Luke 1:24-45
After those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion. She said, “This is what the Lord has done for me in this time, when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.” In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. 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.”
There was a time when Grace was maybe 2 years old. Dave and I were walking along in
Williamsburg on one of those fall evenings when dusk starts at 5 pm. At some point along the
way, Dave said, “Click.” I am taking a mental snapshot, he said. Maybe it was the yellow coming
from the windows or the smell of leaves and distant chimney smoke or the sight of a child with
curls bopping up and down, but he was deeply touched by joy. I held the silence with him, which
is borderline miraculous for me. Usually I follow up, “Yes! What specifically do you love right
now? Is it curls? Must be the leaves. Stay right there, let me snap a real picture.” Sudden
movements like that might be trying to pin down joy and keep it, but they tend to frighten it
away instead. So, that night I just enjoyed, and joy, shy woodland creature that it is, lingered with
us for a while before darting off.
As I consider the moments in my life that were the most joyful, it struck me that joy is a
gift, not a pursuit.
So naturally, I spent the week in pursuit of joy. Studying how joy shows up in the
Scripture and history and theology. Joy definitions. Joy think-pieces. Theologian Ann
Richardson wrote, “Joy in Greek is chairo. The ancient Greeks defined it as the culmination of
being and the good mood of the soul. Chairo is something only found in God. She continues,
“[Joy] isn’t a beginner’s virtue; it comes as the culmination. And the opposite of joy is not
sadness, but fear.” The opposite of joy is not sadness, but fear.
That makes so much sense in light of today’s Scripture. The angel Gabriel greets Mary
with words of God’s favor and God’s presence, but at first, she couldn’t receive it. According to
Luke, she was much perplexed, which is the Biblical phrase for completely freaked out. So
Gabriel said, “Do not be afraid,” which is always what angels say. It seems like joy can coexist
with sorrow, pain, grief, and uncertainty, but fear is a joy blocker. So, until you address the fear,
joy has no opening.
If joy has been hard to come by lately, instead of asking, “Why am I so sad or exhausted
or much perplexed?” it might be better to ask, “What am I fearing?” Fear is extremely
contagious, so it might be wise to start asking ourselves more probing questions like we did
during Covid, “Have you experienced shortness of breath or chills after reading the news?
Difficulty sleeping or flashes of sudden anger? Have you lost your sense of taste so that nothing
shocks you anymore? Have you been around panicked people in the last 24 hours?” If the answer
is yes, fear might be blocking your joy.
Once the angel Gabriel named the fear, it seemed to subside. Naming fear has a way of
making it smaller.
Once fear was out of the way, Mary was overcome with joy. She became part of an
ineffable experience of holiness, one of the most mystical connections in all of history. She was
to become the mother of the Son of God. Mary trusted this promise even though words could not
come close to explaining it. The closest thing she could do was break out into song. And we’ll
hear that next song next week.
This relates to something researcher Matthew Kuan Johnson wrote that surprised me.
There is innate vulnerability about joy. People find experiences of joy difficult to articulate. The
very nature of joy pushes the boundaries of our ability to communicate about lived experience
via spoken language. Spontaneous weeping is part of joy. Later in the story, Elizabeth’s baby
leapt in her womb. We think joy is in our mind, but it is usually felt in our body. The body knows
something that simply can’t be captured in words. Another reason there is vulnerability about joy
is because it often arises from moments we know will not happen again. The moment in a
wedding when the couple sees each other for the first time. The graduation slideshow when they
always play I Hope You Dance. Those are moments when joy and grief sit right next to each
other in the church pews or auditorium chairs, and we sniffle along. This beautiful sacred
moment won’t happen again. Joy like a string of Christmas lights connects back to every joy we
have known and plugs us directly into God. It’s supposed to work like this. As C.S. Lewis wrote,
joy is the serious business of heaven.
But joy also connects us to joy with other people. You may know the phrase, Shared joy
is joy doubled. After this sublime encounter with the angel, Mary sprinted over the hills (I don’t
know how a newly pregnant person did that without lying down every 10 minutes.) But she
dashed over the hill to her be with her 6 month pregnant cousin, Elizabeth, the only one who
could possibly get it.
They hugged each other with a defiant joy and that continued to give fear no entry point.
I say this because sometimes fear tries to sneak back in after joy has begun. We begin dress-
rehearsing tragedy. We slump into foreboding. This love is too wonderful, what will I do if it
ends? This baby just learned to walk, what if he falls harder than I can fix? In the Biblical story,
we know the path of Elizabeth and Mary’s sons, John the Baptist and Jesus. Paths of incredible
courage and meaning and redemption but also horrible suffering. But these women and the
Biblical narrative did not let fear consume them.These women blessed each other and blessed
this moment and blessed the belief they both needed to have and as a result their joy grew
stronger. Author Brene Brown wrote that the antidote to foreboding joy is gratitude. When joy
meets gratitude, it creates an upword spiral. I love that phrase! Gratitude acts as a sealant so that
joy is not infiltrated by fear.
There is a preschool-aged child who makes a point to hug me every single time she
comes. She’ll say, “I just love you so much.” And my heart leaps inside my chest. Then just
when I am overcome with sentiment, she’ll say something completely different, “I am going to a
restaurant today. I have new shoes. My birthday is in 2 weeks.” And then she’ll hop away.
Children are usually the best joy instructors, and while that is good to know in general, it
also teaches me something profound about what God is up to in our world. God supremely
desires joy for all of us. Jesus said that, “I have come that my joy might be in you and your joy
might be complete.” Even though angels proclaimed joy from the heavens, humans that we are,
we could not receive it fully that way. Even though all of creation from sunrises to ocean waves
to Carolina wrens proclaim joy, humans that we are, we could not receive it fully that way either.
So, the wonder of the Advent story, is that God broke through our defenses, all the systems that
adults have created to protect ourselves from danger but that end up depriving us of joy, and
entered this world as a baby. To inhabit the vulnerability of joy. To subvert the limitations of our
language to access the full ancient knowing of our body. To bypass our tendency to go it alone
and send us headlong into each other’s arms where joy doubles. And to disarm us from the inside
out, to pick the lock of all we have deemed impossible, with the tiny fingers of a child, and set us
free. For nothing will be impossible with God.
Amen.