To be honest, when I was tasked with preaching about the “good news of great joy” this Christmas, I had to fight back against feelings of indifference. It’s been a bit of a tough year for me personally – beautiful, but tough nonetheless – and my heart hurts for many friends near and far who have been through unspeakable hardship this year as well. If I’m being real, I just wasn’t quite feeling the joy this season - which is why I knew I was in the perfect position to share some truth about what joy is, and what it isn’t. Here's what I've come up with. :)
Joy is a verb. “To joy” would definitely sound strange if you used it in a sentence today, but it gets at the heart of the joy concept better than our typical language around the word. People used to express this all the time with the word ‘rejoice,’ but sadly, that’s not generally a word we use anymore.
The point being: joy is less a feeling that happens to us (though sometimes it can be that) and more a decision that we make about an outlook or attitude that we are going to choose. In Luke’s story we read about a young woman (likely a teenager) named Mary, to whom an angel appears and shares some huge news: she is going to supernaturally become pregnant and give birth to the Messiah, the Savior that her people have been waiting for since the beginning of time. Mary is astounded, elated, and replies with surrender: “I am the Lord’s servant; may it be to me just as you have said” (Luke 1: 38). What I imagine happens next are some moments of Mary returning to reality after having this incredible encounter with God. If you’re ever had your own mountaintop experience with God, you know what I mean. You’re left wondering, “how do I live my life after what I’ve just seen and heard?" For Mary, this would have been a tough reckoning. She’s been given the most incredible news, no doubt – but it also meant for Mary that a fair amount of danger, hardship, and pain were about to change the world as she knew it. To be clear, for an unwed pregnant teenager, there was no place in Jewish society. In fact, it would have even been sanctioned by the law and leaders for her to be stoned to death for being pregnant outside of marriage. As women in that day also had no rights to buy, sell, own property, read, or write, they were dependent upon their husbands – a dream that would have been shattered for a girl like Mary who had suddenly become pregnant. She would never be married. And, that’s not to mention the shame and guilt that would have plagued the rest of her life in a small, backwoods town like Nazareth. Barring a miracle, Mary’s life was over. She runs away (for 3 months) to her aunt Elizabeth’s house to try and reckon with what her life would become.
This is why, if I was a betting person, I wouldn’t have bet that Mary’s next words in the Scripture are a song of joy. But they are. Mary sings a ‘song’ of joy, explaining the upside down, humble way that God is going to enact His Kingdom and save the world (the same story that God’s people had been telling for thousands of years). “And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name” (Luke 1:46-49).
In the face of her now dangerous and uncertain future, Mary chooses to rejoice. And although I’m sure that she did feel happy and excited for the future at times, I’m betting that her decision to rejoice did not come easily. But Mary would have grown up hearing the stories of her people, and rejoicing is what God’s people have done throughout history – they chose to rejoice even in situations that didn’t make sense, because they trusted that God was faithful. We read of Israel rejoicing when they come to the wilderness, rejoicing in exile, rejoicing through lament Psalms, and at other very seemingly weird times. Throughout the biblical story, joy seems to be an attitude that God’s people choose to adopt despite their circumstances because they know their God will be with them and carry them through. God’s people have a history of rejoicing, and not because everything always went their way! Israel’s story is quite the opposite – marked by pain and suffering, really. But they continue to rejoice in the Lord. Joy seems to be a choice, one that Paul emphatically calls us to make: “Rejoice in the Lord, always; again I’ll say it – rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4).
Joy is not a platitude.
But let’s just pause and be honest - just because we read of others choosing joy in tough times doesn’t necessarily make it any easier for me to do. Choosing joy can be extremely difficult. For many of us, joy does not come easily today. And it’s for those of us that I would say -
Joy is not a platitude.
It’s not a bumper sticker.
It’s not a one-liner.
It’s not a painted-on face.
Joy is hard work.
Sometimes I feel that the Church doesn’t know how to do the hard work of choosing joy; rather, we stuff all of our other emotions down somewhere inside and simply decide to “turn that frown upside down.”
That is not choosing joy.
I think perhaps what we’ve done in the Church is perpetuated this idea of ignoring our pain and the pain of others in the name of “rejoicing.” We say things like -
“God’s in control!”
“Everything happens for a reason!”
