“But the angel said to [the shepherds], ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy
for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” (Luke 2:10–11)
Through these words from the Gospel of Luke, we are told that “Christmas” and “joy” go with each other like “hand in
glove.” And we are also shown that “From its very beginning Christianity has been the proclamation of joy…” In light
of this, it is easy to understand that “Of all [the] accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered
by [the 19th-century German philosopher and poet Friedrich] Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy.” (Alexander
Schmemann, in “Joy,” The Living Pulpit, October–December, 1996, p. 8)
Wow! What an indictment! For were it true that we Christians have no joy, it would in fact mean that we have had no
real experience of the One who is the ultimate source of all joy and who is that to which every experience of joy points,
no true experience of the Christ, no genuine experience of the God-who-is-with-us.
So this evening I invite each and every one of us who is here at the Rutgers Presbyterian Church to have joy— to
experience and to express the joy that can break in on us whenever we contemplate the birth of Jesus, the birth of
Emmanuel, the birth of God-with-us, the birth of this shining face of God. I invite each and every one of us here
tonight to experience the joy of which we first sang in our processional carol: “O come, all you faithful, joyful and
triumphant”; the joy of which we also sang in our second carol: “Joyful all you saints arise, join the triumph of the
skies”; the joy of which we have just sung in our latest carol: “Joy to the world, the Lord is come,” “Joy to the earth,
the Savior reigns.”
Yes, I pray that every one of us who has this night sung about joy will also be blessed this night with a deep
and profound experience of joy. Perhaps some of us will even have the experience of being “surprised by joy.”
Those words, “surprised by joy,” were the title used by the famous Oxford don C. S. Lewis when, nearly 50 years ago,
he published an autobiographical account of his religious conversion. Surprised by Joy (reprinted by Harcourt
Brace And Company, 1995) is the true account of a contemporary person who loses his childhood faith, and eventually finds
his way back to Christianity, along the way being surprised to discover what joy really is.
As many of you know, Lewis was one of the great Christian thinkers of the last century. He was known equally for his
scholarship in Medieval and Renaissance English literature and for his profound and provocative expositions of Christian
beliefs. Before he died in 1963, he gave the world such classics of religious imagination and Christian wit as The
Screwtape Letters, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, the “Chronicles of Narnia,” Mere Christianity, Pilgrim’s
Regress, The Four Loves, and many others. And I urge you to add one of Lewis’s books to your reading list for 2005.
So on this Christmas Eve, this night of joy, I want to share with you some of Lewis’s observations about “joy.” (For
many of these insights, see Doris Donnelly, in “Joy,” The Living Pulpit, October–December, 1996, p. 6.)
First, as his title itself suggests, joy surprises. Joy comes to us “unbidden and unplanned for. It cannot be
commandeered, or coerced or even gently cajoled into existence.” (Donnelly) For the source of joy is God, and
consequently joy’s coming to us lies quite beyond all human calculations. This observation by Lewis may strike most of
us as unwelcome news, for we Americans like to be in control and to have things on demand. For instance, we would like
to think that by merely showing up at a church on Christmas Eve, joy may be ours for the taking. But both pastors
and psychologists know only too well that for some persons observing Christmas brings no joy.
Yes, joy is something that comes to us “unbidden and unplanned for. It cannot be commandeered, coerced or even
gently cajoled into existence.” And this point is exemplified by Lewis’s own first awareness of joy, for it occurred
in quite a humble and surprising way when he was about five years old. His older brother Warnie had made a toy garden
in the lid of a biscuit tin by covering the lid with a layer of moss garnished with twigs and flowers. (Lewis, p. 5)
This humble sight absolutely enchanted young Lewis, and quite unbidden he fell under the spell of his memory of it. He
thought of that toy garden as the first beauty he had known, and the joy it occasioned became somehow linked in his
imagination with paradise. Recurrent glimpses of this toy garden would subsequently come into Lewis’s mind unannounced
(Lewis, p. 14) and would trigger within him a most intense kind of desire and longing.
Lewis’s second observation about joy is that joy is far different from mere pleasure. (Lewis, p. 14) Joy is both more
profound than pleasure or happiness and also more enduring, such that no one “who has tasted [joy] would ever … exchange
it for all the pleasures in the world.” (Lewis, p. 16)
Oh, our longing for pleasure is a pleasant enough experience so long as that longing can soon be satisfied. For
instance, our hunger pangs for Christmas dinner are pleasurable so long as the aroma of the turkey is filling our
nostrils. But should gratification be delayed or become impossible, those hunger pangs become, well, a major irritant.
And many are those among us whose Christmas happiness has been “ruined” by the absence under the tree of one gift or
another, or by the absence around the table of one family member or another.
