The Preaching of Joy
This Festival of Preachers’ theme this year is The Joy of Preaching and I started to wonder about the word joy and what it might be all about… I started also to wonder how the joy of preaching, already assumed in the theme, is inextricably connected to the preaching of joy. There is no way of having joy to preach if we don’t know what the preaching of joy might mean. If that is so, how do we preach joy or about joy? How do we, bearers of this Christian joy, go about the preaching of joy? How do you preach joy in your congregation brother and sister? How do you correlate the joyful gospel of Jesus Christ with the life of your people and the life of the world? How do we intersect our world, our Christian faith and a Christian understanding of joy?
Philippians 4:1-10
1Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.
2 I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. 3Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.
4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
10 I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned for me, but had no opportunity to show it.
“Rejoice in the Lord always” says Paul; “again I will say, Rejoice.“
This Festival of Preachers’ theme this year is The Joy of Preaching and I started to wonder about the word joy and what it might be all about… I started also to wonder how the joy of preaching, already assumed in the theme, is inextricably connected to the preaching of joy. There is no way of having joy to preach if we don’t know what the preaching of joy might mean. If that is so, how do we preach joy or about joy? How do we, bearers of this Christian joy, go about the preaching of joy? How do you preach joy in your congregation brother and sister? How do you correlate the joyful gospel of Jesus Christ with the life of your people and the life of the world? How do we intersect our world, our Christian faith and a Christian understanding of joy?
We most often than not, preach from this space, a chapel, a sanctuary, a worship space, where our lives are interspersed with the lives of our families and the lives of the families of around the world, where God’s story is deeply connected with our own stories. From this place we give and gain liturgical lenses to see the world, we give and gain a certain comprehension to try to figure out without much success the mysteries of God and the mysteries of the world. Here, at our church sanctuaries we gain tools to engage critically with the movements of the world and see how people, communities, parties, business, religions, gestures, feelings, emotions, prayers, songs and confessions affect the ways we live in our world.
Don Saliers says the following: “How we pray and worship is linked to how we live – to our desires, emotions, attitudes, beliefs and actions… the double focus of liturgy,” he says, is “the glorification of God and the sanctification of human beings.”
From this space, how do we preach joy in this mixture of glorifying God and sanctifying human beings? According to Paul, to rejoice is a demand… He says: “Rejoice in God always, again I say rejoice.” A gospel demand rather than a simply instruction that we all must wrestle with.
How can we preach about this “rejoice” in a world of disasters, calamities, flooding like what Nashville saw few days ago, earthquakes, oil licks like the one on the Gulf of Mexico and where billions of people are living with less than 1 dollar per day. How do we hold the GOOD news of the gospel against a globalized world of daily bad news? How do we proclaim the life of the resurrected Jesus Christ in a world where dead people are pilling up? How do we engage God’s promise of the regeneration of creation when the basic resources of the planet are getting completely depleted? How do we gain the lightness of joy against the heavy burdens of the world?
Well, starting from the United States, how do we undo the superseding of the gospel notion of joy with the North American entitlement of the “pursuit of happiness” at any cost?[1]
When the pursuit of happiness is in the constitution of a country, happiness becomes a “constitutional act,” and it can allow us to go after anything, and it becomes a matter of law, of right, easily connected to God’s promises to us. We got to watch out brothers and sisters, there is a sensible differentiation of the joy as described by the New Testament and the happiness we see in our society today.
Happiness, as mostly anything in this country, has become a private matter, an individual pursuit. We approach everything from our individual likes and dislikes and I think that this individualism is one of the worst threats to our churches, since this gospel is about communal life. However, here we frame everything in individual terms. The individualization of life grows like a virus in this country and leads to the demonizing of any idea that hints on common good: distributing the wealth is communism, sharing resources is socialism, feeding of the hungry is radicalism. Just this week I heard somebody saying: justice is biblical, social justice is not. What is that?
NONETHELESS, brothers and sisters, the idea of joy as we find it in the gospels is a communal endeavor, a collective accomplishment, a social pursuit. Christianity offers only a communal notion of joy: if the foot is ill the whole body is ill. If one is happy everybody is happy. If we were to live under this Christian social notion of communal happiness, the destitution of the poor and the lame and the orphan and the widow should put this nation on its knees, the restriction of anyone from the Eucharistic table should make us to weep, the limitation of any individual from health insurance should make us put ashes on our heads, the fearful hatred against immigrants should make us lament day and night.
