Joy in the Valley
Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.
Wow, thanks you guys. Welcome everyone. I am actually pleasantly surprised. I see though we must have a lot of Minnesotans in the room. What a good turnout. I literally thought I'd be saying, hey, you should clap for yourself if you showed up today, but we got a full house, so I don't need to do that. Clap for yourself. (Audience Applauding) I think we need to check around with Justin. For Justin. (Audience Applauding) We should be cheering for him. He has been very brave stepping into it boldly.
Hey, it's good to be together on this cold morning, but it's nice and warm in here as we sit together in the pews. And like Maggie said, we're in the third week of Advent and we're talking about joy. And in this Advent season when we're reminded to slow down and pause a little bit, this season where we're anticipating and preparing, reflecting, I think somewhere inside of us, there's always this sort of longing. When we pause long enough to reflect, there's a longing. A longing for maybe something meaningful in our busy day-to-day lives. A longing for reality to be maybe a little less terrible than it seems like it is. A longing for a hope for things to be made right.
But in this season of waiting, pausing, paying attention, I think the beauty is is that sometimes we get a glimpse. We get a glimpse of the light of God. And in those glimpses of light, we experience hope and love, that hope and love we have in Christmas. And we experience the joy, a joy that gives us life. Our Advent series right now is our sermon series is on Psalm 23…
[to her adult children sneaking into the front row] Welcome, you latecomers! (Laughing) These are all my family members, just heads up. (Laughing) That's what you get, a little bit of shame goes a long way. No, no, no, just kidding, just kidding. I'd never shame you people.
Where was I now? We are in Psalm 23. (Laughing) You might wanna try a few minutes earlier. (Laughing) We are in, see joy is happening already. It is happening, the Holy Spirit is moving. We are in Psalm 23 for our Advent sermon series. And I'd love for you to take a listen, closely to this recording:
Psalm 23. Okay, so can you talk loud like this? Okay, say, "The Lord is my shepherd." My Lord is my shepherd, I lack ‘nuffin. He makes me rise out in a new pathway. He leads me beside the water. He was precious in my soul. He got me along with the path for his namesake. And you may know, I walk through the dark with flowers. I see no evil, but I see you are with me. You're watching this down. They can't fix me. You protect a table for me. I have places in my enemies. And I'm a headless wheel. I cut over flowers. Show your goodness, the world, and follow me. All my days are my wish. And I dwell in the house of the world. For ever.
Whoo! (Laughing)
About five years ago, we were in that season of COVID, and we were doing our sermon series online, most of it. The last maybe four of a six week sermon series. And my oldest grandson, Soren, who's now eight, he was probably three-ish years old, and he did that recording for us. And what I love about it is, is it reminds me of joy. Because what is it about kids that bring so much joy? It's those little voices. It's the way they see the world. It's the way they live their life.
And I think it's a perfect introduction to this conversation about joy. Now I'll tell you, when I first looked at the text, I'm like, wait a second. I gotta weave joy into this text that you'll hear in a moment. But then I was thinking about Advent, and the way that Advent always arrives, right? In that season where the days are shorter, the nights are longer. And that Advent comes to us actually in this season of darkness. Where sometimes our lives are the both and of good and hard. Joys and burdens, uncertainty, weariness.
But that's the beauty of Advent, is that it doesn't pretend that everything is bright and easy….[to her oldest son] Come on in, other son. (Audience Laughing) Oh, anyway. I get no respect for my own family. But, oh my.
As I said, the beauty of Advent is that it doesn't pretend. It does not pretend that life is all good, that it's always rosy. So we are in Psalm 23, verses four. And what the beauty of that is, is it names that truthfulness. And here we go. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil. For you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. The psalmist is not reflecting on the truth of darkness. He's proclaiming the truth of the shepherd.
Likewise, Advent. Advent doesn't deny the valley. Advent doesn't deny the darkness. Advent simply declares, God is with us. And that truth, that we're not alone, that opens the door, no matter what our circumstances are, it opens the door to joy. And in that way, joy is oxygen for us. It doesn't erase the hard things, it helps us breathe through those hard things. It helps us in the road ahead. It helps us not just to survive hardness, but actually to sustain our lives in the midst of it.
I'd love for you all to just take a moment, think about your own stories. And where are those moments of joy in your stories? Just think about that for a second. I'm gonna add this, how about in those seasons of difficulty, of challenge, of suffering? Where has God shown up through something, somewhere, through someone? This maybe brought you a moment of joy.
This past week, I had lunch with an old friend. My friend Claire, we've been friends for decades. She has a daughter, my daughter Annie's age. We've known each other since our girls were two years old. And during lunch, she was sharing a story. Her breast cancer from almost 20 years ago had come back, come back in her bones and her lungs last summer. And she was telling me the story about how discouraged, fearful, lost she felt. Imagine that is how you would feel. And on her first day to chemo, she was getting her treatment down at the Mayo. Her husband was driving her down. It was early morning, it was dark. And she said, "I just hung my head in my hands and I just prayed, oh God, God show me that you're here. Give me a sign, I don't know if I can do what's ahead." And she said, as she looked up and looked out her passenger window, all of a sudden the star appeared right in her window as they're driving down to Rochester. And she said that that star stayed with her the entire drive down. And they pulled into the Mayo Clinic and the sun came up and the star disappeared. And she said, not only did she have this deep sense of God's presence and comfort, but she actually felt joy. In the midst of what was so hard, she experienced joy.
