Towards the end of his life, Henri Nouwen, a Roman Catholic priest, was still looking for some meaning or purpose to his life. Even though he was a world famous author and theologian and had taught at Notre Dame and Yale and Harvard, he still felt there was something missing. And so he left the academy behind and moved to a L’Arche community in Toronto to live with people with intellectual disabilities, some of them severe that require nearly 24 hour care. It was there that Nouwen was matched with Adam, to be his companion and care taker, of whom he said “"It is I, not Adam, who gets the main benefit from our friendship.”
Nouwen would take members of the community with him whenever he traveled to speak around the world, and what he also found in this community was joy. He says that there were people there who radiated joy, not because their lives were easy, because they most certainly weren’t, but because they habitually recognized God’s presence in the midst of all human suffering, their own as well as others. And that is at the heart of joy, which we’ll get into, and so, Nouwen says, “The great challenge of faith is to be surprised by joy.” Let me say that again so you can let it sink in and begin to percolate in your mind, “The great challenge of faith is to be surprised by joy.”
And so today is the third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of
Joy, the Sunday we light our pink candle, although technically it’s rose. The
Sunday is called Gaudete Sunday, from the first word of the Latin Mass for
today, which comes from the epistle reading which begins “rejoice”, and I know
last week’s reading also said rejoice, but that’s because I chose that reading;
it was not the assigned reading for the week. Since Advent is a time of
preparation, a time of repentance, that reading calling for us to rejoice sets
it apart from the other readings for the season, and we get that from Lent,
which predates Advent in its celebration. The fourth Sunday of Lent, which is
the next to the last Sunday of Lent, also begins with a call to rejoice, and
thus breaks up the penitential aspects of Lent, and also used the rose color,
and there is lots of speculation why, and so when Advent became a liturgical
season, the next to the last Sunday, today, we said to be a little different
than the other Sundays, although we don’t normally think of Advent as being
penitential the way we think of Lent. And so we talk about joy as a time
separate from the other themes, but we also talk about joy as being something
that we can have in our lives regardless.
While we talk about joy and happiness being the same, or at
least being related, they are in fact not the same thing. Similarly, when we
were talking about the beatitudes, I said that the beatitudes are not about
happiness, because saying “happy are those who mourn” doesn’t make any sense. The
blessings there are about God’s favor, God’s love, which doesn’t mean that good
things are happening, but that God is always present, and sometimes it even
means that the blessing we receive will potentially bring us problems. And so
think about Mary and the passage we heard today, or even about the annunciation
to Mary. When Gabriel appears to her, Mary is told that she has found favor
with God and that the Lord is with her, and in return for this favor, she is
going to become pregnant outside of marriage. Do you know what the penalty is
for a girl getting pregnant outside of marriage? It’s to be stoned to death.
Now most rabbis and biblical scholars don’t think that was the usual
punishment, but it was certainly possible. And then when she goes to be with
her cousin Elizabeth, Elizabeth tells her that she is blessed among all women
Do you think that Mary considered this a blessing from God? Do you think she
felt favored by this decision? Do you think she felt blessed?
And then one other interesting piece, well one among many,
is that we are told that the baby in Elizabeth’s womb, who will be John the
Baptist, leaps for joy. What’s more, when his father Zechariah is told that
Elizabeth will become pregnant in her old age, he is told that he will be
filled with joy. And so there is joy not just about the coming of Jesus, but
there is also joy for the coming of John the Baptist, and so if John is the one
who prepares the way for the coming of Christ, is it possible that part of the
way that John does that is through the practice and proclamation of joy? John
doesn’t seem like the most joyful person in the world, as he is living an
ascetic life on the outskirts of society, but perhaps he too is filled with joy
and proclaims joy, just not in the ways that we typically imagine joy, because
we think of it as being happy. That someone who has joy is jumping up and down,
there are exuberant, high-spirited, cheerful and boisterous, they are, in fact,
joyful. But what if that’s not what it means to have joy, at least not from a
Christian perspective. What if, in fact, John is joyful the way that Mary is
joyful?
Because Mary’s song of response here, known as the
Magnificat, because in Latin the first word is magnify, from her saying “My
soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.” I’m always
struck by that statement, because she doesn’t say my body, magnifies the Lord.
She is not jumping for joy. But her soul magnifies God, her spirit rejoices,
because of what the Lord has done. She has joy in her soul, in her heart,
because of the glory of God, and the promises of God that will be fulfilled in
her and her son. God is her savior. That is she has to understand all of the
things that her pregnancy means in the real world, and all of the troubles she
will have to undergo, perhaps she even understands that Jesus will suffer and
die, and yet her soul still magnifies the lord. Nouwen said that a joyful
person is the one who talks about the sun on a cloudy day, a joyful person is
the one who sees the warmth in the midst of a snow storm, a joyful person is
the one who knows the light even in the midst of darkness. Because, he says,
joy is a choice that we get to make. Joy is a choice, and he says, it is a
choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our
refuge and our safety and that nothing can take God away from us”, not even
death.
That is the choice that Mary chooses to make. So she knows
that her soul magnifies the Lord because she knows that she is loved, beloved,
of God, and that God’s promises hold true for her, and for Elizabeth, and for
John and for her child yet to be born. She knows that the road will not be easy
because of it, in fact it might be more difficult because of the role she has
taken on, but she knows that God will be faithful. That God’s promises endure
forever, and that there is nothing which can separate her from the love of God.
She knows that joy is, in the words of Nouwen, the experience of knowing that
you are unconditionally loved. And she knows that joy does not mean that there
won’t be sorrow, or pain, or suffering, but that in a God-centered life that
those things can all exist together, because joy is about the presence of God in
our lives, which again means that it is a choice we can make, an outlook we can
choose, because we can always continue to be surprised by joy.
And so perhaps Mary didn’t know what she was going to do or say when she went to Elizabeth’s house that day, but that she was surprised by her own joy because of Elizabeth’s greeting for her, and John leaping for joy in her womb, because joy is contagious, just as hope is also contagious, and hope and joy are inherently linked. When the angels appear to the shepherds, they tell them to fear not for they bring them good news of great joy, for a savior has been born, the one who has come to redeem the world, to save the world, the one who demonstrates not just what God has done of the world and continues to do, but who demonstratives God’s great love and deliverance and forgiveness and righteousness and restoration. Joy is not about jumping around with enthusiasm, joy as we understand it is about knowing that we are loved by God, that we are never alone, and that God has and will redeem the world with peace and hope and love, and thus we can be joyous at all times, even when anxious of fearful or sorrowing or in pain, because it in the joy of the lord that we find our strength, and that is something we may choose this day and every day. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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