The Power of Joy

 

Text: Matthew 1:18-25

Focus: Joy

Function: to help people enjoy the Christmas season.

¹⁸Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹Her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. ²⁰But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” ²²All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

²³“Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son,
    and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” ²⁴When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife ²⁵but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.

Good morning and welcome to Advent four, the contemplation of what Joy means to us this Christmas season.

I am sorry that the text that I choose for today was not a text with a command for us to rejoice, but rejoicing is what we do when we express the feeling or emotion of joy. We started out Advent focusing on hope, then we switched to peace, and then we switched to Love and today we are finishing the four with Joy.

And as I was preparing this, I realized that all four of these themes can be classified as an emotion, or a reaction to, or progenitor of, different emotions.

I find the concept to be divine. I find it incarnate.

What I mean is, when I see the four themes of advent tied to emotion and feeling, I realize that God is calling us to a state of being.

Be hopeful. Be peaceful. Be loving. Be joyful.

Romans 2: 14-16 tells us that God has given the Spirit of God to the world entire.

The Spirit of God dwells inside of us to draw us close to God, to help us trust God, and to give us the power to love others as Jesus taught us.

The Spirit of God moves us.

It is part of our being. And it connects us with the divine. When we experience Hope, Peace, Love and Joy, we are experiencing the moving and the power of the Holy Spirit of God in our lives.

These four elements seem to me to comprise what we call the Christmas Spirit.

In the spirit of Christ. Not the Holy Spirit of Christ, but you know the idiom “In the spirit of” which means the tradition of, so, In the Spirit of Christmas we intentionally take time to stop and experience the feelings and emotions of hope, peace, love and Joy.

As I mentioned, rejoicing is the action expressed by the emotion of joy.

I find it fitting that we sort of begin, or have a precursor to Christmas with Thanksgiving. Because gratitude and thankfulness, taking the time to celebrate what God has done is a form of worship because together we take the time to have and experience the joy we have.

What good is it to be joyful if we don’t allow ourselves to enjoy it? That may seem impossible, be joyful, but don’t enjoy it is a contradiction. SO, that isn’t what I mean.

What I mean is that there is oftentimes a lot of reasons for us to be joyful and we refuse to allow ourselves the luxury, or the hope of joy.

Some people are clinically depressed, and speaking about how we are supposed to be joyful just makes it harder for them because they do not have the resources to experience the joy that is normal when people allow themselves, what I call, the luxury of joy.

Why is joy a luxury?

Because when we are experiencing joy, when we are rejoicing, we are living in the moment.

What that means is that we are not living in the fear for the future, God, we believe, is loving and benevolent and cares about even the little sparrow that might fall from the sky.

Christmas is that time of year when we stop to celebrate all that is good, moral and loving.

I say we STOP to do it. We take the time. We are intentional. We are intentional about the Christmas Spirit being reflected in our lives and in our relationships with each other.

I guess it is too bad that we have to stop to do it. Perhaps what it means for us to be Christians is for us to practice the Christmas Spirit all year long and remember to react to everyone as if we are having the best day of our lives and we want the same for them.

We all wish the Christmas Spirit was with us all year long. And it is, if we choose for it to be.

And again, taking the time to reflect and experience joy draws us closer to that Christmas Spirit all year long.

I mentioned how some people cannot relate to the four themes of Advent because they are clinically depressed.

I believe the promise that Jesus came to bring us to an abundant life. I used to think that if I had enough faith, I would not be depressed and would be able to experience joy.

That wasn’t the case. There is no judgment in this theme of Advent that we express and experience our joy as an act of worship because it demonstrates our faith and trust in the provision of God.

If we can’t do that because of depression we need to understand that depression is a medical condition, not spiritual.

I was raised singing this song, At the Cross where I first saw the light and the burden of my heart rolled away. He is talking about the joy of salvation and the experience of having the feeling that our sins have been forgiven by the grace of God. It brings joy when we are connected with God. One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is joy. (Also love and peace.)

But in the chorus we sang the line, “And now I am happy all the day.”

I can attest that I didn’t feel happy all the time.

And again, sometimes I think too much and that lead me to doubt if I was even saved by grace.

But it is important to remember that depression is a medical condition and not a spiritual condition.

There are lots of reasons for depression. Mine has to do with a combination of a traumatic assault when I was 11 and a traumatic brain injury that I suffered when I was 18.

Imagine the joy I felt when I found out that it wasn’t a spiritual condition that lead me to depression.

I remember that while pastoring a church in Grand Rapids Michigan and Kathy was still living here in the Dayton area I was listening to the song “Pass me Not” and the artist cries out in the song; “Save Me.”

It is a cry from the soul, the cry of faith to the living God. And I remember the impact of praying that prayer and telling God that I needed deliverance.

And I had a mini stroke that day which lead to a complete breakdown and I thought I was done with the ministry.

But I didn’t realize that God was doing something for me. God was answering my prayer. And I was correctly diagnosed, finally, and was able again, to get the help I needed.

And all of that lead me here to be your pastor and I believe that God has a plan for all of us here at Painter Creek.

The healing came when God showed me there is no shame in depression and lead me out.

I rejoice in that. God heals us Spirit, Soul, Mind and body.