And I think that's what joy can do for us. It can carry us. It can carry us in some of the hardest, most difficult, most challenging moments.
You know, those Psalmist’s words, they tie beautifully into the story of Mary, a story that is often told in our church tradition in the third week in Advent when we're talking about joy and more in Luke's gospel. And Luke uses the word joy more than any of the other gospel writers. He is the evangelist of rejoicing, the storyteller who notices joy breaking through the cracks in ordinary and hard lives. And as one of the most extraordinary cracks where joy shines through is in the story of Mary.
Now remember, because this context is so important to the story, Mary is poor, she's unwed, she's living, she's a teenager, she's living in an occupied territory and she gets this unexpected visit. Everything about her situation should tell her that she should feel afraid, uncertain, overwhelmed by the circumstances. But here's the story, we're in Luke 1:28-37:
And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you." But she was much perplexed by these words and pondered what sort of greeting that 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'll be great and he'll 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.”
And Mary said to the angel, “How can this be since I'm 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 the 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 I am, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed.
Greetings, the Lord is with you. The angel's first words to Mary are often translated as rejoice. Rejoice and ancient traditions translated as hail, which means joy be with you. The first message of Christmas is one of joy, of rejoicing, the Lord is with you. And yet, Mary doesn't respond with an easy joy or an immediate enthusiasm even. Luke tells us that she's perplexed. Other translations say greatly troubled. She doesn't embrace this greeting with some kind of giddy delight. She asks questions. She hesitates. She wonders, how could this be?
And here's the point. Mary's joy is not cheap. It's not immediate. Her joy is not detached from reality. And yet, despite her circumstances, after hearing the words, nothing is impossible with God, she answers yes. Mary gives her yes and not a lightweight yes. Not an unthinking yes, but a serious, a courageous yes. Which begs the question, why do we, the church, have as our tradition this story to talk about joy when we're lifting up someone who's so serious? And I think the answer is that Mary's joy is the very heart of our Advent joy. It's a joy that's real and it's honest and it's unflinching. And her yes, her yes leads directly to that true joy, the joy that we know in what we call Mary's song or the Magnificat:
My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.
Surely from now on, all generations will call me blessed for the mighty one has done great things for me. And holy is his name.
Indeed, in his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. He has come to the aid of his child Israel in remembrance of his mercy. According to the promise, he's made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.
Mary's rejoicing in those first verses, but in the same song, she sings about God scattering the proud and lifting up the humble and feeding the hungry, God confronting injustice and acting faithfully and a mournful oppressed history. And this is what I think is important is that Mary's joy isn't alike. It's all good. Everything's fine kind of joy. Her joy tells the truth and it names reality. It's a joy that understands the price of pain and still says yes.
And I think that's what Advent invites us into, that kind of joy. A joy that doesn't escape reality, but actually embraces it. Think it's important to emphasize that Mary's joy isn't about her being in this great place. That she's not evoked by some kind of wellbeing or worldly success or good fortune. It's a joy in the valley.
And there we go back to Psalm 23, which reminds us, even though I walk through the darkest valley. When Mary receives the angel's announcement, she's not standing on the mountaintop. She is standing on the edge of the valley. Pregnancy outside of marriage. Social uncertainty, a future that's unknown, yet Mary sings, because like the Psalmist, she anchors her life in the truth that God is with her.
And that's exactly what the shepherd, what he proclaims in the Psalm. "I will fear no evil, for you are with me." Kind of like that, that Mary and the Psalmist, they preach the same Advent truth. Joy is possible because God is present. And here's the paradox of Advent joy, everybody. While the spirit is at work, joy is a choice. Mary receives the spirit's promise. She also gives her yes. She creates room for God to move. She chooses to trust. She chooses to sing.
And for us, that might mean our choices might be in letting go, letting go of those burdens, clearing out our cluttered thoughts, clearing our schedule if possible, and making room for maybe even five or 10 minutes of stillness, of quiet, of reflection. In that space, we can experience God's presence. Because the truth is, is when our schedules are full and our minds are full, we crowd out room for joy.
You know, I was just reflecting back over the past week because I started the week out. Let's see how I say this, so it makes sense. A week and a half ago, my husband and I spent a few days up north near the Boundary Waters. It was beautiful and quiet, but we came flying back into reality with this Advent season. My mom had been hospitalized, lots going on here with our awesome Advent celebration last week in church. And just so much going on. And I had a commitment every single night last week, meetings scheduled almost every day. I knew I had to get ready to preach, so I walked into the week feeling totally overwhelmed. My mind, my heart, my calendar was totally cluttered. And I was able to look back over the week and see those places where space had been. And actually I said yes to a few things that allowed that space for some joy.
