Practicing Joy, and a Belated Happy New Year
The Third Sunday in Advent, also called Gaudete Sunday, is awash in the pale pastel color of pink, a break in the month-long penitential purple in the first weeks of the new liturgical year. The focus of this middle-of-Advent day is joy, and the liturgical exhortation is to rejoice!
Deep into my middle years of life, and here now in the middle of this Advent season, I have learned that I have to practice joy consciously. It doesn’t come to me naturally, nor do I find it easy to do. I know myself well enough to know that I harbor a deep instinct in me that bristles when I hear the biblical exhortation to rejoice. I don't want to! You can’t make me! Yet, when I do actions that help me practice joy, I find them to be therapeutic and, thus, transformative.
That transformation tends to be almost imperceptible: quiet, persistent, and nonmagical and nondramatic. Rejoicing doesn’t mean drumming up some kind of deranged merriment in the midst of life’s bewildering difficulties. It’s not the plastic smile of niceness. The practice of joy looks life in the teeth, with courage and hope, and sinks its roots in something other than circumstances and its index of fluctuating feelings. Joy beautifully defies the clamor of life’s pain as the totality it appears and claims to be, and quietly strengthens us to imagine beyond, around, and through our alienated bewilderment.
The Luke 3 passage we heard read in church yesterday affirms that life’s pain and alienation is real and unmasks our collective temptation to use religion as an escape. John the Baptist issues a stinging rebuke to the crowds of people who trekked to the bank of the Jordan river to check out the revival scene he was hosting in the desert. The crowds came armored in common curiosity and fogged in with false securities.
Armored up and anesthetized, they are met with a hard slap of John the Baptist’s call to wake up and repent. Stop dabbling in religion! Immerse yourself in the active surrender of taking God seriously! Drop the secure superiority act as descendants of Abraham! If you have more than you need, give to those who have less. Practice contentment. Stop exploiting and harassing others for your own gain.
None of these actions saves. John makes certain everyone knows that he is not the Messiah they are looking for. But these actions prepare us for the Messiah's arrival for they help us loosen our instinctive, grasping grip of sleepy control we have on our own lives. These actions help open us up to a reality far larger than our imaginations can grasp -- the kingdom of God, which is unlike any other ordinary ruling power on earth.
Repentance and rejoicing seem to be as dynamically related as breath, insofar as this Lucan repentance passage was paired with a reading from Philippians 4, a Pauline passage exhorting us to rejoice:
“Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!” (Phil 4:4-5, MSG)
All month long in this season, the opening sentence I practice with my eyes, mind, and heart in the morning is:
"Therefore, stay awake -- for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning -- lest he come suddenly and find you asleep." (Mark 13:35-36)
The point of all this preparation isn't to feel cranked up with fearful anxiety, to which I’m prone, but to keep ourselves ready for the coming King, whose arrival is beyond my control or ability to perceive all by myself.
A couple of days ago, our family attended a holiday gathering at the chief of mission's residence, a stately mansion situated along the coast and used for official receptions. While it is technically the residence for the Chief of Mission, the Ambassador and his family haven’t lived there during their tenure here, which is now coming to an end. It's a beautiful building -- one of the American spoils of World War 2, a former Nazi officer’s house -- and surrounded by well-maintained grounds. The building needs serious renovations and updating, which will begin early next year. While my husband has attended receptions there in recent months, he wanted to be sure that the kids and I got to see it before it closed for renovations.
We had the privilege of meeting the house manager at the party. I peppered him with questions about the building and its furniture: Are there any secret tunnels or hidden stairs hidden behind bookcases? What's the story about that interesting roll-top desk here? He assured me that while there were no hidden features, or secret passages to other worlds, there was one desk tucked in an unused bedroom with a storied past at which a Nazi commanding officer signed death orders. The ignominious furniture wasn’t worth displaying or using.
While waiting for the current Ambassador to be confirmed, the house manager still had to keep the house and grounds ready for his arrival. He said that he "almost had to live in the building himself to keep it maintained and ready,” overseeing many crews that performed work at the residence. Even without anyone living there, just to keep it ready, it was a monumental effort. “You'd think you could just clean the place, close the door, and that would keep it ready enough for the next Amabassador's arrival, but no. It has to be cared for daily to keep it in readied condition." That conversation took on immense meaning in this Advent season.
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Belated Happy New Year greetings to you all! Advent announces the start of the new church year, and I find that it is a great season in which to begin a new thing with God, perhaps to "practice the scales of rejoicing." It’s a great season in which to refresh our habits of feeding on Scripture. I have long used this Bible reading chart to bubble off the passages I read throughout the year. It’s not a schedule, which works really well for me. You might love a schedule (keep reading). I have found, though, that holding a habit loosely and imperfectly ensures that I actually do it. If that’s true for you too, I highly recommend this method of capturing your bible reading!
Presently, I use this prayer and scripture guide, which is where I got that opening sentence, “Therefore stay awake . . ..” I love this guide too because it features reflection questions at the end of each season and easy month, which are powerful transformative tools as well.
Peace to you in this season, and bucketfuls of defiant joy!
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Current writing work:
a book review of Margaret Miles’s Beautiful Bodies: nunc et tunc.
an essay for Christianity Today about Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflecting again about my time at the Bonhoeffer-Haus
my dissertation writing, which is even more challenging in the holiday stretch of merriment and activity! Pray for me. I desperately want to practice regular faithful work in this task before me, and it is a daily struggle to practice emotional sobriety in it, which is closely related to practicing joy.