December 23, 2007 Fourth Sunday of Advent
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Isaiah 35; Luke 1:26-56
Mary says in the Magnificat, “My spirit rejoices.”
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and as if our spirit operated by calendar or
clock, the expectation is that we will begin rejoicing on December 24th at 5PM
sharp. The pressure is on. After all the pressure to get here—all the deadlines at
work, all the preparations of gifts and meals and travel or home, now there is this
one last pressure, which is to feel joy. But how? How can we, who are suffering
all we are suffering in our lives right now, make our spirits rejoice?
As Americans we should know the answer—after all, we fought a
revolution for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As Christians we should
know how to enter into joy. As we heard Jesus say in the Gospel of John during
the candle-lighting, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you
and your joy may be complete.” Happiness and joy are our birthright as
Americans and Christians, and yet do we really know the way to joy?
The prophet Isaiah promised that joy was coming—a joy that God was
bringing to all people. Isaiah said, “ A highway shall be there and it shall be
called the Holy Way.” He said that for those who take the Holy Way, “everlasting
joy will be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and
sighing shall flee away.”
As Americans, we know what the Holy Way to joy and gladness is. It is the
Miracle Mile. It is the stretch from K-Mart to Wal-Mart. It is the road to the
Manchester malls. After the national devastation of September 11, 2001 our
President urged us to respond by going shopping. Shopping came first, war
second. Consuming is the American way to happiness and well-being.
Consuming gadgets and appliances and furnishings and clothes and accessories
and toys, consuming recreational food and alcohol and drugs and sex, consuming
CDs and DVDs and sports and all forms of entertainment; consuming soldiers’
lives and Middle East nations and their oil.
It is true, all this consuming does bring happiness, but it also brings
problems. One problem is that by definition, consuming uses up the source of the
joy. Time passes and then it is gone, or it has grown stale, and needs to replaced.
Another problem is that eventually we lose our ability to consume or our ability to
enjoy it. We run out of supplies, we run out of money, we become sick, we come
face to face with death. The consuming strategy becomes empty in those
situations, and there is no comfort or joy when you need it most.
Isaiah clearly had another Holy Way in mind—something more like Mary’s
source of joy. Mary’s joy came precisely because she was empty. It came to her
because she was lowly, a servant. It came to her when her nation was occupied
and oppressed.
If we look closely at Isaiah’s prophecy it is similar to the Magnificat where
Mary declares that God has “exalted those of low degree” and “filled the hungry
with good things.” Isaiah talks about joy coming to those who are at the bottom of
his society—the blind, the deaf, the lame, the dumb—all of whom were
considered “unclean.” After Isaiah says, “A highway shall be there and it shall be
called the Holy Way,” comes a verse that scholars have trouble translating, but the
footnotes of our pulpit Bible offer the most logical and useful translation. It says
“the unclean shall not pass the Holy Way by, but it shall be for them.” On the
Holy Way, “the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongues of the speechless sing
for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.”
In other words if you are in a barren or dry time, if you are suffering or struggling
or stressed, if you have done wrong, this way to joy is for you. If Christmas feels
joyless to you, this is your hope for joy.
Materialistic, consumer ways to happiness, or ways to happiness that
depend on things going well—even unmaterialistic, virtuous things—these
strategies for happiness cannot help us when things go badly. The lame remain
lame, the speechless without song, the dry places dry. But the Holy Way to joy
transforms sorrow into joy. It finds hidden reservoirs of water beneath the dry
land.
The most beautiful expression of this that I know was written by a
contemporary American Eastern Orthodox monk named Damascene in the book
Christ the Eternal Tao. It says about God:
Many say that He wishes us to be happy.
They try to make Him what they want Him to be.
The truth is, He cares not for that happiness.
For that happiness is not real, but a dream.
It…is like clouds,
Clouds that change shape and vanish into air…
Beneath the clouds is the ground we call sorrow.
This sorrow is our earth, the dust of the ground,
The very substance of life.
Unlike the clouds, it is solid and firm.
Beneath the earth are hidden reservoirs of water,
And this water we call joy,
A joy deeper than the happiness of the clouds.
But this water may not come to the surface of its own accord.
Therefore one must labor to dig the ground of sorrow
In order to tap it. (p. 198)
This coming Lent Dick Devor will teach a course on the Book of Job. Job
began with all the things that make for earthly, material happiness. He was rich,
he had a family, he had good health, he had a reputation for being righteous. Then
all that was taken away. He suffered utter devastation, the worst of human
suffering and loss. But Job chose to do the work Damscene calls “digging the
ground of sorrow,” the Holy Way of letting go of all our other programs for
happiness and going through our suffering with a determined focus on God. It led
Job to a triumphant and joyous outcry in the midst of his pain: “For I know that
my Redeemer lives…and though I lose everything, I will see God. (Job19: 25-26)
We do not have to have the certainty of Job to find the Holy Way to joy.