One of those things was on last Tuesday night, Justin and I were going to a worship service right here in Minneapolis, but it got canceled because of the snow. And my daughter, Kate, had put out a family text at five o'clock that night. We're all going sledding at Fuller Park. And I thought, oh my gosh, I looked at my husband and said, oh, I'm going to the park. I looked at my husband and said, oh, we got a couple hours. We could actually put our boxes of Christmas stuff away and get organized and I could get set for the week. And we looked at each other and said, this is not the stuff you say no to. This is the moment. We put on our snow stuff and we walked down to Fuller Park. And I kid you not, the snow is falling and the temperatures are perfect and the kids are laughing and doing snow angels and we're heading down the hills on sleds and they're eating all the snow and we experienced joy.
And the beauty of experiencing that joy is it carries you. It carries you through the week. And as I looked at all the moments, I was with a group of friends on Wednesday nights singing Christmas carols together. And on Friday, I had an awesome coffee with a dear, dear person in this community that just filled me up. And I was so grateful for the space to experience joy.
That's the other funny thing. I think joy is really always about relationship. Relationship with creation, relationship with one another, relationship with God. And I think we feel that and experience it in so many different ways. It's a beautiful thing. But what does joy look like for you in these short days and long nights? How do you find that small moment, whether it's in a conversation, a good laugh, a cup of coffee with a friend, taking five minutes to steal all that clutterness, releasing one worry into the hands of God. It could look like whispering one quiet prayer. You are with me.
But to find joy, we can look at Mary, a young woman facing uncertainty, choosing to sing anyway. And what she shows us is that joy looks a whole lot of different ways. It's not always loud and flashy, but sometimes it's quiet. Sometimes it's courageous. It certainly is always honest. And it's rooted in the presence of God.
I think important to this conversation is Mary's yes, because Mary's yes goes beyond Mary. This isn't all about so that I can feel just, that I can feel connected to God. Mary's yes is bigger than her. It looks outside herself. And joy is a part of all of that as well. Now sharing with someone earlier this week, I'm well aware of my privilege when I talk about those moments of joy. It's hard for me not to think about how you experience God, joy in the midst of living in Gaza right now. It's hard for me to imagine the families that, the families that are being targeted, those people that are walking out of their homes, out of their places of work, are being dragged away by ICE. But I think we also have a place in that, a partnership with God and standing with, maybe bringing a glimpse of hope and joy in those situations. Because like Mary, her joy wasn't ignoring what was going on. It was acknowledging that there is stuff going on in our communities, in our neighborhoods, in our world, in our country, and we cannot ignore it. And we can still hold that joy and the truths of what's going on.
I think one way that we can partner as a community with others in our lives, whether it's those that we meet out in our neighborhoods or those right here where we can remind others by our presence that you are not alone, that God has not forgotten you. And one of those is right here, the Park Place community that meets on Tuesday, Thursday is here every night. We collected Christmas gifts that we might help that community experience a little Santa is what they wanted to call. Well, last week, I called their director, Clara, to just check in on a couple of gifts. And I got on the phone and, "Clara, it's Debbie from the table, how are you?" I'm not good, she said. Oh no, are you sick? No, my family was taken away this morning by ICE. I'm trying desperately to find a lawyer. I did what I could do with some resources and I know that I reached out to her co-director and she's getting some help with that. But as her co-director and I were in conversation later that week, she let me know that they had to cancel all their Park Place programming for the rest of the year, that they're canceling their Christmas party that our gifts were gonna go to, because it's too dangerous. Too many of their families this past week had been taken by ICE.
And this is a place that we can tangibly step into. So I'm in conversation right now with their co-directors to see how we might dream a little bit, hope a little bit how we can stand with this community who shares this building, who lives just a mile or two over here. And we will do that. Whether that means us delivering these gifts to their doors, any other ways that they lead in that we can partner with, be their allies, we will do that. Because in the midst of the unthinkable, the hard, God's still present. We can all still experience joy, even if it's momentary, but it's a joy that can sustain us and carry us through. The valley is real. The darkness is real. But so is the shepherd. So is Emmanuel. So is the God who lifts up the lowly and feeds the hungry. And that's what Mary shows us, that Advent joy is often simple and quiet and tender, and it's always just. And sometimes joy is the simple exhale of God is with us.
Last Sunday night, we gathered here, if you weren't able to come, I encourage you for next year, because it was awesome for an Advent celebration. And I was thinking about this, I'm gonna show a little clip here. It was so joy filled. But the truth is, the people that were in this room are carrying burdens, whether it's the weight of what's going on in our community, in our country, whether it's personal things. I know that people in that room were carrying burdens, but yet we gathered together and we joyfully sang and celebrated Emmanuel, God with us. I'm gonna end with that, take a look:
(Singing 12 Days of Christmas)
Chris P shouts: FOUR CALLING BIRDS
(Audience Laughing)