What Joy?
Isaiah 61:1-11[1]
When I was a child, the promise was made that technology
would one day provide us with more “leisure time” than any other generation in
history. And the idea was that we could use all that “free time” to pursue
happiness. I can’t say that promise was ever fulfilled. Yes, we have faster and
easier ways to do everything, from everyday chores to being “productive” at
work, from communicating with one another to finding any kind of information. All
those activities have been to some extent “automated” by technology. Even a
task like writing a sermon. I’ve never tried it, but the latest generative
artificial intelligence offers to do our research for us, and at least provide
us with a draft for whatever project we’re working on. At the risk of sounding
like a luddite, I really can’t say that all our technology has translated into more
leisure time, or more happiness.
I think part of the problem is that no amount of technology
can truly enable us to escape the reality of our experience with life. One of
the fundamental truths of the human condition is, “wherever you go, there you
are.” That means we carry around our own happiness or unhappiness. Technology
may make it easier for us to distract ourselves by doing things that are “fun,”
or simply by escaping into the vast maze of “entertainment” options that’s
available to us 24/7 with nothing more than a phone and an internet connection.
If we’re honest with ourselves, we’re just settling for a way to pass the time
without really having to deal with whatever we’re facing. At the end of the
day, when you’re looking at yourself in the mirror and it’s just you there,
“wherever you go, there you are.” Whatever happiness or unhappiness you carry
with you is still there.
In part, it’s been my experience that we tend to sabotage
our own happiness. What we focus on stands in the way of finding true happiness
in life. For example, some of us may think that our happiest days were back in
the past somewhere. When our happiness is bound to the past, we find ourselves
stuck in a kind of perpetual grief over what we’ve lost. That leads to what can
sometimes be deep and unshakeable sadness. When we believe that our happiness
is tied up with a certain (very particular) version of the future, we find
ourselves plagued by fear. If we can only be happy if things turn out the way
we hope, clinging to those notions only fuels our worry. In my experience, the
only way to be truly happy is to choose to be content with your life just as it
is, without changing anything. You choose to be satisfied with your past,
present, and future. You choose to be comfortable in your skin because
it’s the only one you’re going to have in which to live.
Our Scripture lessons for today speak to the issue of
finding happiness through contentment. The word they use is not happiness, but
“joy.” The Psalmist speaks of the return of the people of Israel from exile in
Babylon in fairly optimistic terms: “When the Lord brought back his
exiles to Jerusalem, it was like a dream! We were filled with laughter,
and we sang for joy. And the other nations said, ‘What amazing things
the Lord has done for them.’ Yes, the Lord has done amazing
things for us! What joy!” (Ps 126:1-3 NLT). But instead of a song of
joy, instead of being amazed enough to say “What joy!” in response to what God
had done, there are plenty of indications elsewhere in the Bible that the
people who returned from exile may have turned that exclamation into a question.
They may have wondered what joy there was for them in their return.
As we’ve discussed, their experience after mourning in
exile for decades was that they had returned to a home that was devastated, and
their mourning continued. The fact that the “servant of the Lord” in Isaiah could
say he was chosen by God to bring “good news to the oppressed” (Isa.
61:1) echoes indications elsewhere in the Bible that after they returned home
to Judea the Jewish people struggled just to survive. That included having the
safety of shelter and the ability to raise crops to feed themselves. Their
lives were far from “happy.” In fact, some of them were literally stuck in
prison, and the servant promised that they would be released. If we wonder about
that, we may need to understand that in that day prison wasn’t a place where
justice was carried out. Prison was a means of control. Kings threw their
rivals into prison. Enemy captives were thrown into prison. Those who had
incurred more debt than they could pay were thrown into prison. True criminals
were executed swiftly, so the majority of those who were kept in prison very
likely hadn’t committed anything we would consider a crime.
In that situation, the “servant” had the courage and the
vision to declare boldly to all who found themselves in this seemingly hopeless
situation that God was going to relieve their suffering, comfort them in their
sorrow, and set right all the wrongs they had endured. It’s quite clear in
Scripture that God is on the side of the poor, the oppressed, those unjustly
deprived of their freedom, and in fact, all who suffer due to the heartless
ways we treat our fellow human beings. And that means that God will not always
stand by while his beloved children suffer and mourn in sorrow. The promise of
our Scripture lesson for today is that God would enable them to rejoice with
the “oil of gladness” instead of fainting under the burden of continual
mourning (Isa 61:3).
When I look at our world, it seems there is precious little
joy. There is some: the joy of a baby who is much loved. The joy of families getting
together. The joy of faith that chooses to trust God’s unfailing love even when
we don’t understand our lives. But too many people are trading “happiness” for
joy. We seem all too content to find “happiness” through “fun” or
entertainment. But when you step back and take a pause to really look at what’s
going on, it’s almost as if every effort we make to “find” happiness only
reminds us that we’re not happy. All those “fun” times fade so quickly, and it may
leave us positively frantic to keep trying to find “happiness.” Call me a
cynic, but I wonder if that’s because all the running around we do to find that
elusive “happiness” is only a way of avoiding having to admit to ourselves that
we may not be happy at all.
The promise of Scripture on this third Sunday in Advent is
that God comforts those who mourn, lifts the burdens that weigh us down, and
sets us free from everything that robs us of joy in this life. That doesn’t
mean we can expect God to grant our every wish. The joy that’s promised to us
on this third Sunday of Advent comes from the promise that God would send us a
Savior who would not only proclaim the good news, but who would also enact it
by relieving suffering and setting all things right in the world. If we find it
challenging to see that promise fulfilled in our day and time, we can remember
that the message of Christmas is that “God’s light is more real than all the
darkness, that God’s truth is more powerful than all human lies, that God’s
love is stronger than death.”[2] When we
wonder what joy there is to be found in this world, we can remember that God
isn’t yet finished with the saving work he began in the birth of Jesus. And so
we celebrate with the words of the
Psalmist: “Yes, the Lord has done amazing things for us! What joy!”
[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 12/17/2023 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Henri J. M. Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, 32
