Life-Saving
Joy
Sermon for MCC
New Haven
December 22nd
2013
Rev. Brian
Hutchison, M.Div.
Psalm
30
Matthew
1:18-25
In the
Christian season of Advent, today is marked as “Joy Sunday.” I think that joy is a word that we have
left out of our vocabulary too often. Think about it. When we experience a
positive emotion, we will say, “I am happy” or “That makes me happy” or “You
make me happy.” We don’t often say, “I am joyful” or “That gave me joy” or “You
give me joy.”
Webster’s
dictionary defines joy as the emotion of happiness or great pleasure. Those are
good things, but this definition lacks depth. It does not explain the transformative
power that joy can have in our lives. From the scriptures that we heard today
from that Psalmist and from the Gospel of Matthew, I find a different definition
of joy: Joy is the awareness of supreme satisfaction within your soul. It is
the awareness that you are one with God always.
Some
Christian theologians have claimed that the purpose of the Christian journey is
happiness. I like the idea, but I would take it a step further. I say that the
purpose of the Christian journey is to find supreme satisfaction within
yourself in the knowledge of the God Within, helping others to find the same.
In the
Matthew passage today, a messenger (or angel) from God told Joseph in a dream
that Mary would bear a son and that he should be named “Jesus” because he will
save people from their sins. The name Jesus in Hebrew is “Yeshua,” which we
translate to “Joshua” in English. “Yeshua” is often said to mean “salvation.”
The word salvation is almost a cuss word in our contemporary vocabulary because
dogmatic Christians have been selling salvation like a cheap appliance in an
infomercial. Their brand of salvation has proven to be a faulty product that
should have been recalled long ago.
Instead of
salvation, a better meaning of Jesus’ name is “Deliverance.” Doesn’t that feel
much more liberating? When certain religious people knock on my door and tell
me I need to be “saved,” I immediately feel judgment. What in the world do I
need saving from? I’m not drowning! I don’t know that I would feel any better
if they said I needed deliverance, but to me the word offers a different path
to understand the meaning of Jesus’ life.
The need
for deliverance is a very real need. There are many real life obstacles that
keep us imprisoned. And I can assure you now that they are not the so-called
“sins of the flesh” that Uganda outlawed this past week. Anyone found to be
“homosexual” in Uganda can now face life in prison. The United Methodist Church
in the United States also claims in their Book of Discipline that
“homosexuality is not compatible with Christian teaching.” Under that church
law, Rev. Frank Schaefer was defrocked in Pennsylvania for performing the
marriage of his son and his son’s husband. The UMC formally claims that Rev.
Schaefer needs to be saved from his sin. But the prophetic voice of Spirit is
saying today that the UMC needs to be delivered from its practices of
oppression and discrimination.
Remember
that A Course In Miracles defines sin as “lack of love.” Who in these two
scenarios are expressing lack of love? I overwhelmingly say, the Ugandan
government and the UMC. What would it look like for the Ugandan government to
love its LGBT citizens in the way of Christ? What would it look like for the
UMC to love its LGBT members as Jesus did? I say it would be heaven on earth!
Jesus came
to deliver us from many things, but what he did not come to deliver us from is
God’s punishment. Too many people ask me if God is punishing them with the bad
things that are happening in their lives. It makes me sad. Who ever began the
teaching that if we don’t obey, an angry God is going to zap us with lightning
or send a natural disaster? Several authors in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible)
expressed their concern that God did these things, but their writings were
meant to be learned from, not taken literally.
There is a
kind of deliverance that I want to first focus on: the deliverance from fundamentalism. Between 1910 and 1915, the Bible
Institute of Los Angeles (CA) published twelve volumes of a series called “The
Fundamentals.” They were written in reaction to new findings about biblical
history and science. Instead of allowing their faith to evolve, they decided to
ignore new knowledge and put in stone what a Christian must believe in order to
“go to heaven.” Thousands of copies of The Fundamentals were printed by a
wealthy man named Lyman Stewart and were sent to conservative churches around
the country. The texts have ever since been the basis for fundamentalist teaching.