“God doesn’t give us any more than we can handle!”
But biblical joy does not ignore the pain and the suffering of the world, but gets down in it, sees it, feels it, cries out to God, and then makes a choice anyway.
Joy is not a button we push, or a wish we make, and then things are automatically all good in our world. This does not seem to be what Mary is doing in this story nor is it the narrative of joy in the Scriptures. Christians can have joy not because we ignore the pain and brokenness of the world, but because we feel it, engage it, and know that God is with us in it.
The world that we’ve inherited is the same the world that the angels came to many years ago announcing good news of great joy. I imagine the shepherds in their fields looking around thinking, “Great joy? Good news? Have they seen the world we live in?”
It was in that world, engulfed in oppression, slavery, patriarchy, injustice, and hunger (much like ours) that angels show up in a field to some dirty shepherds and proclaim that the good news is in fact for this messy world, not some other perfect one. And they’ll know it’s real because they’ll find a baby – the Savior of the world - lying in a grimy feeding trough in the middle of nowhere. The good news of great joy has entered the very real mess of our world.
It was good news then, and it’s still good news now.
God does not ignore the pain of His people, but came down to the mess to share in it and redeem it. If the Church is going to actually be able to be carriers of good news and joy to the world, we can’t ignore the pain and mess of the world either. We must engage it, as God did and does.
Joy is available now.
It's true then, that joy is not determined by our current struggles, but by our future destiny. The future that believers in Jesus look forward to - when there is no more pain and “God’s dwelling is now with His people” (Revelation 21). We look ahead to that world where peace reigns and Earth has received her King, so the song goes! So, when I go through something difficult now, I can still have joy because I’m looking ahead to someday reality.
But on the other hand, joy can only ever be experienced right now. Think about it. The only moment I have to experience is this current moment.
This present time.
Right now.
I don’t have future moments with me at this moment.
Thus, if we are always waiting for the day when there is no more struggle to experience joy,
we are going to miss it.
I can have joy right now because God is with me now in my struggle.
Practically, I think sometimes we miss joy because we don’t know how to slow down and be in the present moment with God. This is the lifelong challenge of the believer: slowing down to notice God. We’re always hurrying, always on to the next thing. I think God wants to give us joy if only we would slow down enough and quiet ourselves enough to experience it.
I feel the tug of this challenge in my own life regularly. Lately, I’ve noticed it at bedtime with my toddler. Since she moved to a floor bed, I’ve gotten into the bad habit of snuggling her to sleep in her bed. I have a love-hate relationship with this routine, as it sometimes takes her awhile to settle down and fall asleep. I flip flop between two attitudes: one of hurry and one of joy.
My hurried inner voice often sounds like: “okay babe, go to sleep! I have 247 things on my to-do list and I need to fit my entire adult life into these two hours before I go to bed. Close your eyes and hurry it along, girly!”
My joyful inner voice, however, has no concept of any time other than the one I’m in presently and will never get back.
It sounds more like, “This is the new greatest moment of my life. She will never be this little again. God, thank you so much for this little life and these sweet days with her.”
There’s so much joy to be experienced and taken hold of in our ordinary days – if only we would slow down enough to be able to choose it.
Joy is a choice, but it is also a gift.
Unfortunately, joy is not something we can just “add to cart” on Amazon or wish upon a star for more of. Joy is a choice, yes, but joy is also a gift from God – something He cultivates in us over a lifetime of being renewed and transformed by Him. More specifically, joy is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5), which means that joy is a natural byproduct of spending time with God’s Spirit. It’s not complicated – you become like who you hang around. Our God is a god of joy, the Psalms say: “in your presence God there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).
The more we become like Jesus through our lives, the easier it becomes to do the work of choosing joy. Joy is a gift that God develops in us day by day, and we choose to exercise it day by day as well.
We choose to slow down and notice God and make space for joy, so that when the bad days, the hardships, danger, and misunderstandings come our way – we hope that we would be able to rejoice, like Mary, and take on our God-given calling with joy.
When we choose joy, we proclaim a drastic alternative way of living to the world around us. A different kind of life - a joy-filled life - is available to us right now through Jesus. May we take hold of it. And may the joy of Jesus permeate our lives and spread and grow through the world. Let Earth receive Her King.
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