy, on the other hand, can exist along the whole spectrum of the human experience. It’s possible to experience joy when you are happy and to experience joy when you are sad. It’s possible to experience joy when you are struggling and to experience joy when everything seems to be going your way. It’s possible to experience joy in the midst of a global pandemic.
It’s possible to experience joy in all these experiences because in all these experiences, God’s promise of grace and love is being constantly declared to you. Wherever you find yourself on the spectrum of human emotion, n Christ God has been at work reconciling the world to himself, not counting your sins against you (2 Corinthians 5:19). The creator and redeemer of all that is, seen and unseen, is completely in love with you.
True joy is not dependent on the circumstances of your life; instead, it bubbles forth out of a much deeper and dependable well. Think of a time that you participated in a mission trip, or spoke with someone who returned from a mission trip -- such as our trips to Fondwa, Haiti. You likely noticed this refrain, “Despite having very little, they were filled with joy.” That’s because true joy is not dependent on the circumstances of your life. True joy, like grace, is a freely-given gift of God. It surrounds you at all times, like the air around you, and merely has to be breathed in.
Literally do that. Take a breath. Inhale and exhale. That you just did that is nothing short of a miracle. In the midst of all the complicated emotions that swirl around in our minds and hearts, we tend to forget the sheer improbability of the fact that we get to experience them at all -- that we are here at all. We’re alive. You did nothing to earn the gift of life. It wasn’t a reward for a job well done. We don’t need to dig too deeply into reproductive science to remember how the odds were stacked against every one of us from the very beginning. And here we are. Alive in a world full of beauty and possibilities, living our “one wild and precious life,” as the poet Mary Oliver famously called it.
It’s perfectly ok to feel sad, or lonely, or lament that life isn’t quite what we had been accustomed to. But joy can live alongside those real emotions. Joy because we can feel anything at all. Joy because God loves us and is working in us through it all.
There’s no path, equation, or action plan to cultivate joy; we simply have to breathe in and out and recognize the sheer gift that it is to be alive. Our call is to enjoy what we have while we have it -- be present to the present moment. Our call is to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances.
This difficult year is almost behind us. COVID-19 vaccines will be delivered and administered starting tomorrow. Heath workers are telling us even though things are going to get worse in the short-term, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Once this pandemic experience is behind us, I wonder if we will have learned the myriad of lessons it has held out for us, socially, medically, politically, and emotionally.
My hope is that we would emerge from this experience having learned and experienced that true joy is not dependent on our external circumstances, that God is not just with us but FOR us in every moment, that each breath is a gracious gift of God full of possibilities.
May it be so. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
