12.08.04 Joy! Joy! Joy!

Joy! Joy! Joy!

It’s a Christmas theme for sure.

It may be, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.”

It could even be a 12-day long lavish flurry of exotic gifts from a love-blinded suitor.

However it’s packaged, joy is one of the promises of Christmas. It has always been. The message of the Angel the shepherds saw was, “I bring you Good News of great joy!”

Not all who hear this agree with it. Christmas, many believe, is a tale of contradictions. Rumors of adultery. Near scandal surrounding the shady nature of his Mother’s pregnancy. An oppressive census that left Jesus Family virtually homeless on the night of his birth and for years later. Skeptics can build a very strong case for the dark side of the birth narrative. If this is not a tale of contradictions it is certainly filled with paradox.

One of the finest thinkers and writers of our era has opened my eyes to the profound nature of joy and helped me understand how, to our limited vision, it is paradoxical. In the process he has made its meaning for us, particularly at Christmas, virtually boundless.

C.S. Lewis suggests that, “Joy is the serious business of heaven.” I understand “serious” here to be “weighty.” “Joy,” in the ultimate sense, as God understands it, you could say, is “heavy” stuff. (To help distinguish between our finite joy, and what Lewis is speaking of, I will use quotations and a capital J whenever referring to “Joy” as he perceived it.) The Christmas story, taken realistically, is “heavy stuff.” A much different event than is suggested by the embellished, sanitized narrative we’ve grown up with. Lewis helps us get inside the paradox of Christmas by taking us beyond what we are inclined to understand joy as, in purely material, here-and-now terms. Speaking of this “weighty,” “Joy,” he writes, “It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me: Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation of course, of desire, but desire for what? … before I knew what I desired the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that had happened to me was insignificant in comparison.” It was, he said, “surprise.” There was a “sense,” with it, “of incalculable importance.” “Joy,” he notes, was “something quite different from ordinary life … even from ordinary pleasure; something, as they would now say, ‘in another dimension.’” I desired,” he writes, “with almost sickening intensity something never to be described … and then, … found myself at the very moment already falling out of that desire and wishing I were back in it.” This was, for Lewis a sensual experience that “must be sharply distinguished from Happiness and Pleasure. “Joy,” in my sense, “has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. The paradox of it is that “it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want.” You can readily see how highly and “wholly other,” this thing he’d tasted was for him in his insistence that, “I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world.” “At once I knew, he confesses, “that to ‘have it again’ was the supreme and only important object of desire.”

“Surprised by Joy,” is the autobiographical story of Lewis spiritual journey. It is filled with accounts of his encounters with this “Joy.” “Stabs of joy,” he called them.

The reader of Lewis story inevitably recognizes that it is an account of encounters, which, in the end, lead to a transforming final engagement with the infinite. “Joy,” in his narrative, is recognized as a “taste” of; “pointers” to; something “other and outer,” something “other dimensional,” and ultimate. Each encounter is filled with a new and equally compelling sense of this “other;” this cosmic reality, which alone has in it what all of our longings desire. “Enormous bliss,” it is, as we’ve seen, completely distinct from and more desirable than any happiness or pleasure we know. It is a sensation of desire, of longing that is unsatisfied in us. The longing is almost sickening in its intensity. We cannot define it. It is mysterious even ominous. It seems at times to have an unhappiness or grief about it but “of a kind we want.” Everything else is now insignificant by comparison. To have “Joy,” again is, in Lewis understanding, the supreme and only object of desire.