Among those
teachings are the literal virgin birth of Jesus, the divinity of Jesus, Jesus’
miracles as fact, the reality of Eternal Damnation and Satan, salvation only
through Jesus, belief in Jesus’ blood sacrifice, the literal Resurrection, the
literal Apocalypse, and others. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need any of
these things to call myself a follower of Jesus the Anointed. They say I have
to be saved from the dirtiness of my being. The God Within tells me that I need
to be delivered from these harmful false teachings.
It’s too
late for the countless saints who have taken their own lives because someone
used the Fundamentals against them. Their bodies have returned to the earth and
they are at peace with God. But it is not too late to allow the Spirit of God
to work through us to oppose damnation. The joy we share can quite literally
save lives!
“This joy I
have, the world didn’t give it to me! The world didn’t give it and the world
can’t take it away!” Did judgmental people give you the joy that you hold in
your heart? No! Did homophobes holding stupid signs in the street plant a seed
of joy within you? No! Did that relative that always gave you a dirty look show
you the joy that is possible in life? I don’t think so.
The days of
long weeping in the night can be over! We don’t have to beat ourselves up and
call ourselves bad names in order to win God’s Presence. God doesn’t smile when
we hurt ourselves; God weeps. The Psalmist wrote so beautifully, “Weeping may
endure for the night, but JOY comes with the morning!” I don’t know a lot of
things for sure, but one thing I know is that the sun rises every morning with
a new day that is full of opportunities for second chances. God’s grace is
fresh with each new day.
Mary found
herself a pregnant, unmarried teenager. Joseph was going to call off his
engagement (which was actually a gracious act since women were stoned when they
were found to be pregnant outside of marriage.) The distress of that situation
caused weeping for the night. Mary wept. Joseph wept. But after God spoke to
Joseph and called him to be the guardian of Mary and Jesus, joy came in the
morning!
God had
planted something inside of Mary that could bring her and her whole family to
shame. But Mary and Joseph took that gift and actualized it as the man called
Emmanuel: “God is with us”. What has God placed inside of you that you
are ashamed of? What are you pregnant with today that God has called you to
birth?
For many of
us, we know that God placed a sexuality or gender identity within us that we
knew beyond the shadow of a doubt was God’s own creation. The time came in
coming out that the beautiful child was born. Your expression of sexuality or
gender identity is “God with us.” But God places so many more taboo things in
the womb of our hearts. Perhaps your taboo baby is a desire for economic
justice in our country and in our world. Perhaps it is a desire for erotic
exploration. Or perhaps God has placed in you the desire to be a prophetic
advocate for the poor, for a woman’s right to choose, for victims of domestic
violence, for the legalization of healing things such as medical marijuana and
stem cells. Or maybe your holy child this year is the simple practice of
presence with those who are hurting. No matter what your child is, it is a
creation of God. What the world calls a bastard child is the Holy Child of
God.
All of
these children of ours are the result of joy. Remember, joy is the
awareness of supreme satisfaction within your soul. It is the awareness that
you are one with God always. When we share
regular time in God’s presence, miracles happen without us trying.
December 17th
marked 740 years since the death of the Sufi poet known as Rumi. His real name
was Jelaluddin Balkhi (Gel-al-oo-din
Balk-hee), but history calls him Rumi because he was from Roman Anatolia
(now Turkey). From Rumi’s spiritual practices and writings came Sufism, which
is a form of Islamic mysticism. You may know Sufis by the Whirling Dervishes (Darvish is the Persian word for “poor”, which
means to them “poor in spirit” or “humble.”) The Dervishes whirl in circles with
their tall hats and flowing robes, emptying their spirits so that they can
fully embrace the presence of God in a state of ecstasy. (The word “ecstasy” means,
“to stand outside oneself.”) In order to stay in place while spinning, they
place a large metal nail between their first and second toes on the left foot.
When spinning, one hand is cupped upward to receive God’s grace and the other
is turned down to give that grace to the world.
Now, I
don’t recommend you try this at home. But what we can learn from the Sufi
tradition is that the ultimate goal in life is union with God. It is in
that state that we find true joy. And what I may love most about Sufism is the
practice of finding joy through dance. Rumi writes, “Dance when you’re broken
open. Dance if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of fighting.
Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.”
Folks,
empty yourselves of the poisons of the world that have stolen your joy in the
past and just allow yourself to dance in joy! Repeat after me this affirmation:
Nothing can steal my joy! Nothing can steal my joy! Nothing can steal my
joy! Amen.
