Many years ago I had a conversation with a good
friend and she coined a phrase I had never heard before and it sounded strange
to me. She said, “I’ve lost my
joy.” She was a Christian of a more
charismatic variety than me. She had
been taught that joy is one of the fruits of the spirit that Christians receive
through the workings of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22,23). These spiritual fruits like fruit on a tree
develop and ripen over time in followers of Jesus as a result of a deepening
devotional life.
Being raised your typical Presbyterian I had hardly
heard of the Holy Spirit let alone that the Spirit works in us and brings forth
these fruits. I thought being a Christian
simply meant being good and sticking to God’s rules all on your own efforts
because that’s the deal if you want God on your side.
My friend was the most committed and devout Christian
I knew at the time and always seemed so joyful.
She was the first person I met who went to church and actually worshipped. She said she lost her joy, that at the end of
the day she wasn’t feeling joy anymore, but rather profound disappointment. People she loved had let her down and hurt
her. These people wouldn’t give her the
space to sort things out. On top of all
that she didn’t feel close to God anymore. She lost her joy. It even came to the point that this
worship-filled person pulled away from church.
For a couple of years, she couldn’t worship. She lost her joy.
Thankfully, her story is not tragic. In time her joy returned. God brought her life together in the way she
felt he promised he would. She married,
became an elementary teacher, and had children. She had hit a period where she just needed to
walk alone, a period of time for God to heal some deeper hurts in her than just
her present ones.
This friend is one of those people I think of when I
hear Mary’s Song. Let me give a rather
expanded translation. “My soul, the
entirety of my being, worships the Lord and my spirit, that within me that
makes me feel alive, rejoices greatly in the God of my salvation. For, He has looked with favour on his
overwhelmed servant. From now on people
will call me blessed! God has done great
things for me that only God can do. His
mercy is for all those who trust their whole lives to him.” Mary sang that song the moment she realized that
God truly did have his hand in her troubling circumstances. The angel had told her that her elderly
relative Elizabeth was pregnant and so she was.
There is great joy in Mary’s Song, in Mary, but it
leaves me with a few questions. I don’t
think that what she means by joy and by being blessed is what we think they
mean. Let me start with what it is to be
blessed.
These are holiday times and most of us gather
together with our families and have a big meal.
Usually someone will say grace and then begin to count the many
blessings the family enjoys. Everybody
is reasonably healthy. Everybody enjoys
a comfortable life. The family has a good
name. We give thanks that God has
blessed us in so many ways. Gratitude is
a good thing to feel towards God, but I don’t think this sort of “count your
many blessings” is what Mary meant when she said people would call her blessed.
For Mary, being blessed meant God had included her in
his mission to bring salvation to the world.
This blessing came by means of an unexpected pregnancy that would have
blemished the family name. Not to
mention the health risks to her for she was somewhere between 13-15 years old. Nobody but Elizabeth and Joseph believed her
that the child in her was the Son of God conceived by the Holy Spirit. Then, when Jesus was born Joseph and Mary had
to become refugees in Egypt because jealous King Herod wanted to kill the baby. That meant Joseph had to leave his job as a
respected carpenter. Then, as Jesus progressed
through childhood, he apparently wasn’t your "normal" child and people knew
it. So, Mary had to bear the stigma of
having a child who appeared mentally unstable.
Then, Jesus started his “Kingdom of God” ministry on the coattails of
crazy cousin John - John the Baptizer...locusts, honey, camel hair. Then, Jesus was arrested and tried for
treason. Then, she had to watch her son
die a public execution by crucifixion and as she stood there utterly
heartbroken people certainly would have mocked her for being the mother of this
humiliated false Messiah. Whatever she
felt when she encountered Jesus raised from the dead would have certainly been
tempered with what we know today as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Mary is called blessed not because she was a good,
hardworking person and so God rewarded her with health, wealth, and a respected
family name. Mary is called blessed
because God was working through her and she remained faithful through all that
she suffered for being the mother of Jesus.
Blessedness always comes in the face of
suffering. In this fallen world full of
evil, God’s workings, his mission to save and heal it will always meet with adversity. Yet, the blessing one receives for being a
disciple of Jesus and living according to him who is the light of the world is, well, him; the assurance of his presence personally with us and God’s favour, his
faithfulness to us. Health, wealth, and a
good name are quite often distractions that keep us from being faithful and
enjoying the fullness of life that Jesus has for us.
If blessedness comes in the face of suffering, what
does this say about joy? We live in a
culture that sees the pursuit of happiness as a basic human right. But, we also live in a culture in which
corporate advertisers tell us we can’t be happy unless we have this or have
that and there’s never enough. True
happiness in this broken world is not found in wealth and security. It’s when your whole being rejoices from
saying “I know my Jesus is with me and that he is working through me and that
my dis-ease at not having the “good life” that so many around me enjoy is not
in vain. Yes, God is working through me. I am blessed!”
At the end of the day when we are alone with ourselves,
what do we come back to? Is it joy? Do we lift our hearts in the wonder that we
belong to Jesus, that he is with us and we are a part of his reign in this
hurting world? At the end of the day
what do we come back to? Is it joy? Amen.