Every time I read or think about “Joy” in this sense I feel the “longing” Lewis is describing. There is a reality in the universe that entices us, by these “stabs of ‘Joy,’” toward it. The weight of it, its intensity, its enormousness, is overwhelming, even painful to experience, as well as to long for. I think I’ve experienced it. Driving in the coastal mountain canyons North of Los Angeles I’ve felt it. As the winding road breaks out of its rocky walls the vast seascape of the Pacific flashes into view. Myriad tiny diamonds glimmering on an endless sea of brilliance reflecting the light of countless suns. Ecstasy! I want to stake out a claim on the land that provides such a vision. I want to hold that moment forever. But even as I reach out to hold onto it I remember – I grieve – that it cannot be, for every moment, what it is in that moment. To hold it would be to make it familiar and finally ordinary. The longing is not for it but for something of which it is only a splendid reflection. I’ve felt it reading a book. Stories of the companionship of a man with his dog leave me weak with longing for an affection that no creature can fully provide. My tireless longing is that, somewhere, with someone, such love can be found. There is grief for its elusiveness but the painful desire to find it moves me to weep. The longing is so intense. The boy who tells the story of inseparable friends in the “The Sandlot,” is me. I feel their terror at the beast. I revel in their quest to overcome their adversary. I cheer Benny with every stride as he outruns the “Beast.” My heart swells with joy when his loyalty and courage prevail and the “Beast” becomes a friend. My longing for happy endings is, for a moment, satisfied. The desire for a true and lasting love in which loneliness will one day be deposed in the reign of true, and lasting friendship is for a moment relieved. A fearsome ogre of a man turns out to be consummately human. Sidelined from his beloved baseball and blinded by a wild pitch, he is just another guy who only wants a friend; someone who will listen and enjoy with him his telling of a life when baseball was really all that it had in it to be. Benny’s loyalty to his friends, his game, and his courage opened the door into the old man’s solitude and gave him a taste of what he longed for. When, in the end, Benny, “The Jet,” steals home – I get teary recalling it – I dance with his friend as he shouts ecstatically, “The Jet stole home! The Jet stole home!” The moment has something more in it than it is in itself. It has ecstasy. It also has desire. Desire that somewhere, sometime, the ultimate conquest will be played out in the kind of cosmic proportions that will forever satisfy our longing for true courage, and loyalty, friendship, compassion and the freedom from ourselves that empowers us to revel in the triumph of another. I felt “Joy,” on the shores of a beautiful lake in Canada deep in the blended forests of South Eastern Ontario. Another never-to-be-forgotten week with Students, a Staff made up of some very special friends, and our Lord, was coming to an end. It was truly bittersweet. We were worshipping on the lakeshore. There was not a ripple anywhere. Pristine in its morning calm it seemed like a mirror of every beautiful thing around us. I felt the love of my friends. The admiration of the Students who’d boisterously demonstrated their appreciation the night before still warmed my heart. It seemed as if it really could not ever be any better than this. We were singing of Jesus unmatched love. “Like a rose, trampled on the ground, you took the fall, and thought of me, above all!” Tears flowed freely. I wanted, like the friends of Jesus on the Mountain where, for a moment they saw his celestial splendor, to build a sanctuary and stay there forever. But the poignancy of the moment was also the pain of it. For I knew that this was only a taste. With lumps in our hearts we would say our good byes soon. And this would, also, be a memory. But we had tasted something we could never forget and would never be happy until we had tasted again in its fullness, ultimately and finally.

Lewis is right. “Joy,” is besides its “enormous bliss,” a “longing.” A longing so painful yet so powerful that we can never be satisfied until we’ve found it.

This, I believe, is the “Joy,” of which the angel spoke that first Christmas night.
Nowhere is it more vividly demonstrated than in the life of Mary, Jesus’ Mother.
Imagine what it must have been like to have Gabriel himself appear, right before her eyes, in her own home. Surprise! Bliss! Other dimensional! What words do we have to describe even what we imagine it being? We are tempted, in light of the angel’s reassuring, “Do not be afraid,” to think that she was terrified at his appearance. No, she was “troubled at his words.” “Mary,” Luke, the story teller says, was “greatly troubled, because she wondered what kind of greeting this might be.” To be surprised by the celestial was for Mary what Lewis says is peculiar to being surprised by “Joy.” It is shrouded in mystery. To be in the presence of the celestial is to be exposed to something beyond the ordinary. Hearing the voice of angels, even when they tell us God, “favors us highly;” that he is “with us,” can be terrifying. We do not understand it. What we do not understand we fear. Mary’s “Joy,” in this heavenly moment was at once “bliss,” and terrifying in its “otherness.” This is the paradox of “Joy.” She trembled as she marveled.

From that day on Mary’s life would be filled with “stabs of Joy.” Bliss intermingled with more and more experiences of something from another dimension; wholly other. Rapturous, at times, yet fleeting and painful in its elusiveness. Her joy was unrestrained as she sang, “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” In her ecstasy she felt, for a moment that she understood the meaning of God’s “favor.” “From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me … .”

Mary’s story is no different from anyone else’s though. She had to return to reality. She came home to find her soon-to-be Husband preparing to quietly dissolve their engagement. He had been completely faithful to her. He’d respected her virginity. Hearing of her pregnancy broke his heart. He wasn’t going to make a scene. He loved her too much for that. But she’d betrayed him. Her story about immaculate conception was as difficult for him to believe as it is for us. The crushing weight of his rejection fell on her heart with such massive force she felt she would die. “Joy,” was gone. Is this the “favor” of God? Is this what God brings when he comes near? Her heart was ready to break with grief!

