Our readings for this morning are all about joy.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus tells the disciples, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” There’s more joy in our Psalm. We are supposed to “sing to the Lord a new song.” We are to “shout with joy to the Lord… lift up [our] voice, rejoice, and sing.” And that joy extends to all creation, as we hear in verse nine: “Let the rivers clap their hands, and let the hills ring out with joy before the Lord.” As you might guess, I do not often sing with joy, especially not in company. But I have sung with joy. In the late 1980s, a friend and I drove around the country in his mother’s car. Over a few weeks, we pushed her car hard. We started in Atlanta, went to Chicago, west to Oregon, down through California, and then across the southern route back to Atlanta. The car died as soon as we got back. But we had a great trip. I did most of the driving, while my friend chose the music. This was still the era of cassettes, and he had lots of them. But our favorite was a cassette with just one song, “Free Nelson Mandela.” My friend and I approved of the sentiment of the song, but politics wasn’t the reason we loved the song. We loved the beat. There is a link below to a YouTube recording of the song.[1] Here’s a challenge. Try to listen to that song without moving any part of your body. I don’t think it’s possible. We played that song as loud as the car speakers would go. And as we drove across the highways of America, with “Free Nelson Mandela” blasting from our speakers, we sang and shouted with joy, and we bounced in our seats so hard that the car shook on its axles. That may be one of the reasons the car died at the end of our trip. Dancing as best we could in the car and singing “Free Nelson Mandela” at the top of our lungs is probably the closest I have ever come to singing a new song and literally shouting with joy. Of course, life was good for me and my friend back then. We were young and free, bursting with energy, with no responsibilities, and with bright futures ahead. Joy came easy. That kind of joy doesn’t come so easily to me now that I am older, with less energy and more responsibilities, and with a greater awareness of the problems in our world. But, if anything, I have become more convinced of just how necessary joy is, not only to our flourishing but even to our surviving. I have also come to a deeper understanding of what joy truly is. The kind of joy I experienced singing with my friend all those years ago was great. But it wasn’t the kind of joy Jesus is talking about in our reading. Our joy that summer depended on our circumstances. It depended on how things were going for us at that moment. It depended on our emotions. When things weren’t going as well, when we were tired and didn’t have a place to stop for the night, or were running low on gas in the middle of nowhere, or were hungry with no place to buy food, when our circumstances weren’t great and our emotions were low, then my friend and I weren’t joyful any longer. At our prison Bible Study a couple of weeks ago, we talked about a deeper kind of joy, the kind of joy that doesn’t depend so much on what’s happening in the moment, or how we are feeling right then, the kind of joy that no one can take from us, the kind of joy you can have even in prison, the kind of joy that is firmly rooted in God’s love for us, and our love for God and our neighbors. That is the joy Jesus means in our Gospel reading. It is Jesus’ Last Supper. Jesus has just said some hard things to the disciples. “I (Jesus) am about to die horribly. I mean, in the next eighteen hours. You, my friends and disciples, are going to fail me worse than you can believe.” This is not friends on a road trip. This is not even people in a minimum security prison. This is a man facing a horrible death, and other people facing their own monumental weakness. The Last Supper was a really hard time. Thankfully, Jesus has said some other things, too. “As the Father has loved me so I have loved you; abide in my love….[And] love one another as I have loved you.” With that kind of divine and human love, joy, true joy, divine joy, is possible even in hard times like at the Last Supper. Because hard times are an inevitable part of every life, we all need the kind of joy Jesus is talking about. And I had a small taste of that kind of joy last week, on my way to a family wedding. My travel day started well at the Seabury’s house, with a generous breakfast and good conversation. But the day started at 4:00 am. (I pause to acknowledge their VERY gracious hospitality!) The first leg of my flight was fine. But my connection was delayed, stranding me for a time in the Minneapolis airport. I do not enjoy airports. Particularly when I am tired. But the delay gave me time to say Morning Prayer, using an app on my phone that includes hymns. I felt a little self-conscious sitting there, praying to myself, so I was not as focused as I should have been. Then came one of the hymns. It wasn’t “Free Nelson Mandela,” but it was enough to get my head bobbing and me singing along, if very quietly. The hymn began with these words: “Joyous light of God’s own glory/ Light of heav’n that fills this place.” And it worked. As I bobbed and sang that line, I looked around the airport, reminded that the joyous light of God’s own glory does indeed fill even unpleasant places like airports. Then the hymn ended and I went back to feeling sorry for myself. But for a moment, tired and stressed and distracted as I was, I tasted the joy Jesus talks about, the joy that does not depend on our circumstances or how we feel, the joy that comes from knowing God is with us through thick and thin. I wasn’t exactly shouting with joy. But I was singing to the Lord. And it was joy. One last point. Joy is a powerful form of Christian witness in a world that often seems joyless. In the Franciscan Principles, it says Christian people are called to “carry within us an inner peace and happiness,” grounded in our relationship with God and expressed in our love for neighbors. The Principles go on to say that, at our best, other people can see and be drawn to that joy “even if they do not know its source.”[2] Christ invites us to experience true joy, to express that joy in song, and to share that joy with the world. Let us lift up our voices, rejoice, and sing! In Christ’s name. Amen. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLMV7Buj5g0 On our trip, we didn’t know the name of the artist who performed the song. But you can find everything on the internet, including “Free Nelson Mandela.” I now know that the song was recorded in 1984 by The Special AKA. [2] The Principles of the Third Order Society of Saint Francis, Day 28.
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Rev. Dr. Harvey Hill Third Order Franciscan Archives
February 2025
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