Let us look at the Biblical text. Paul is filled with joy for his people, joy and also admiration for them, two main sources where love springs. Paul starts by saying: “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.” He stretches a family bond and a deep sense of belonging: “MY” brothers and sisters, my “BROTHERS AND SISTERS…” this way of speaking already defines the ways we should relate. Then, as a result of that bond and sense of belonging Paul goes on to say that these brothers and sisters of his are his joy and crown. If we look attentively we see that the cause for his joy is not in his own attempts to find his own joy but in the lives of his brothers and sisters. “YOU are my joy and crown” he says, in YOU are my sense of happiness and my joy in YOU is such that I feel like a king wearing a crown walking on the streets.
Based on this bond and this admiration and pride, Paul goes on to say that there are two sisters among them that need better care so this mutual joy can continue. The commitment to these sisters is bigger that anything else. There is a covenant between them that supports the notion of communal joy. Paul calls them CO-WORKERS in the joyful gospel of Jesus Christ and this joint work we end up having all our names in the book of life. That book, the book of God’s love is the book of our shared humanity, a a source of our common joy.
Paul is reminding them of this deepest bond in God and out of that bond he says: verse 4:
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.“ It is IN God the Holy and Merciful One that we must rejoice. Not in our pride, not in our personal belongings, not in our particular awards, not in our personal accomplishments, not in our own capabilities, not in what we can do individually, but IN God who effects everything else in our lives. This sense of joy has the affect of helping us to sense that “The Lord is near” as Paul says. Yes, brothers and sisters, God our joyful creator is near and as a circling of joy and God’s presence, we keep moving: God is near, so let us rejoice! And as we rejoice, we can sense, through any sense, that God is near!
It is God’s presence in and through our brotherhood, sisterhood and communities that can sustain our happiness and let us “not worry about anything,” as Paul says. It is the weaving of God’s presence issuing the peace of Christ in our hearts, along with the continuous love of our brothers and sisters that give shape to joy. Again, joy is not a private gift or an individual task, but rather, a collective task, a communal gift, a shared blessing given by God to and through us all.
How then can we, a la Nietzsche, affect a powerful trans-valuation of joy might mean in a world that keeps on pushing joy to the limits of the individual, to the glamorous life of Holywood, to the dismantling of the social networking, and to the sole individual pursuit of happiness? How can we go against the tide and preach that Christian joy is not the pursuit of the American dream or the achievement of prosperity but rather, the pursuit of the common Christian dream that makes us all search for a shared notion of joy?
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.“ SING
In order to live out this counter cultural, trans-valued gospel of Christ we need to work! Work hard! Work constantly brother and sisters. But wait! The work I am talking about here is not the capitalistic work, the work of the economic market that intends to create and accumulate capital for few people. Nowadays we have about 400 families around the globe accumulating most of the wealth of the planet. The work I am talking here is a collective work for all, but a work without proper resolution, without any gain, without individual profit. The work I am talking about is almost like the reverse of capitalistic work, because it is a kind of work that we lose what we have, that we give without receiving back, without charge, or expectation. A work that somewhat resembles the teaching of love in Christianity.
To love God and preach joy in this world reminds me of the work of Sisyphus in the Myth of Sisyphus. Do you know the myth of Sisyphus? You can see it happening here.
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king punished in Tartarus that was cursed to push a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. He had to repeat this act throughout eternity. The word sisyphean means “endless and unavailing, as labor or a task.”
SING REJOICE
As we move to work for this gospel, for this common joy, we end up doing endless and unavailing work. However, this is our task brothers and sisters, to work ceaselessly in God’s name as we keep creating the world, keep loving the world the way God does, keep announcing that the love of God is bound to a promise of joy, a joy that we find in each other through the Holy Spirit of God who gives us the peace of Jesus Christ.
The world out there is waiting to be created, a creation where ethics is interspersed with prayers, testimonies with protests, praises with jobs for justice, spiritual renderings with political actions and theological reasoning. As Don Saliers says: “Questions concerning Christian ethics and the shape of the moral life cannot be adequately understood apart from thinking about how Christians worship. Communal praise, thanksgiving, remembrance, confession and intercession are part of the matrix which forms intention and action.”
The preaching of joy vis-à-vis the creation of the world happens right here too! LEITOURGIA, is the work of the people.
Mary Collins says that “The word leitourgia is a secular term concerned with the work of the people. It was used to mean the service of the people in the city, be it political, recreational or civic in general. However, leitourgia in biblical discourse was explicitly religious activity; it did not retain the broader reference to wider forms of service of public order…” 19
Our liturgical work, the work of the people of God is to be God’s co-creators of the world, co-workers in the world of God as Paul mentioned. This is the work of the people of God, to envision liturgically a new world here and elsewhere, to honor God and one another, here and elsewhere, to re-create the world in our chancels and on the streets, without disconnection and without ceasing.