But the angel appeared again. This time to Joseph. Accepting the celestial visitor’s explanation that, yes, God had, by his own hand, placed his life within Mary, Joseph immediately took her to be his Wife. He loved her. His love went beyond the limits of ordinary love. It embraced her despite the cost. Whether his reputation might suffer from his choice he loved her anyway. The “Joy,” she’d tasted as she pondered the favor of God had surprised her again. Now in the generous, love and restraint of a good man, she felt it. Yet just as quickly it was gone. Gone in the clatter of a multitude of questions. “Why could the angel not have come to Joseph when he came to me? For that matter, couldn’t God have saved the miracle until Joseph and I were married? Why this disgrace? Why this maelstrom of pain and relief?” There was so much that just didn’t make sense. It was agony to feel Joseph’s rejection. It might have been prevented had the “Most High” done a few things differently. On the other hand, could it be that she understood the generosity of Joseph’s love more clearly, having seen the look of hurt on his face at the news of her inexplicable pregnancy? Would she have understood such love had she not seen his agony at the thought of being betrayed by what he believed to be a true love? Perhaps her own despair in the moment of abandonment gave her a keener sense of the nature of love that so readily forgives. Could “Joy,” be both excruciating pain and enormous ecstasy? Would she, really, want it to be any different?

Her next “stab of ‘Joy’” would be even more revealing.

Little is known about the events that followed. We know, of course, of the Roman census. The story of the journey to Bethlehem Joseph’s hometown is the stuff of legend. And we know about the starkly vivid detail in the backdrop for Mary’s first encounter with childbirth. The birth, itself, is filled with paradox. This baby was God’s child. Could not the “Most High,” the one “who rules in the Kingdoms of men,” as he himself declared, have used a bit of his leverage to postpone the census? Did it have to be now? The time of year; the distance; the sheer mass of people going to the same town; it was all so unfortunate. We’ve so sanitized the story that we’ve lost all sense of what it was like. Childbirth, under any circumstances, is as painful as it gets. Mary had to be cold. The stable may have been warmed somewhat by the overheated bodies of the many travel weary beasts crowded into it. But cold winds capriciously played around this open nitch in the hillside. No amount of straw could make the ground as soft as she needed it to be. This was not the place or the time for anyone to have a baby. But, yes, it was the time. She did give birth. There, that night, bone tired, and aching from the rigors of walking, and riding a donkey, for endless hours, while pregnant, this little girl had a baby. Any of you who’ve witnessed childbirth know how desperately painful it is. You also know that, if ever excruciating pain and ecstasy are common threads in the fiber of “Joy,” it is here. How someone’s tears of agony can so suddenly; so dramatically become cries of “Joy” is a mystery. This is paradox. Would Mary; would any Mother really want it to be any different. Would their love be as dramatically different from all other human loves were it not so costly?

Travail and birth, are, perhaps, of all our earthly experiences, the most purely “Joyous.” Pain resolved in sheer “bliss.” From that day onward Mary’s life was characterized by this mysterious paradox. Twice Luke tells us that she “kept in her heart her personal record of all that went on and pondered its meaning.” In the Temple eight days after the baby’s birth, a prophet raised her soul to ecstasy with his words of promise, and then crushed her heart ‘til it ached insufferably with his stern warning of political intrigue, and swords, and the piercing of her already scarred heart. The surprise visit of a distinguished, regal entourage from a far-off land, determined to affirm the royalty of her Son and pay homage to him with their obeisance and lavish gifts, was turned tragic by the barbaric murder of dozens of baby boys, and her, and her Family’s frantic flight to safety in a foreign country. There were certainly moments of pure “Joy,” watching this baby grow; learning with him; seeing his delight with the simplest things. Noticing how he loved people and how they loved him in return. Feeling pride at his exceptional understanding of life, its simplicities, along with its complexities. He loved his Father, God, with such sincerity and deep devotion. But, for her, so much mystery surrounded this Father. At times she felt her Son loved him more than her and she wondered why. She wondered why it mattered so much to her. There were anxious moments. He got lost once. His Father died. How would she have gotten along without him? Then he left home. Yes his siblings were there. But how would she get along without him? She heard of his fame. What “Joy,” to see him now! A man with a heart like his was a rare find. He came home for a visit. “Joy” filled her heart seeing him again! But they hated him! The people of his hometown tried to throw him off the cliff. What does it all mean?

