The Promise of Joy

Sunday, December 15, 2024 – Zephaniah 3:14-20, Isaiah 12:2-6, Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-18

Since we had so much fun singing in last Sunday’s sermon, I thought we should do it again because as soon as I read our second reading for today, I thought of this bible camp song: “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.”

We use and sing the word “rejoice” all the time in the church. It’s a word that means being really glad and expressing that gladness with great enthusiasm.

Joy and rejoicing are threads that run through our first reading, psalm, and second reading. And I think that the promise of joy runs through the gospel as well. It seems our biblical writers thought that joy is – or needs to be – a central part of our communal and individual life with God.

But let’s look a little bit more closely at what accompanies joy.

First, I want to point out that these first three readings talk about God being “in our midst” or “near” to us. This is a theme I can’t stress enough. God is not some distant, off-planet bearded judge on a throne who is uninvolved with the world and watching it from afar.

That’s certainly not the God of the Bible.

While it’s true that God does have the transcendent perspective of the whole of creation, God is also creation’s most intimate presence. God is at the heart of everything that exists. We must never forget that because it’s from the presence of God within us that our joy arises in the first place.

Zephaniah tells us that we should sing, shout, rejoice, and exult with all our hearts. But then goes on to say that the Lord who is in our midst “will rejoice over you with gladness; he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.”

It seems that our relationship with God is just one big love fest.

God rejoices over us, we rejoice over God, and that mutual flow just keeps going and going when we don’t block it. And then our Psalm tells us that we will draw water “from the wells of salvation” with joy. Maybe it’s the joy that primes the pump and gets the flow going in the first place!

Rejoicing is front and center in Paul’s letter to the Philippians and our reading begins with the words to the song we just sang. And what’s extra crazy about that is that Paul is writing this while he is in prison! In other words, Paul is not letting his outer conditions buzzkill his love and joy.

Not letting our outer conditions cause that dissipation of faith I spoke of a few weeks ago is not easy. But Paul gives us insight into how he’s able to do it. First, he tells us to be gentle and then to show that gentleness because the Lord is near. That’s why we can be gentle and vulnerable.

Next, he tells us not to be anxious about anything that may be happening but to pray with supplication, meaning to ask for what we need. But here’s the secret sauce – he says we should pray with thanksgiving.

In other words, he’s telling us to pray with the thanks for the assumed positive outcome already on our lips!

Now this is something that a lot of “new age” people talk about; that we should envision the outcome we want in order to “manifest” it in reality. But author Gregg Braden adds another level. He says we should intensify within ourselves the bodily feelings we would have as if the new reality is already accomplished.

In fact, in his book The Isaiah Effect, Braden shares the story of accompanying his Native American friend, David, during a historically long period of intense draught when David went to the desert to “invite the rain.” They walked to a holy place where the tribe had placed a circle of stones in a pattern they call a “medicine wheel” and this is what happened. Braden writes,

I watched as David removed his shoes. Even the way that he untied the laces of his tattered work boots was a prayer–methodical, intentional, and sacred. With his feet bare to the earth, he turned his back and walked away from me toward the circle.

Without a sound he navigated his way around the wheel, taking great care to honor the placement of each stone. With reverence for his ancestors, he placed his naked feet onto the parched earth. With each step, his toes came within fractions of an inch of the outer stones. Never once did he touch them. Each stone remained precisely where the hands of another had placed it, from a generation long departed.

As he rounded the farthest rim of the circle, David turned, allowing me to see his face. To my amazement, his eyes were closed. They had been closed the entire time. One by one, he was honoring the placement of each round, white stone by feeling the position of his feet! As David returned to the position closest to me, he stopped, straightened his posture, and moved his hands into a praying position in front of his face. His breathing became nearly indiscernible. He appeared oblivious to the heat of the midday sun. After a few brief moments in this position, he took a deep breath, relaxed his posture, and turned to me.

‘Let’s go, our work is finished here,’ he said, looking directly at me. ‘Already?’ I asked, a little surprised. It seemed as though we had just arrived. ‘I thought you were going to pray for rain.’

‘No, I said that I would ‘pray rain’, he replied. ‘If I had prayed ‘for’ rain, it could never happen.’”

Within hours, torrential rains began to fall.

Later David shared how he “prayed rain.”

In my prayer, I began with the feeling of gratitude for all that is and all that has come to pass. I gave thanks for the desert wind, the heat, and the drought, for that is the way of it, until now. It is not good. It is not bad. It has been our medicine.

Then I chose a new medicine, I began to have the feeling of what rain feels like. I felt the feeling of rain upon my body. Standing the stone circle, I imagined that I was in the plaza of our village, barefoot in the rain. I felt the feeling of wet earth oozing between my naked toes.”

David continued this practice of imagining and feeling the positive outcome, and added, “this is how we choose our path in this world. We must first have the feelings of what we wish to experience. This is how we plant the seeds of a new way. From that point forward, our prayer becomes a prayer of thanks.”

It seems to me that indigenous peoples and Paul knew something that we have forgotten. Maybe planting the seeds of joy and praise in our prayers is the missing piece for all of us.