"JOY: FROM THE INSIDE OUT"

As you recall that feeling of joy, I want you to note where you "feel" it. Find it, center on it, note it. Now...open your eyes. How many of you, who were able to call up the memory of a moment of joy, found that you "felt" it deep inside your body, emanating almost from a place at the center of your being?

That’s certainly always been my experience. Joy comes from a place deep within us. Happiness seems to jump from our heads to our hearts to our hands and then off it flies...fragile and fleeting at best. Pleasure walks the terrain of the skin and often only goes that deep. But joy...joy comes from deep within and dwells there – dormant at times but always alive...if we will let it be.

When I tried to recall a moment of joy, I immediately thought of two. And they were very different experiences. The first came last August in Orlando, Florida when several of us here attended our denomination’s Leadership Conference. At one of the evening worship services, the speaker and featured musician was a man named Ken Medema. Ken has been blind since birth, yet he is an extraordinarily talented keyboardist and song writer. His most acclaimed talent is his ability to have people stand up (unrehearsed, not "set-ups"), tell their story or some experience they’ve had and then he will sing a song – not a little ditty but a song, each one with multiple verses and a unique melody and style – based on what they’ve said. He did that at a morning worship service and it was awesome. But on this one evening, he mostly just talked and played and sang...a lot. And he got into a set of songs that combined lyrics about spirituality with a kind of Celtic, jazzy melody line and the driving beat of good dance music. It just grabbed a hold of me and, more to my surprise than anyone else’s I think, I spent about 40 minutes in the side aisle of the worship space we were in...dancing. Uninhibited, free, joyous! It was one of the most amazing times in worship I’ve ever had. Get ready, ‘cos I believe that in heaven we’re going to dance!

The other moment of joy I recall came just a couple of weeks ago. I was on my way to a class I’ve been taking at Eden Theological. It was snowing...just flurries, really, but very pretty to see. I was stopped at a red light, and I happened to glance up at the top of my windshield which is tinted slightly. The glass was cold enough that, as the flakes of snow landed, they stuck and didn’t melt immediately. I could see the individual shapes of every flake that was landing. Like the shapes you see in a kaleidoscope, I could see the lace and the points, the stars and the cotton fibers of the ice crystals. And I experienced joy.

Two very different kinds of experiences. Two different ways of expressing the joy. One was exuberant movement...the other quiet contemplation. But both, unmistakably, where moments of joy that came from somewhere deep within.

That’s how joy is. It comes from that place deep within us where God resides. Didn’t Jesus tell us long ago that the dominion of God is within us? Why did Jesus tell us that, in order to enter God’s realm, we must become like little children? Because children are in touch with that pure joy that comes from the presence of God within them.

If there’s one gift I would like to see us all receive this Christmas it would be that we unwrap that place of joy within us. That we discover...again or for the first time...that God does not come to us from without but from within.

Most of us spend all our time looking for happiness. The world teaches us to do that. We spend most of our waking moments being reminded in subtle – and not so subtle – ways that looks, money, prestige, power, a certain weight, a certain outfit, a certain vehicle, owning a house, having a partner, a better job, a pet or the right toothpaste will make us happy. Well, you tell me: has it worked yet?

Happiness...and for that matter, pleasure...are fragile and fleeting. They’re hard to find and harder to keep. Now unhappiness...that’s a little easier. In fact, for those of you who may have already determined in these few minutes that you cannot – and will not – discover joy in your lives, then let me help you out with something you can easily possess. Ala David Letterman , here’s the Top 10 List of ways to be unhappy:

#10. Make little things bother you; don’t just let them, make them!

#9. Lose your perspective on things, and keep it lost. Don’t put first things first.

#8. Get yourself a good worry – one about which you cannot do anything but worry.

#7. Be a perfectionist; condemn yourself and others for not achieving perfection.

#6. Be right, always right, perfectly right all the time. Be the only one who is right, and be rigid about your rightness.

The #5 way to be unhappy: Don’t trust or believe people, or accept them at anything but their worst and weakest. Be suspicious. Assume ulterior motives of others.

#4. Always compare yourself unfavorably to others, which is the guarantee of instant misery.

#3. Take personally, with a chip on your shoulder, everything that happens to you that you don’t like.

#2. Don’t give yourself wholeheartedly or enthusiastically to anyone or to anything.

And the #1 way to be unhappy: Make happiness the sole aim of your life.

However...if you are willing to accept that happiness will always be intermittent and that it’s a waste of the precious time and energy we’ve been given to pursue happiness alone, then there is something you can have -- something we can all have -- that no circumstances can ever take away...and that is joy.

The apostle Paul wrote about this permanent kind of joy in the reading we heard from his letter to the Philippian church. That whole book of Scripture is known as the "Epistle ( the letter) of Joy." Not because of circumstances, that’s for sure. Paul wrote those words from a prison cell where he was under arrest, and he wrote to a group of people who were living under the constant threat of persecution because of their faith. And yet, hear what he said to them: "Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, Rejoice." "The Sovereign is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything.... And the peace of God (which is really that inner wellspring of joy I’ve talked about), which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." Then at the end of the passage we heard today, Paul writes the sentence that – if you never memorize another piece of Scripture, memorize this one – "I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me."

You see, it is the spirit of Christ within us that enables us to have joy even in dire and difficult circumstances. It is the Spirit of Christ that dwells at that deep place within our beings that is the source of strength when we should have none, the source of love in the face of hatred, the source of kindness and goodness and gentleness in a world that works perpetually against such things and it is the source of pure and unending joy when we realize that, in Christ, we have something that nothing, not even death, can ever take away from us.

Jesus said it himself in the Gospel of John: "Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn...you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy the child brings. So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you."

The truth is that if we desire to have this unending wellspring of joy, the Spirit of Christ must be born within us. As Christmas approaches, we are reminded in a variety of ways, of the child Jesus born and laid in a manger a very long time ago. But I tell you today that Christ can be born within us and it won’t be just a one day a year affair.

The world tries to create the Spirit of Christmas from the outside in. Surely, if we see enough lights and buy enough gifts and consume enough sugar, we’ll get the Christmas spirit. The truth, of course, is that from those things alone we get tired and in debt and depressed...not necessarily in that order.

The true Spirit of Christmas -- which is joy -- comes only from within. And it can enter into the most unexpected places and circumstances. Consider this piece by someone names E. C. Baird:

"I am the Christmas Spirit –

I enter the home of poverty, causing palefaced children to open their eyes wide, in pleased wonder.

I cause the miser’s clutched hand to relax and thus paint a bright spot on his soul.

I cause the aged to renew their youth and to laugh in the old glad way.

I keep romance alive in the heart of childhood and brighten sleep with dreams woven of magic.

I cause eager feet to climb dark stairways with filled baskets leaving behind hearts amazed at the goodness of the world.

I cause the wayward soul to pause a moment in her wild, wasteful way and send to anxious love some little token that releases glad tears – tears which wash away the hard lines of sorrow.

I enter dark prison cells, reminding scarred humanity of what might have been and pointing forward to good days yet to be.

I come softly into the still, cold home of pain, and lips that are too weak to speak just tremble in silent, eloquent gratitude.

In a thousand ways, I cause the weary world to look up into the face of God, and for a little moment forget the things that are small and wretched.

I am the Christmas Spirit.

That is the Spirit of Christ – the true source of joy. J.O.Y. – Jesus occupying you. That is what is waiting to be born this Christmas: the Spirit of Christ in each of us...a joy that the world can never take away. Amen.

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