Joy to the World, even now

“Joy to the World, even now”

Rev. Laura Bogle

Luke 1: 39-45

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.  When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb.  And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.  And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?  For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.  And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

⁵⁶ And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

This time of year we hear “Joy to the World” being played at every turn and we have “Joy” up in lights on city streets and we get “Joyful Greetings” arriving with advertisements in the mail.  It’s an in-your-face kind of “JOY”—almost a command.  Be JOYFUL! – or else.  As if Joy is just something you are supposed to have in your back pocket, ready to whip out for the holidays.

As if JOY can be bought or sold, passed around like a trinket.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t find it that easy; this year I’m feeling a little cynical about that cheap kind of joy.

Where can we find a deeper and sustaining joy?

We have in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, the short account of Mary and Elizabeth.  I think it tells us something important about joy at Christmas-time.

Mary and Elizabeth, Two women who were dangerously pregnant, living in the margins of an unfriendly empire.

Elizabeth has lived her life in disgrace because she could not bear children.  Her husband Zechariah has a mystical experience at the temple and stops talking and here she now is, an old woman with a mute husband, and suddenly she is pregnant! 

And Mary, so young, and unwed.  Not only that, but she has been told by an angel that she is bearing a child who will be called “Son of the Most High.” 

Elizabeth: Strangely, dangerously pregnant. 

Mary: Scandalously, dangerously pregnant. 

We don’t really know how these two were feeling… Biblical accounts don’t spend much time on the emotions of pregnant women.  By rights, both these women could have been feeling small and scared and isolated, shrinking from the expectations of motherhood and angels looming over them. 

And yet, they are so powerful --

And yet, we get this glimpse of joy:

Mary, having been told by the angel that her relative Elizabeth is miraculously pregnant, sets out on her own and she goes to visit her. 

When Elizabeth heard Mary coming, before perhaps she had even seen her and embraced her, she has a bodily experience of connection, she is filled with the Holy Spirit.  She says “As soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.”

This joy is more than merely feeling happy at seeing a relative. 

This joy is a spontaneous and deep reaction from the center of her being.

This joy is a moment of recognition, of seeing and being seen. 

This joy is born out of the womb of creativity, that dark place of conception and growth, which is in all of us. 

And then Elizabeth blesses Mary, she blesses her creative power and her creation-in- progress--the fruit of her womb-- and she blesses her for believing in herself.

Elizabeth blesses Mary, loves her, at time when perhaps no other human does.   And the story says Mary stays with Elizabeth for three whole months. 

Now, who among us feels that kind of joy at the prospect of a relative coming to live with us for three months?

But here is where their joy arises – out of their creative solidarity with one another.  They did not shrink and they did not stay alone.  They are both working on risky projects, bringing children who will be liberators--John the Baptist and Jesus-- into the world of the Roman Empire, and they decide to stick with each other.

I love to imagine that time of solidarity… the two women, two dangerously pregnant women, one old, one young.  Living together, supporting each other.  Growing and changing together, blessing one another, despite being overshadowed by the unknown, despite their dangerous circumstances.

Mary and Elizabeth, in touch with their creative powers and God’s desires for them.  Mary and Elizabeth sharing with one another, not just to bring forth new life for the children they are carrying, but new life for themselves.

How can we do the same for each other?

Theologian Catherine Keller talks about the womb of the universe, “the depth of Godself” in which we all live and out of which the creative love of God emanates.  She says, “We might also call this creative love desire, or the divine passion.  Alfred North Whitehead had called it ‘Eros of the Universe.’”

There is a joy in experiencing creative love, love that brings forth new life, love that taps into our deepest desires, God’s deepest desires for us.

Audre Lorde—black woman, feminist, lesbian, cancer survivor, and poet-- called this kind of creative love “a self-connection shared.”   A self-connection shared—when I am in touch with my own deepest desires, and I share that with another—becomes a moment of joy.

Audre Lorde goes on to say that the “self-connection shared is a measure of the JOY which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling.  And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible....”

Joy itself is not something to be possessed, something we can just have at the ready when the carols and Christmas cards command it.  It is born of sharing with another.  Joy is also not something that lasts—it comes in moments of connection, and then is over.

I can’t imagine that the three months Mary spent with Elizabeth were non-stop Joy.  After all, there were chores to be done, there was a mute husband to take care of, there was the pain of being a religious minority in a time of persecution, maybe there was morning sickness, who knows.

BUT, as Audre Lorde reminds us, we can call on Joy.  We can live our lives remembering that it is possible to tap that Godly place of creative love.  We can live our lives remembering those moments when we have shared our deepest desires with one another.

This is not a sugary-sweet business, living our lives in this way, under the current day version of the Roman Empire...  An empire of gross inequality, of exclusion and domination of people of color and LGBTQ people, An empire that locks people out of health care for their bodies and minds; an empire where the disenfranchised and the desperate feel they have little choice but to pick up guns that are far too easy to obtain; an empire that values profits over the well-being of the planet and the health of our children.

It takes stamina and a commitment to call on Joy in the midst of an Empire that numbs us to our deep feeling for one another.

But we Unitarian Universalists know that the birth of hope can and does happen every day, and that we participate in the delivery.  We celebrate the birth of Jesus not as a singular event in time, but as symbolic of something that happens over, and over, and over.  Every time we join together to bring new love and life into this world, we are witness to joy and the birth of hope.  Every time the marginalized and the excluded stand in solidarity with one another and claim life, even in the face of empire, we are witness to joy and the birth of hope. 

Just as Mary and Elizabeth claimed their own lives with joy, and shared their own lives with blessing, let us do the same. 

Let us do some risky things to bring hope to the Empire.

Let us open our doors and share our lives with solidarity.

In the year ahead, let us be the ones who greet one another with a leap of joy inside, knowing our deepest connections, believing in one another, knowing what beauty and love and justice we may together bring to life in this world. 

May it be so, Merry Christmas, and Joy to the World.