Where is Joy?

Aug. 20, 2006

Karl Ruttan

Proverbs 9:1-6, Psalm 147, Ephesians 5:15-20, John 6:53-59
 
“Without joy what’s the point?  There has to be joy!”  Someone said this to be once and it really got my attention.  I guess it came in a week in which I wasn’t feeling particularly joyful.

So I got to thinking- Where is joy?  Everybody wants it but it seems so hard to find.  Where is your bliss?  Do you anyone that is truly joyful?  Are you?

I thought of someone I know who is truly joyful.  Although struggling with a life threatening disease, she has an inner peace and communicates hope to others.  People want to be with her because she has a joyful hopeful center.

Oddly we do everything to find true happiness.  We look here there and everywhere.  And, of course, we look for joy in all the wrong places.  We look for joy in places that give us temporary enjoyment but no true satisfaction.  It is so easy to seek joy in alcohol or drugs or sex or shopping or success or –well you get the point the list, goes on an on and on. But none of these things give us true joy.

We know that we look for joy, for peace, in all the wrong places for happiness, for joy, for true peace.  We seek joy in things that give us an illusion of joy but no true peace and satisfaction.  I know that you could tell me what truly gives your life true satisfaction.  You know the joys that endure.  And you know what robs life from you - how you squander your energy in activity that gives short lived satisfaction.  No wonder when advertising makes millions telling us that if only we used this product or bought this gadget than we would be beautiful, popular, successful, and, course, happy.

If I were to ask you what it would take in your life to make you happy you would probably play the “if only” game.  If only I had a better job, if only I had a partner, if only I  my spouse would treat me better, if only I had more money.”  We get caught up in thinking that happiness has to do with what is out there- and not what is in here.  In our heart of hearts we know that is not true- and yet somehow we all get caught- chasing after the wrong things.

I mentioned  Pema Chodron last week, the Buddhist nun, interviewed by Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason. She gives a helpful illustration.  She says, life can sometimes be like crossing the hot sand to get to the sea.  Our feet hurt and we suffer.  So sometimes we act like we could solve everything if we just could take leather and wrap up the sand and the beach and everything hot to protect us.  So we think about the “if only’s.” Well to be happy I’d get rid of that person who bugs me at work.  I stop my mother-in-laws complaining.  I get rid of that women’s annoying perfume.  I would get the room a little cooler.  And on and on and on.  And so  we desire to manage our world to the nth degree.  Than it would be great- but than we would be living in a cocoon with no tension, no heart, no struggle.  She suggests that rather than put the leather around the world- we must put it around our feet and make shoes.  Or in other words- instead of looking out on the world and seeing what is wrong with it that keeps me from being happy- we look inward into our own hearts and start there.

Today’s lessons are lessons in wisdom.  Wisdom is true joy.  Wisdom is living for that which is good and truly satisfies.  Proverbs says: “ Wisdom is better than jewels and all that you may desire cannot compare with her.   

The lesson from Proverbs today is about a wonderful banquet that wisdom has prepared for you and for me.  It is true joy.  Wisdom in the Old Testament- is the wisdom and order and purpose of God.  The book of Proverbs describes wisdom - I hope you will go home and read it.  Wisdom was from the beginning with God.  She is God’s agent of creation. Wisdom is a she in proverbs!  John’s Gospel took this notion of wisdom and called it the Logos- the Word- the purpose of creation- who was made flesh in Jesus.

Wisdom has prepared for us a heavenly banquet.  Wisdom calls us to joy.  We are invited to fulfillment, to life.  La cheim!  “Leave aside immaturity and your foolish ways come and enjoy true life,” Wisdom calls us.

This invitation is what Jesus called the abundant life- this is life in its fullest.  Life lived in joy.  Religion has sometimes made everything so serious, so moralistic- we forget that the true life of faith is joy. 

The religious quest is at heart a seeking for joy, for felicity- as one of my favorite poets - the 16tth century Anglican poet Thomas Treherne puts it.  He writes: “When I came to the country, and being seated among silent trees, and meads and hills, had all my time in mine own hands, I resolved to spend it all, whatever it cost me, in search of happiness, and to satiate that burning thirst which nature had enkindled in me from my youth.”   And he discovered that God had create all the abundance of creation for him to enjoy.  He discovered happiness in seeing the blessings of God.

