M. Suzanne Terry

“Today is the Sunday of joy.”

This is the first thing the pastor said this morning in his sermon. I usually do my daily Advent activity at night, so I had forgotten that this is the week we focus specifically on joy in the liturgy. All throughout the service on Zoom, there seemed to be an emphasis on seeking it out that carried over from the annual meeting we held the hour before. This was a hard year to recap and put a tidy bow on, but it was easy to find joy in these people with whom I worship, who avoid neither hard truths nor practical, hopeful solutions, who have patiently and faithfully made all the adjustments we’ve asked of them this year and keep showing up online and responding with grace and exuberant generosity.

I know I talk about my church and mention faith in passing, but I don’t say I’m a Christian a lot because wow, the baggage. It’s a lot to unpack. Part of that baggage is the pull of the prosperity gospel that is popular in many circles, particularly in our culture. The name-it-and-claim-it, ask-and-you-shall-receive, vending machine Jesus where you put in a prayer and walk away #blessed. The “you just need to pray harder” message. And the inevitable flip side of the coin that quips if there is a God, then why is the vending machine so broken? Why is the world the way it is and why do bad things happen to good people (or for that matter, why do good things happen to bad people)? If you’ve been hammered with these messages, it can be hard to find joy even when it’s the theme of the day.

To be fair, this sentiment doesn’t come out of nowhere. “Ask and you shall receive” wasn’t lifted off a bumper sticker; it’s straight out of the gospels. And it’s got backup:
– If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, I will answer and heal their land.
– If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you can ask what you will and it will be done.
– My God shall supply all your needs according to the riches in Christ Jesus (riches which, of course, the Bible teaches are unfathomably abundant or even limitless).

There’s a whole lot of “If A then B” going on in the scriptures.

Fortunately, this isn’t the whole story. Good news for me, because if it were, I’d be firmly in the second camp, unable to believe in a god who chooses to withhold resources and dole them out stingily based on a whim or performance or prayerful hoop-jumping. I’m interested in the scandalously extravagant God who pours out the wealth without feeling the insecure need to micromanage what we do with it (overbearing, controlling father metaphors? No, thank you.). My faith means seeing other people as the very image of God. This, too, is risky, because sometimes we people act like garbage, and that does not reflect well on any deity who would have us believe they are love.

But when I look for it, I get a glimpse of joy in actions born of that unfathomable abundance that we often try to keep locked up as only something God can access in order to avoid our own responsibilities to each other – to set captives free, to right every wrong, to feed and clothe and house and heal. It’s in every person. We don’t always see it or act accordingly and thus *gestures broadly* But I believe it’s there.

I contain unfathomable abundance. You contain unfathomable abundance.

This has been a hard weekend that followed a hard week (month…year…decade?). Seeking and finding joy has been and remains a difficult task. But yesterday, there were hours spent online with friends, sometimes talking but mostly just hanging out in the ASMR of some of us baking, some of us making art, some of us writing. And there is a church that doesn’t require me to sit quietly or to stuff everything and everyone I love into a box but instead encourages me to keep speaking up. And there are local activists, artists, and business owners who bond together to ensure mutual thriving and to bring our little corner of the world closer to what it would look like if all were true and right. And there are baked goods and rosewater that show up at my front door. And cards that come in the mail. And coffee. And candlelight.

Hello, joy. There you are.

I’m writing about chasing joy for the 31 days of December. Click here to see the whole list.