SING
Thus, the Sisyphean work of rolling up the ball endlessly to the mountain is very close to the liturgical work of the people of God. Every time we worship we create a new world to come just to have it vanish right afterwards. Liturgy is a vanishing act, but an act that remains somewhere else, inside of us, in the midst of our debris, our half dreams, our most desperate hopes, our most scary fears and our deepest sense of inappropriateness. The vanishing act of leitourgia becomes the weight of our life and the structure of our beliefs. Leitourgia is what gives breath to our churches, our institutions, and our people.
Thus, the liturgical vanishing act/Sisiphean work we need to do together has also to do with this constant preaching of joy, a joy unattainable by the measures of the world, unreachable by the values of things we have or want to have, and unknown by those who associate it only with individual pursuit.
The Sisyphean work of preaching this ridiculous gospel and this out-of-fashion notion of communal joy is always an anticipation that something that might happen. As we roll up the ball, there is a sense of anticipation of what might be coming and how that will change our lives forever. In this process, a tension is always in the air. Is it really possible? Is it really coming? Is it going to happen this time? Or is the ball going to fall flat again? As we live with this anticipation and in this tension, this frustration and this hope to believe, this anxiety of trust and the frustration of our unavailing work, something CAN happen and this something is the work of the Spirit of God who breaks this reality open in order for the joy of Jesus Christ to appear and to be lived somehow, somewhere in the lives of our communities.
The liturgical vanishing act of our Sisyphean work of preaching joy is about facing the meaninglessness of life and the absurdities that life entails. Once we face the bottom of our existence, we crash into the depth of our darkness, then we find ways to cling to this very fragile rope of life and say, “yes, death is all around us but we will trust God that life is still possible, once again!” Once we learn how hard it is to live, then we find ways to cling again and again to this very fragile line of life and say, “yes, I will rejoice because there is something else to it that was given to me by God as a gift and must care for it. Something lived by my brothers and sisters who are out there with me no matter what…”
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say…
The Sisyphean work of preaching joy is about learning what sadness is all about, about sometimes finding our way to heaven through the way of hell.
The Sisyphean work of preaching joy is about doing this unavailing non capitalistic, unprofitable work that re-creates, re-shapes and re-configure the world for all.
The Sisyphean work of preaching joy is a work for the future, preparing the way for the generations who are coming after us.
The Sisyphean work of preaching joy is putting together Sunday after Sunday, the vanishing act of our leitourgia so that our people will know how to walk in this scary world and change it!
The Sisyphean work of preaching joy resembles Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, moving forward but looking to the past, gaining awareness of the disasters of history so that we won’t repeat them again.
The Sisyphean work is very close to the work of the prophets in the Hebrew Scripture who “Instead of dealing with timeless issues of being and becoming, of matter and form, of definitions and demonstrations, the prophet is thrown into orations about widows and orphans, about the corruption of the market place… taking us to the slums.[2]
Like Sisyphus and the prophet, we have no choice brothers and sisters, we must preach this common joy in collaboration with one another, establishing a “platform for relations.”[3] To roll the ball up and again is the only way for him and for her people to survive in this desolated world with few sparks of God’s glory. Because like Paul said, we are concerned with each other, and with God’s world, we will do it again and again for the sake of God’s children and God’s creation… through prayers, through singing, through the celebration of the sacraments, and by engaging with the poor.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say rejoice.”
SING
At the end, Paul gives us a sense of direction without a proper end as we do our Sisyphean task:
“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you. I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned for me, but had no opportunity to show it.”
As we move the ball up the mountain again and again we will try to think about these things and continue to rejoice in God and each other.
We will roll the ball up and again for God’s glory.
We will roll the ball up and again for the sake of each other, because we are not only concerned with each other but because we can’t live without each other. My happiness is in you, your happiness is in me.
Thus, I will roll the ball up and again without ceasing because of you…
And you will roll the ball up and again without ceasing because of me….
And together, we will re-create God’s world
And we will be able to say to the world:
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say…
GET THE LUNCH BOX AND START EUCHARIST
[1] “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
[2] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets.
[3] By Erin manning, Relationscapes, Movement, Art and Philosophy.
What you have captured here is what all who are called to be Ministers of the Word and Sacrament are to remember each week as they sit down to pen another sermon. Despair in the world and in the hearts of each member of the congregation. But, Joy is real in the world as well, and my prayer is that when the love of Christ and the Grace of God and the Communion/Fellowship of the Holy Spirit is proclaimed through God’s Word, that then Joy may be truly alive and sent forth in motion in the world, but also transformed into Hope. Hope that is poured into our hearts and set us free to pursue the great ends of the church. Thank you for your message.