In contrast, the desire for joy retains its joyful quality even when fulfillment is delayed or seems remote or even
impossible. Lewis’s desire to relive the joy of Warnie’s biscuit-tin garden brought him a sense of continuing joy even
though no toy garden would ever again exist in his life, save in his memory. And ancient Israel’s desire for the joy of
the Messiah remained joy-filled throughout all the centuries of its waiting, and waiting, and waiting.
Which leads us to Lewis’s third observation—that joy often coexists with pain. Indeed it is in the very midst of
affliction that joy gives proof of its power. (Donnelly, p. 6) Now Lewis was by no means the first or the last person
to make this observation. The psalmists and prophets of ancient Israel knew well the truth of this, and so too did the
20th-century Catholic social worker Dorothy Day, whose experiences of both pain and joy were deep and lasting. She once
commented (in The Long Loneliness, as quoted in The Living Pulpit, October–December, 1996, p. 33) that:
“Joy and sorrow, life and death, [are] always so close together!” And the contemporary Protestant pastor, Talitha
Arnold, has summed it up succinctly by saying: “Joy comes where it has no business being.” Indeed, every pastor has
known persons who have found inexplicable joy amidst immense sadness, and I venture to say that many of you have known
such persons, too.
For joy, unlike mere pleasure or happiness, is rooted in that which transcends our world of suffering and grief and
in that which breaks into this world of ours in surprising ways. Barbara Brown Taylor sums it up well when she observes
that: “The only condition for joy is the presence of God. Joy happens when God is present and people know it, which
means that it can erupt in a depressed economy, in the middle of a war, in an intensive care waiting room.” (in “Joy,”
The Living Pulpit, October–December, 1996, p. 16)
When God is present and when we acknowledge that God is present, then we just cannot contain ourselves. We sing and
dance. We open our mouths, and poetry falls out. (Ibid.) Or as the composer Franz Joseph Haydn once put it: “When
I think upon my God, my heart is so full of joy that the notes dance and leap from my pen…” (quoted in The Westminster
Collection of Quotations [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001], p. 214)
Yes, when God is present and when we acknowledge that God is present, then we drop what we’re doing and rejoice where
we are, no matter who is watching. For God is the one who knows how to bring life out of death. God is the one who knows
how to come into a darkened room and turn on the lights, surprising those inside, and bringing joy to all. (cf. Taylor,
in The Living Pulpit, October–December, 1996, p. 17)
Since joy is rooted in God and in God’s presence and since our longing for joy is a restlessness that is satisfied
only by God, it is therefore no wonder that Christmas is a time when joy overtakes so many—even Ebenezer Scrooge. For
Christmas celebrates God’s presence with us in human flesh. Christmas celebrates the coming into our world of this
unique “bundle of joy.” Christmas celebrates the birth of the baby Jesus, who is himself Emmanuel, God-with-us,
the incarnate presence of God. And when we acknowledge this as truth, we simply cannot contain ourselves. Our bodies
want to wriggle in joy, and we sing and dance.
Micki Bingham Esselstyn offers us a vivid image of human joy (in “Joy,” The Living Pulpit, October–December,
1996, p. 44): “Picture a little baby lying on her back who, upon seeing a favorite person or special toy, wiggles all
over, arms outstretched, legs happily kicking the air.…” Such delight as this, such body-shaking joy is what we adults,
too, can feel when, on Christmas Eve or any other day of the year, we catch sight of the God made known to us in the
face of Jesus.
More than two thousand years ago, near Bethlehem of Judea, certain shepherds in the fields were surprised by joy.
They went with haste to find the child lying in a manger, and, having found him, they returned home, glorifying and
praising God.
And this evening God wants all of us, too, to be surprised by joy and to embrace “the exuberant, wiggling, squealing,
affectionate child inside of each one of us” as we once again have this opportunity to encounter and acknowledge the
living embodiment of God’s image that is Jesus. (cf. Esselstyn, p. 45)
Well, akin to the joy C. S. Lewis felt whenever he called to mind his brother’s biscuit-tin garden, there’s a rush
of joy that never fails to come into my own heart whenever I hear or call to mind this one particular Christmas poem by
Ann Weems. It’s a short poem found in her book Kneeling in Bethlehem (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 198x,
p. 27), and it’s called “Godburst.” I pray that as I share it with you tonight it will create a rush of joy in your
hearts, too—perhaps even enough of a rush of joy to lead you, along with me, to wriggle like a little baby in response.
Listen, please.
“When the Holy Child is born into our hearts
there is a rain of stars
a rushing of angels
a blaze of candles
this God burst into our lives.
Love is running through the streets.”
Let us pray:
O Thou Joy of every longing heart, come to us, we pray, and fill us to overflowing with the Joy that is You. Amen.