Woody Allen’s character in his movie Hannah and Her Sisters shows that even
someone with abundant neuroses and flaws and doubts can find this way to joy.
Allen’s character is a hypochondriac who finally has a real scare. Doctors
think he may have a brain tumor, and put him through a series of tests. He is
convinced he is going to hear that he is dying when the doctor finally comes in and
tells him he is fine. Allen bursts out of the doctor’s building leaping like a deer for
joy. The camera follows him as he runs and leaps again and again down the
Manhattan sidewalk. But then he stops dead and puts his hands to his mouth.
The thought has hit him, “OK, so I am not going to die now. But I am
going to die sometime.” It throws him into a spiritual crisis. He tries to believe in
God, he tries to believe there is meaning to life, but eventually he gives up and
decides there is no God. He is about to commit suicide—the gun actually goes off
but somehow misses his head—when it suddenly occurs to him that maybe he is
wrong. Maybe there is a God. Won’t he feel stupid if he has thrown his life away
and then discovers that it had meaning after all?
“Maybe” is not much, but it is enough for his character to take a second
look at life. And when he looks in the light of that maybe, he is able to see how
beautiful and meaningful and enjoyable life is, despite all that is wrong and all the
uncertainty and the fact of death. The Holy Way transforms him in just the ways
Isaiah said it would. The lame leap like a deer; Allen’s character is freed from his
hypochondria. The speechless sing; his character goes back to the creative theater
and television work he had quit. Waters break forth in the wilderness; he had been
sterile, and the movie ends with his new wife telling him she is pregnant.
The Holy Way to joy does not come through escaping our sorrows, because
as Woody Allen’s character knows, there is no escaping death. The Holy Way
leads us into and through our sorrow and suffering. All the other ways to
happiness are seeking it in the clouds of illusion. The Holy Way seeks it in the
darkness within the solid ground of our true human condition.
As the psychologist Carl Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by
imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious… This
procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not very popular.”
Enlightenment and joy come not through the glittering tinsel of the consumer way
to happiness, not through the flickering light of entertaining distractions, not
through the shining halo of virtuosity, but through entering into the darkness fully
mindful of its reality, fully present to it, peering into its pain or emptiness with
fearless patience—at least with a “maybe” if not a full “yes.” The Holy Way to
joy is to look into both good times and bad for the light that shines in the darkness
that darkness does not overcome.
The father of Centering Prayer, Thomas Keating talks in his most recent
book about how people who are able to maintain material happiness in their lives
may never find the way through the darkness to the true light, and through the
ground of sorrow to the reservoir of joy beneath. Keating says, “The problem with
the elite in any society is that they do not realize the dangerous condition they are
in. Status, power and wealth tend to hide from them the truth about themselves.
Until they have been through such trauma as a painful divorce, serious illness,
bankruptcy proceedings, or loss of loved ones, reputation, or social status like
Job…they do not know who they are. The elite not infrequently have to be
confronted by enormous tragedy in order to grasp the emptiness and inadequacy of
their own ideas of happiness as well as the full extent of God’s love for them.”
(Manifesting God p.19)
Mary recognized that her emptiness enabled God’s love to fill her. Her
lowliness enabled God to lift her. Her sorrow enabled God to give her joy beyond
earthly happiness.
If we want to experience joy this Christmas, as the pressure is on to do, we
could try really hard to have the perfect meals, the perfect presents, the perfect
interactions and entertainments. We could try really hard to consume the perfect
Christmas. But even if we succeed, the emptiness that follows will leave us hollow
and sad.
Or we could try following the Holy Way. We can accept perfection or
imperfection, success or failure with the same spirit of welcome, the same single
focus of seeking the light of Christ that is born in each moment. We can practice
being fully present to what is, making the darkness and the light equally conscious
in the faith that maybe, just maybe, Christ really is within this moment and within
us as he was in Mary.
If we can keep that focus and that modicum of faith, we will be on the Holy
Way to that life where “the lame leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless
sing for joy, and waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the
desert,” where our spirit rejoices in God and our soul magnifies the Lord. And we
may even get there by five o’clock on December 24th.
Let pray in silence, making the darkness within us conscious, looking into
its truth for the light that shines in the darkness and the water that springs up when
we dig in the ground of sorrow.
Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 12/23/2007