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Sermons at Saint Mary's
Christmas “Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her King.” This evening, I’m thinking about a little word. It’s a Christmas word. It’s a word rising up from the depths of life. The word is joy. It comes from the Old French joie. Joy is defined as that intense, ecstatic, exuberant happiness in our experience of life. And the biggest question for us tonight is simply this: is joy something we know? Is joy something we are experiencing? And by joy, I don’t mean physical comfort or ease. By joy, I don’t mean pleasure as this world defines it, as personal gratification, or a kind of free-floating, disconnected, warm, fuzzy buzz that accompanies our Christmas cheer. By joy, I mean instead what the French philosopher Simone Weil meant when she located joy in what is real, and what is real as located in what is hard and rough in life. By joy, I mean what I think the poets meant. Like Wordsworth, when he wrote: “With an eye made quiet by the power of knowing, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.” That’s what I mean: joy as the power to see into the life of things. This holy night, I think of joy in the way William Blake wrote about it: “He who binds himself to a joy, does the winged life destroy. But he who kisses joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise.” That’s as close as I get to experiencing joy : As a gift from eternity, not as a possession to hold on to for dear life. And to kiss joy as it flies. For joy flies, dear friends. It is like the wind. It sweeps down into the darkest, coldest, meanest recesses of human means and ends. It blows hard and strong past the most resistant fortresses of pain and misery. And on this night, it lights up a Bethlehem stable. On this night, it melts mountains and turns the heavens to fire. On this night, it comes knocking on the doors of our lost and lonely hearts. And friends, isn’t this the joy we desire? Isn’t this the joy we want desperately to feel in the depths of our souls? The way it is described in our Psalm, in which “light has sprung up for us, and joyful gladness fills our hearts.” I wonder. You know, in a few short weeks, I will be travelling to a place known as the City of Joy. Which is strange, because Calcutta is known to most people as a hellhole. But this is precisely where a little Albanian woman of peasant stock discerned her vocation. And in Calcutta, this solitary soul became the most brilliant star of a saint we have known in our lifetime. Despite the awful conditions the surrounded her, despite the abject misery that was her daily visitation, despite her battle with her own inner demons, Mother Theresa, you see, knew joy. And this is how she described it: “Joy is a prayer,” she said, “ Joy is strength. Joy is love. Joy is a net by which you can catch souls. God loves a cheerful giver. She gives most who gives with joy. The best way to show our gratitude to God and others is to accept everything with joy. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love. Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of Christ.” So, then, friends, let us sing Joy to the world this Christmas night. Let us our songs employ. While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains repeat the sounding sounding joy. Repeat the sounding joy. Repeat, repeat the sounding joy! Will you pray with me: King of all nations, Jesus Christ, only joy of every heart, come save your people. Give us joy, dear Lord. Lift our hearts and open them. Let joy empower us to see into the life of things. Let your incarnate love in the coming of Jesus stir and quicken us. Let us kiss joy as it flies, and let us live, this night, and all the days to come, truly live in eternity’s sunrise. top | home | site index |
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