Each of us has that burning thirst for joy- for love, for peace.  That is what God wants for us- that is the invitation of wisdom.  St. Augustine called it beautitudo, Aquinas called it True Happiness.  And yet we think faith and religion are not about true joy but about buckling under.

We all want the fulfilled life- the truly joyful life.  This life is a life of contentment.  It is seeing the beauty and joy now in the world.  Not in pretending it is other but embracing life in its fullness and true reality..  It is looking into our heart and being true to ourselves- being true to our deepest self it to be true to God.

Jesus, the Logos, invites us to joy.  It is abundant life.  His life is the sign of life in abundance- giving ones self away.  You want abundant life- you want happiness?  You who eat my flesh and drink my blood will have abundant life in all eternity.  And furthermore unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man you cannot have live within you. 

When I read these words in light of wisdom, suddenly they took on new meaning.  I saw it for the invitation to abundant life or joy.  To eat of the flesh of Jesus is to step into his self giving love.  It is the giving up of self for love for life for God.  It is letting go of all of our foolish ego demands and saying yes to God yes to our heart, yes to life.  If we cannot do this, we will not have life within us.  If we cannot let go and let God, if we can not give ourselves over to love in this world, we will not have life.

When we really attend to our deepest yearning, our deepest desires, we are yearning for God, we are yearning for the good and holy.  Partaking of this Eucharist, which means Thanksgiving, is our partaking of God’s grace in our lives.  It is satisfying our deepest hunger for something more which is ultimately God.  Holy Eucharist  is the outward and visible sign of abundant life which we seek so desperately.  It reminds us to put first things first, to put away all of our stupid distractions and live for God.   The way of true joy is the calling on our heart to love.  It is the calling on our heart for God.  It is coming to the banquet.  Susan Muto one of my teachers at Duquesne puts it this way.  In a chapter called Seeking deeper peace she writes: “The more we push ourselves and others, the less we see good results.  Instead of being content as a matter of course, we experience pockets of peace here and there but relatively little lasting harmony or inner tranquility.  We begin to realize that every attempt we make to attain total happiness cutoff from our deeper self and its transcendent source, leads to disappointment.  Life is ebb and flow, joyful and tragic, honest and deluding.  Only when we accept this alternation can we rest in the peace that passes understanding.”

True happiness is a gift from God -it is seeing grace, possibility everywhere.  Here is a story told by Rachel Naomi Remen about choosing life.

Let me close with a story of choosing life. 

A women was referred to Dr. Remen who she counseled after her husband died of cancer.  Many months after his death, he was barely functioning.  She would go to work but had no energy for life.  She had been treated for depression but it had little effect.  After several sessions with Dr. Remen she used some images about how she was “circling the wagons, and sill circling.”  When she drew a picture she showed a snake swallowing its tail.  Later Dr. Remen discovered that this is a classic symbol of survival. 

Dr. Remen writes: “At her next visit I began to talk to her about survival.  Did she feel that she was able to survive?  Meaning to ask her whether or not she was able to survive a world without Dan, I heard myself say instead, “Are you willing to survive in a world without Dan?”  Shaking her head no, for the first time she began to cry.” 

She went on to describe the inner loss, the emptiness and her despair at going on.  Dr. Remen told her that she could choose to continue to “circle the wagons” or she could choose another way.

Dr Remen continues: “Two weeks later she returned filled with excitement, saying that she had had a dream.  In this dream she was sitting on the ground in the company of a circle of Indians.”  These were the elders, who asked her about the death of her beloved husband.  With the elders  she reviewed the pictures of her life together with Dan.  She looked at every moment.  And then when he died the pictures stopped.  And the elders tried to take Dan away from her. 

“Then she knew that with the terrible strength with which she had stopped life to prevent losing Dan, she could choose to let him go.  That she was strong enough to live life.  That it was  time to give him back.”

In her dream the scene shifted, she was carrying Dan’s lifeless body.  She carried him to the edge of a cliff and than she lifted him and let him go.  Like a bird he flew away.

Dr. Remen writes; “Freedom may come not from being in control of life but rather a willingness to move with the events of life, to hold on to our memories but let go of the past, to chose, when necessary, the inevitable.  We can become free at any time.”