Holiday Joy?
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HOLIDAY JOY?
The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Third Sunday of Advent
December 15, 2024
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything. (Philippians 4:4-6).
Last Friday afternoon – just two days ago – I realized that if the Waring family were ever to get our Christmas cards in the mail, I would need to purchase postage stamps. So I made my way through the Christmas pageant rehearsal that was underway in Tuttle Hall, and across 4th Avenue to the post office. The line was not long, and I was quickly at the counter making my order. I had calculated that to send a card to all of our Grace Church households I would need 300 stamps. The postal attendant pointed to a chart in front of me offering six different holiday options.
The first possibility was a stamp entitled “Holiday Joy,” and it depicted a hanging holiday ornament. The second, called “Winter Whimsy,” showed an art-deco snowflake. The third was Christmas, portrayed by a classical painting of the Madonna and Child – Mary and Jesus. Fourth was Hanukkah with a menorah. Fifth came a dancing family celebrating Kwanzaa. Finally, a stamp for the Muslim holy day, Eid, that breaks the Ramadan fast. “Which one do you want?” asked the attendant. I was not wearing my clerical collar and black shirt, so she could not have known that of the six, only one would suit my purposes. However, for a nanosecond my impish mind thought what fun it would be to mail our card with a completely unexpected stamp on it, and see if anyone noticed. Of course, I chose the Christmas stamp, meaning that Mary and Jesus are coming your way.
The attendant thoroughly counted out the appropriate number of pages with the stamps on them. Then, to be safe, she counted them again. As she was ringing me up, she said, “That’s the biggest order of Christmas stamps I’ve had all year. People look at this one and say, ‘it’s too religious.’ They don’t want it because it’s too religious.” I smiled and replied, “Well, they are missing out on all the cool stuff.” She agreed, and wished me a merry Christmas.
Which stamp do you think St. Paul would have chosen? We can probably rule out Winter Whimsy, given the climate of Palestine. Eid would be unknown to Paul, as Islam was still 600 years away from being a thing. Kwanzaa was even further off in the future. But what about Hanukkah? Paul identified as Jewish to the end, and Christmas as a Christian feast didn’t appear on the calendar until the 4th century. Nothing Grinchy about it, but Paul was not wishing anyone a Merry Christmas. A case could be made that he would have chosen Holiday Joy. Toward the end of his life Paul wrote a letter to the Christians in the city of Philippi. The letter contains some of the most familiar verses in the Bible, and the selection we heard today is all about joy: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything … And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Rejoice in the Lord, always. “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!” Today is the Third Sunday of Advent, otherwise known to liturgical nerds like me as Gaudete – Latin for Rejoice. We light the pink candle of the Advent wreath, and our challenge is to experience and express Holiday Joy. How goes it for you? Are you feeling joyful yet? Are you experiencing the peace of God which surpasses all understanding? Or are you worried about how you will do all the things you ought to do over the next nine days? Or did you give up chasing holiday joy years ago? My guess is that St. Paul would have given a rousing two-cheers to the Holiday Joy stamp. Two cheers? Why not three? Paul would have held back on the third cheer because Holiday Joy does not rest on a firm foundation. The joy that Paul was writing about is not a baseless thing. It is always grounded “in the Lord.” Rejoice in the Lord, is what he wrote. Don’t overlook the importance of those three little words. Rejoice in the Lord, because of what God in Christ has done for us and our salvation. Rejoice in the Lord, because the Lord is near. Rejoice in the Lord, because God can and will at any time make his presence known.
Perhaps you are thinking that I am suddenly sounding too religious. Perhaps you are thinking that it was easy for Paul to say, Rejoice in the Lord. After all, he was a saint. Life in Christ came easily for him. Actually, when Paul wrote to the Philippians he was not in a place of ease and contentment. He was confined to a Roman prison where he was awaiting trial. The charges against him had been deliberately orchestrated in Jerusalem. But rather than taking his chances with the corrupt court there, Paul appealed to Caesar in Rome. He was sent off to Rome and shipwrecked on the way. Paul was a man who cared little for creature comforts, but shipwrecks and prison had to make life difficult even for him. Yet still he was able to say, Rejoice in the Lord. Paul’s witness tells me that the joy in the Lord he speaks of transcends our present, outward circumstances. It is not controlled by externals. It doesn’t rise and fall with how well or how badly your day or your life happens to be going. You can have the peace of God and joy in the Lord no matter what the circumstances of your life – no matter how much you have, no matter how little you have, no matter who is in your life, no matter who isn’t in your life.
