Joy to the World

Sermon

On Friday morning, I was out walking the dog. It was not the most inspiring of days, rather gray and dull with no hint of joy in the forecast. But this particular morning the dog decided to turn right, which meant we got to walk by our neighbor’s poetry post. He had posted this little gem of a poem by William Carlos Williams, “Winter Trees.”

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

I took special note of the poem because forefront in my mind as I walked the dog on Friday morning was the growing concern that I would be preaching Sunday morning on this lovely text from the prophet Isaiah about joy and trees clapping their hands.

Isn’t it interesting, the way we attach nature, the natural world, to things like our feelings and our faith? Back in the days of Isaiah, and even before, authors of those ancient texts had few metaphors at their disposal. To say someone was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound would have sounded like gibberish.

But to have trees clap their hands – now that could make some sense. Imagine what might make a tree glad – when those leaves so patiently nurtured in the cold winter months finally burst forth, or when the dropping of the acorns implies that life will go on even after this particular tree is eroding back into the soil. Do the nests of crows make trees glad, or the way squirrels use them as their playground?

Does wind make a tree glad, a chance to let loose those dead branches the way we might slough off dead skin with the loofah? Do the rains make trees clap for joy? Perhaps we will never know, but we can always imagine.

Still, it is a beautiful image, mountains and hills bursting into song, trees clapping their hands, and Isaiah uses the world around him to convey this sense of what is about to come – a return, a homecoming, the promise of grace fulfilled. Those people who walked in darkness have received their great light, and nature has too, for God is fulfilling the promise not to be mad forever, not to punish the people indefinitely, but to bring them home. You might hear echoes of the Exodus story here. Or you might know that when God allowed the people to go into exile, when God allowed the destruction of Jerusalem and the lands all around the great city, briers and thorns overtook what was cultivated and habitable.

But now – imagine this: a flat, smooth road stretching from Babylon to Jerusalem, and the people in a great caravan upon it, and nature cheering them on with song and applause. It is glorious. One might even say joyful.

I probably spend more time than the average person wondering about this joy thing, so I found comfort in these words of novelist Zadie Smith. 

“It might be useful to distinguish between pleasure and joy. But maybe everybody does this very easily, all the time, and only I am confused. A lot of people seem to feel that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure, arrived at by the same road—you simply have to go a little further down the track. That has not been my experience. And if you asked me if I wanted more joyful experiences in my life, I wouldn’t be at all sure I did, exactly because it proves such a difficult emotion to manage. It’s not at all obvious to me how we should make an accommodation between joy and the rest of our everyday lives.” (Zadie Smith, “Joy” in New York Review of Books, January 10, 2013)

So joy is not the same thing as pleasure, nor is it pleasure that been hyped up. Receiving an unexpected and delightful gift at Christmas is a pleasure; being under the same roof with your most beloveds might be joy. Perhaps pleasures feed the heart, and joy feeds the soul. 

I wonder what joy you have experienced this year. I know that some of you welcomed new children into your lives, and that is a joy that carries some heft with it. Some of you have come through serious health crises, and there is joy in treatments being done and healing happening in ways that are almost miracles. There are joys that come from tiny things too – Jesus talks about finding a stray sheep, or a woman sweeping and sweeping and sweeping until she finds that coin she thought she had lost.

Once Gregg’s watch went missing for a year, and when we finally found it on top of the refrigerator, there was much rejoicing in our house. And a few laughs too. And a promise to clean the top of the fridge more often.

Is there a common denominator to these experiences of joy? Maybe…. 

This is what I know. That while we might be able to create conditions that could lead to joy, making joy happen is beyond our ability. Joy is a gift to be received, not a feeling to manufacture.

This is what I know. That while we can know personal joy, joy is best experienced in community. One lone pine doesn’t clap its hands – the whole forest joins in, along with the foothills and the whole range of mountains.

This is what I know. That joy often shows up when we least expect it, like the watch on top of the refrigerator that was there the whole time. Maybe joy is always present, but we may or may not be able to recognize it. I might wonder about that for a while too.

All of this has been leading up to the main thing that I wanted to say today, so if you’ve stuck with me thus far, thank you, and here we go.

I hope you know joy in the coming year. This last Sunday of the year, and this last Sunday of the decade, we look ahead at what might await us. We know some things that will – a presidential election that will likely bring out some of the angels of our worst nature; rain and then daffodils and daphne; our greatest joys and sorrows – births and deaths and new love.

Since joy comes unbidden and since it is beyond us to create it in full, maybe the best thing to do, as this year comes to a close, is to consider who in our lives, or who in our world, needs joy in the coming year. And though we cannot create joy for them, perhaps we can do something to ease the burdens enough so that if joy shows up, they have the capacity to receive.

Who might that be?

It might be a group of people – families in Syria who face an agonizing decision of staying and risking bombs and debris and hunger or going and facing the trudge of the refugee to a place where they might receive welcome but more likely will receive more hate and more hunger. The world’s refugees might need a sighting of joy.

In the last few years social scientists have noted that there is a rise in depression among adolescents. So often I say I am glad I did not come of age with social media, although coming of age in the late ’70s and early ’80s had its own challenges. Social scientists note that depression among adolescents has risen with every passing year of social media.

But to wish joy for the teenagers you know – they might need a sighting of joy. The joy of laughing yourself silly with friends; the joy of staying up late and going out in pajamas and seeing a sky full of stars; the joy of knowing that the people who love you don’t care about the number of likes you have – they just love you, as you are that very moment. 

And the weary – oh, what joy might do for them. In our midst are people who are weary of persistent racism; people who are weary of looking for meaningful work that will pay a living wage; people who are so very weary of ugly politics. If weariness is a thick fog that seems impenetrable, then joy is like a strong breeze that blows that away and makes the world seen again. So joy for the weary, too.

There may be others on your list, and you might consider that, as you consider new year’s resolutions, or as you consider how to celebrate on December 31. 

Because if there is a common denominator to joy, I think it is in the plural. Joy comes when we get outside of ourselves, when we consider the welfare of another, when we reach out to a friend or a stranger and our world expands and the joy that was always there becomes visible. 

The poet David Whyte says this. “…joy is the act of giving ourselves away before we need to or are asked to, joy is practiced generosity. …To feel a full and untrammeled joy is to have become fully generous.” (Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)

Here in church, we might say that we receive joy because of God’s generosity to us in the person of Jesus, who indeed gave himself away without being asked to. When we leaf through the ancient pages of scripture, we see the generosity of God throughout: a God generous with power given to the people as they left slavery and received freedom; a God generous with mercy given to the people who had been so unfaithful, who never stopped being loved; a God generous with God’s own self in the person of Jesus.

So those are my wonderings about joy today, about the generousness inherent in joy, and the serendipity of joy, and really, the wonder of joy.

May all the trees clap their hands, indeed.