Sermons

September 25 2005

When was the Last Time You Felt Joy?

Reverend Dr Cheri DiNovo

Perhaps I’ll start out with a quote. This is from George Bernard Shaw; "This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose being recognized by your self as a mighty one. The being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap, the being a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

Have you ever had one of those days when you ran out of deodorant and then you left the house and got on the bus and realized that everyone on that over crowded bus had also run out of deodorant? O r have you ever had one of those months where you’re using your line of credit to pay off your Visa which you used to pay off your Master Card? Then, guess what, welcome to the human race!

Whenever we have Moses and Jesus in the same lectionary reading I always think of this joke, bear with me through it: Moses and Jesus went out fishing together and they started to chat to each other about how great it used to be when they both performed miracles. "Why don’t we, for old time’s sake, perform a miracle again?" suggested Moses. Jesus agreed and added, "Why don’t I walk on water? That was popular." So Jesus got out of the boat and proceeded to take a step or two and then promptly sunk like a rock. Moses quickly dragged him back into the boat, wet and gasping for air. "What happened?" cried Jesus. Moses responded, "Maybe it’s that the last time you tried that you didn’t have holes in your feet." Even Jesus had days ‘like that’.

You know I think we Christians desire one thing. If I can try to understand what brought you to Church this Sunday when you could have been doing a whole lot of other things, I think that perhaps what brought you here is that you really want joy in your life. Now joy is not happiness. Joy is bliss.

I used to think that money might buy me love, that it would buy me all the things that make for a loving and fun life. It would buy me travel. It would buy me good meals out. It would buy me culture. It would buy me books. It would buy me movies. And yes, perhaps it would buy me the best possible mate, or at least put me in a really good bargaining position for one. I had a lot of money and I had a lot of things but I didn’t feel a lot of joy.

Bill Gates is the wealthiest person in North America right now and the people who own Wal-Mart take up five of the other nine spots on the top ten list and I wonder how many of them have a lot of joy in their lives? I wonder how many of them actually experience bliss. After all, that’s what we are created for. Now that might sound kind of strange. Yet we are created for absolute, incomprehensible bliss. That’s what God wants for each one of us, not just once or twice in life but that we should be like fish swimming in bliss. That’s what God needs for us to feel, after all look at all the trouble God went to in creating this whole planet, life and everything about it. Why would God do that if not to provide us with an incredible time?

The passages today and the theme of today are really about moaning, complaining and grumbling. Here are people who have Jesus in front of them, who have the divine in front of them. They can reach out and touch the divine. The divine is looking at them and they are grumbling! Here’s Moses, the one who took them out of slavery. He’d just provided them with a heavenly feast and what do they find to complain about, ‘Where’s the water to go with it?’ They’re complaining with Moses in front of them! There are days that we complain, after all it’s human to do so. Even though we too have the divine right in front of us and we can reach out and touch it any time we want.

The world says that the only way we can feel bliss is through hedonism yet all you get from hedonism is a head ache the morning after. I don’t care what it is you try, you can list all the possibilities, and all of them will simply give you a headache the morning after. The Churches and the faith communities have done something even worse. They’ve told us that the only way to feel bliss and joy is to go in for asceticism, which is the opposite of hedonism, which is to say, renounce all bodily pleasure, renounce hedonism and then you’ll find true joy and true bliss.

I think it’s kind of strange the way our world has moved in the last generation. We’ve gone from thinking Buddhists worshipped statues to another grievous error about religions from the east. We’ve forgotten all our good training as protestants around the selling of indulgences and the working our way to God. You can’t work your way there and you can’t buy your way there yet sometimes now we think that if we could just get that full lotus position down, enlightenment might be ours. Or if we sit and (it’s suffering believe me I’ve done it) and stare at a wall and meditate for eight hours, then we’ll know bliss! Then we’ll know joy. This is a kind of orientalism that’s ultimately patronizing to the religions of the east. We don’t get it. One of the best pieces of information that I’ve come across regarding Tibetan Buddhists is that they love to drink. The Dalai Lama apparently likes Scotch. There you go, human! Even the most holy of people – human!

Personally I don’t like or trust ‘holy’ people, perhaps because I’m so un-holy. Who’s really holy anyway? I’ll tell you who’s holy in this congregation. George is holy and when he does his liturgical dances in the aisles, I see God. Andreas, who has Down’s Syndrome, singing the Back Street Boys, that’s holy! And you’ll never find any two examples closer to God. And you, all of you, are holy. If you look in the mirror you see the face of God. You don’t have to sit in a full lotus and you don’t have to meditate for eight hours. You are created holy by a loving God who loves you.

So I’m sorry on behalf of all the faith institutions who told you anything different because there’s nothing you have to do to get close to God. It is what God did for us that brings God close. When I introduced communion last week I said, "This table is open to everyone, it’s not just open to ‘good’ people because there aren’t any. It’s open to real people, everybody. The reason that it is open to everyone has nothing to do with what we do or don’t do and everything to do with what Jesus Christ did for us. God finds us.
Let me tell you about the Divine and going on a Divine hunt. The more you look for it the more you’ll find it. It’s everywhere. Until that moment of bliss becomes a half hour of bliss becomes an hour of bliss becomes joy, real joy. What does real joy look like? It doesn’t look like an absence of suffering. You have to have suffering to have joy. You have to have the cross to have resurrection. If you didn’t know suffering how would you know joy? So by all means when you suffer, suffer mightily. When you feel joy, feel joy in the divine mightily.

Yesterday I hosted a pre-marriage class which usually has 6-10 couples in it and partly because of the time of year and partly because of the workings of the Spirit, only had two. One couple was a psychiatrist and an emergency room Doctor, the other couple were recovering addicts on social assistance. In pre-marriage you share and talk about the stuff of your lives. I said to them at the end of the day, "Where else on earth would this miracle have occurred? That you four people would sit together in a room and share your lives together." Don’t we all get that this is a miracle?

Every day in my ministry I experience miracles. I look out upon them right now. Every time I pray, my prayers are answered. I have never prayed for anything that I did not receive an answer for and usually the answer was what I prayed for. This is bliss, absolute joy. This is bliss and joy, the stuff of our lives.

It’s not just about the birth of a baby, the wedding day, it’s also about the funeral. It’s not just about the water of baptism, it’s about the water of Katrina raging, scary, even there you’ll find joy and bliss. Miracles are not just about another time and place, the historical Jesus. Miracles are about the risen Christ who is here right now, who is sitting right next to you, who is in the pews today, who you can reach out and touch despite all the complaints and all the arguments. This Christ is real. Miracle, joy, bliss!

I’m going to quote from an under acknowledged author:

"So dear friends, in the manner of our faith’s epistles, I would have to say that I survived humbled. I will never be the same. It is not easy to invite difference into your life and the life of your Church. It is not always joyful or liberative or rewarding or enriching. It brings suffering. It also brings the closest experience to heaven that we will ever have in this life.

I picture the women huddled around the cross and then waiting outside the empty tomb. Was the cross not horror? Was the road to Emmaus not ecstasy? I can be sure of only one reality in this Church and that is death. I can guarantee only one experience and that is bliss." (Qu(e)erying Evangelism: Cheri DiNovo, 2005)