Cheryl Walters and Earl Petit were singing a stunning version of "O Holy Night." I mean free-flowing-tears-among-the-congregation stunning. It was that beautiful. I was sitting up on the pulpit dias behind our singers, a perfect vantage point to watch the emotion swirl and roll through the pews.
Third Sunday of Advent means I was about to preach a sermon on joy. As I sat there looking out on the people with whom I've ministered and to whom I have preached for 14 years, I started calling up some of the sacred, private moments into which I have been welcomed:
- my dear, lovely friend who has embraced her too-soon widowhood as a challenging, sometimes-solitary adventure, and whose homily when the grief was so fresh two Easters ago - on joy as something for which we must decide to reach and work - still sticks with me every day,
- the widower facing his first Christmas without the physical presence of his remarkable, Spirit-filled wife
- the beautiful, fun and friendly couple who are silently going together through a profound grief quite similar to one Teresa and I once experienced,
- the man who went two years powerless and unemployed before suddenly finding potential employers beating down his door,
- the great, great grandmother,
- the sister who suffered mightily convincing her mother to leave the homestead she loves for a safer environment.
So many people. So many cycles of tragedy and triumph, all together in a moment of deep, profound beauty. A thrill of hope. A weary world rejoices.
"Merry Christmas" doesn't begin to cover it, does it? Joy is something so hard-won and all-encompassing. It warms us to the core through some of the coldest of human experiences. It doesn't whistle past graveyards or drown out sighs and tears with staged laughter. Joy is planted firmly in what is and who we are.
In that moment, I saw an entire congregation make the conscious decision to reach for joy. For some, I knew, it took heroic effort. God bless them.
Merriment distracts. Joy completes.
Please don't settle for a merry Christmas. Reach for joy.