Joy in the Lord transcends not only a difficult present, but also a painful past. People find it difficult to rejoice because they look back with regret on the sins and offenses of their youth. Paul, too, had a past that he easily could have looked back upon with regret, and stewed over for the rest of his life. Prior to his Damascus Road conversion, Paul was a zealous Pharisee involved in the hunting down and rooting out of Christians. He approved of and presided over the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Imagine the potential for such a brutal crime to burden Paul’s conscience in his later years. Imagine the mantle of guilt he could have carried on his shoulders. Yet still he was able to say, Rejoice in the Lord always. Paul’s witness tells me something else: that joy in the Lord is able to transcend the sins and the regrets and the heartaches of anyone’s past. What a shame it is that often we continue to condemn ourselves long after God Himself has forgiven us. God’s grace is this: no matter where you have been or what you have done, you are not exempt eternally from experiencing God’s peace and joy.
If we are to take Paul seriously, then we must conclude something more: that joy in the Lord is able to transcend not just our present circumstances and our guilty past, but even the prospect of a bleak future. Paul was not a young man when he wrote to the Philippians. With his trial delayed indefinitely, he must have suspected that he would never leave his prison. To the best of our knowledge, he never did. Yet he was able to say, Rejoice in the Lord. Paul’s witness tells me that joy in the Lord is available to us no matter how short, or grim, or uncertain our future is shaping up to be. So do not worry about anything, is what Paul went on to say. The Lord is near, he added. Indeed, a quiet trust in the proposition of God’s near presence was the foundation of St. Paul’s joy. An awareness of God’s close companionship was why he could rejoice in the Lord always, and urge us to do the same.
Ah, but there’s that problem again of being too religious. Would you rather have Holiday Joy? If so, you don’t need to worry. Let me offer you two words for Advent, based on today’s readings, to help you rejoice in the Lord without being overly religious. The first word sounds religious, but turns out to be not so much in the end. The first word is repent. Did you hear in the Gospel reading (Luke 3:7-18) how John the Baptist angrily charged the people to bear fruit that is worthy of repentance? Person after person came up to him and asked, “What should I do?” Once John got past the bluster of his unquenchable fire and winnowing fork, his reply bore little resemblance to the strictly religious ideas we have of what it means to repent. Instead of telling the people to go make groveling apologies or burn down their whole lives, John told them to make simple, concrete changes. Those with two coats can share with those who have none. Those who have food can do the same. Tax collectors and soldiers can go about their business honestly. What do you think John would have told you? Repentance means turn – turn to a better thing. We don’t like to hear it, but the truth is this: repentance is a prelude to rejoicing.
The second word is one that we have a difficult time translating into English. In Paul’s letter today it has been rendered as gentleness, as in Let your gentleness be known to everyone. Other versions of the Bible translate the word as moderation, softness, kindness, reasonableness, and mildness. Sad to say, moderate and gentle are not adjectives that would describe our society these days. Instead of moderation we think joy is to be found in the uncompromising extremes. Instead of gentleness, we seek to find joy in competitiveness, or toughness. Instead of kindness, we think meanness will lead to rejoicing. Guess what? It’s not working! These attitudes are poisonous to joy. But imagine how our society, and how your life and mine would be different if we each sought to outdo one another in works of kindness and gentleness. We would find ourselves walking in the footsteps of Jesus, along the pathway to God’s peace and joy. Let your gentleness be known to all, so that by your very presence, they suspect the Lord is near.
If St. Paul remains too remote and religious a figure for you, you might consider the words and witness of someone more contemporary. Alexei Navalny was the Russian opposition leader who opposed Putin’s corrupt regime, gave up his freedom, and died in prison earlier this year. Recently, Navalny’s memoirs have been published posthumously. The book is entitled Patriot, and it consists of diary entries and reflections on his three years of imprisonment. His notebooks had to be smuggled out of the prison or they never would have seen the light of day. Navalny’s words are pertinent for Advent, and the anxious times in which we live. He can help us prepare the way of the Lord, and make straight in our souls a highway for God. He writes:
I have always thought and said openly that being a believer makes it easier to live your life and, to an even greater extent, engage in opposition politics. Faith makes life simpler. Ask yourself whether you are a Christian in your heart of hearts. It is not essential for you to believe that some old guys in the desert once lived to be eight-hundred years old, or that the sea was literally parted in front of someone. But are you a disciple of the religion whose founder sacrificed himself for others, paying the price for their sins? Do you believe in the immortality of the soul and the rest of that cool stuff? If you can honestly answer yes, what is there left for you to worry about? Don’t worry about the morrow, because the morrow is perfectly capable of taking care of itself.
My job is to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else. They won’t let me down and will sort out all my headaches. As they say in prison here: they will take my punches for me.[1]
Dear People of Grace Church: good old Jesus, along with Mary, and the rest of his family are coming to you. Over the next nine days, I do wish you Holiday Joy. But even more, I pray that God gives you the grace to Rejoice in the Lord always, and to let your gentleness be known to everyone. Remember, the Lord is near, so do not worry about anything. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
[1] The excerpt is found in “Prison Diaries,” The New Yorker, October 21, 2024, p. 40.