The answer came wrapped in travail far more painful than any human experience before or since. The paradox was resolved in ultimate barbarism. The crucifixion of Mary’s Son answered the question, “What does all of this mean?” She was there. She witnessed the whole thing. No labor ever hurt like this. Agony, the wrenching spasms of a breaking heart, tore at her until there were no more tears. “How could they do this?!” He noticed her that day in the way he used to. He cared for her. He asked his friend to look out for her. She felt a slight brush of the “Joy,” when, in the past, he told her he loved her. But the sweetness of it was quickly drowned in his piercing cry from the cross. He was gone. Could she have thought, in that terrible moment, that Gabriel’s promise had been a sick joke played by a sadistic deity that found pleasure in another’s agony? There wasn’t even a trace of joy to be found anywhere in her story. The skeptics were right. It was all “a tale told by a fool.”

Some fifty-five or so hours later she was huddled, with some of her Son’s friends, in an upstairs room on the back streets of Jerusalem. The doors were locked. Any friend of her Son was wanted now. The authorities were bent on ridding all Israel of the least suggestion that this man was anything but a troublemaker. Night had fallen. It was dark. Everything was dark. They had hoped. They didn’t hope now. What did all of this mean? Someone said they’d seen him alive. They were quite adamant about it. Peter and John had gone to the tomb and found it empty. Mary, the one from Magdala, insisted she’d seen him. She said he told her he was, “going to his Father and our Father; to our God and his God.” Could it be? Oh, if only … And then he was there! The doors were still shut. But there he was. Jesus was standing in the room. He was alive. A songwriter reliving it all in a moment of inspiration captures Mary’s “Joy” powerfully. “Suddenly the room was filled with strange and sweet perfume! Light that came from everywhere drove shadows from the room! He stood there beside me with his arms held open wide. I fell down on my knees and just clung to him and cried. He’s alive! Heaven’s gates are opened wide! He’s alive!” This was “Joy!” There were traitors in that room; friends who had fled from her Son in his darkest hour. They had betrayed him. But he had not forgotten them. He had come to find them. “Guilt and my confusion,” the songwriter exults, “disappeared in sweet release. And every fear I’d ever felt just melted into peace!”

A travail beyond all travail, God crushed under the weight of all sin and evil, dieing, heartbroken by the guilt and shame of all humankind, has come out from under it, throwing it all off, throwing off death itself. The race has been reborn. ‘Til that night Mary had only tasted “Joy.” Her experiences of it had been as painful as they were blissful. But the pain was of the sort that she could not completely forsake. She couldn’t understand it. But neither could she take another path. Now she understood. Joseph’s agony at her apparent infidelity; the dreadful pain at the birth of her child; the terrorized Families around Bethlehem; her anxiety on the journey to Egypt; the fear that she’d lost her Son on the Eve of his Bar Mitzvah; the despair at the foot of the cross; would she ever truly know the magnanimous love of this God man whom she had birthed if she had not seen how severely his coming clashed with a world gone mad? On this day of “Joy” beyond words she saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt something beyond even the angelic presence. She caught a glimpse of the celestial. Her Son, at once God and man; splendid, loving, regal, gracious, triumphant, gentle, someone in whom the paradox is resolved, who though dead yet lives. Never again would there be any confusion for her. She knew now, even as she was sure this Son of hers knew her, that the path “Joy” lead her to was the path to her own immortality. And in that moment she loved her Son and his mysterious Father so much that she was content in knowing that, now, “all generations will call him blessed.”

This is the “Joy,” the angel promised to the shepherds that first Christmas night.


Lewis acknowledges, in the closing paragraphs of his story, that his experiences of “Joy,” became less important to him once he became a convert to Christianity. They were not less frequent necessarily; just less important. He explains. “Joy, … as a state of (his) own mind was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer. While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed large in (his) thoughts.” “When we are lost in the woods,” he says, “the sight of a signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries, ‘Look!’ The whole party gathers round and stares. But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare. They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up. But we shall not stop and stare, or not much; not on this road, though their pillars are of silver and their lettering gold. ‘We would be at Jerusalem.’” This Jerusalem, I assure you, is the New Jerusalem, spoken of in the final paragraphs of the Bible. It is here that all sensation finds its fullest experience. Here all vision; every color of a new and infinite spectrum fills the heart with a wonder of which all shimmering earthly seas are but a dim reflection. Here the fragrance of infinite scents soothes every cell of the glorified body, each in its own timeless moment of endless ecstasy. Sounds soft and sonorous echo through one’s whole being soothingly, stirringly. The gentle touch of unbridled strength brings a peace that only consummate love provides. Here, in this wonder filled place, we are at home!

This is the Christmas promise, made through a Hebrew Prophet named Isaiah, hundreds of years before that first Christmas. “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given. The government will be on his shoulders. He will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.”