“This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me… the world didn’t give it, the world can’t take it away.” These lyrics were written by the First Lady of Gospel Music, Shirley Caesar, whose name you may recognize for the many awards, concerts and shows she’s done over the years, including winning one of her multiple Grammys for her performance of “Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee.”
Before she was a gospel music legend, Shirley grew up in Durham, North Carolina during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. She remembers restaurants putting up the “CLOSED” sign when she would arrive. “I went to school in the days when all the white kids got things better” she told People Weekly, “I remember once when a lady gave cookies to all the kids in the state. The white kids got the fresh ones; we got the stale ones.”[1] Cookies are a minor example of the much bigger and more painful realities that black communities faced at that time, but from a kid’s perspective it was a symbol of all that was happening in their lives.
Shirley grew up singing gospel music, which was born out of the tradition of spirituals sung by enslaved people in the southern United States. The lyrics often express radical hope in the midst of deeply painful and trying circumstances, echoing the hope that the Psalmist writes: “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy” (Ps 126:5 NRSV). Shirley sang traditional gospel songs from her community and faith tradition, but she also wrote her own music that reflected her context as a black woman in an oppressive and divisive society, and during the challenges that her life held she still sang about joy, a joy that comes not from the world but from elsewhere.
We’ve spent the last few weeks pondering joy and what it looks like when we are living in weariness, and sometimes we need a reminder that we don’t have to figure it out on our own. We are grateful to the generations who have walked this weary road before us and left a clear treasure map of where we can look for joy in the midst of challenging circumstances. We have been reminded by Zechariah’s experience that it’s ok to be weary and how acknowledging that opens us to the possibility of joy. We visited Mary and Elizabeth and remembered that joy is amplified by connection. And today, it’s what we’ve been waiting for throughout this advent season – a baby is finally born! No, not that baby… but a pretty important one nonetheless.
We return in Luke’s gospel to Elizabeth and the long-silenced Zechariah, who are finally having the baby that they’ve dreamed about for years. We are told that when this baby is born all of the neighbours and relatives rejoiced with Elizabeth – they shared in her joy. She surprises them by naming the baby John, which was not a family name, and when Zechariah confirms the name his silence is broken, he is able to speak, and the first thing he does is praise God. His joy bursts forth and overflows and he lifts his voice in praise and thanksgiving.
I’ve often wondered what God DOES with all that praise. For thousands of years we humans have been praising God in countless ways – through song and story, through incense and offerings, through sharing our time and our gifts with the church and with others. As humans we sometimes seek out praise or even thrive on it – who doesn’t love being told they did an amazing job on something? But I truly don’t believe that God’s self-esteem is bound up in how many times we sing “How Great Thou Art” or how many of us shout “ALL THE TIME” when we hear “God is Good.” It’s also not a transaction – we don’t get a prayer answered for every time we pray “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise” (Ps 145:1). So what’s the point of all that praise if God doesn’t actually need it?
Theologians and philosophers have debated this for centuries as they’ve considered the nature of God. Does God actually need praise? Does God need us at all? According to St. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan beliefs that followed him, the answer lies in God’s goodness. Bonaventure, a Franciscan himself, argued in the mid 13th century that God had no actual need to create anything – not the universe, not humanity, not sunrises or orchids or freshly squeezed orange juice. Creation would add nothing to God, who was already perfect and whole and complete in God’s own self. But yet out of God’s goodness God… created. [2]
This discussion continued and expanded to include the question of why Jesus came to Earth. Some argued that God sent Jesus because humanity was such a mess and we either had to be “saved from sin” or shown how to love each other better because we were doing such a poor job. But others such as John Duns Scotus wrote in the late 13th century that even if there were no sin or brokenness in the world, Jesus would have come anyway to express God’s goodness. He proposed that “the three persons of the Trinity together desire others to join in the praise, joy, and love that they share.” [3]
Alice Walker wrote this famous line in her novel The Color Purple: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see [God] always trying to please us back.”[4] The character Shug believes that the existence of beauty and things that bring us joy in the world are evidence that God wants us to experience joy – not because God wants credit or praise for it, but because the essence of God’s goodness just bubbles up and overflows out of God’s being and into creation.
I have never been good at doing devotions. Setting aside time to sit and read and reflect and pray… it just often gets pushed to the side as other more urgent tasks come up. I promise myself I’ll do it later or get back to it the next day, and before I know it the book of reflections I’ve read three pages of is laying dusty on a pile in the corner. My colleague, Rev. Lindsay Mohn in Saskatoon, noted the other day that she’s started a different spiritual practice of trying to notice when God’s goodness and joy is bubbling over into my own life through the Holy Spirit. She shared some examples highlighting that these things are usually in relationships with others – like last week Lindsay ended up doing a funeral for a family that felt really random, but we ended up having a lot of deep connections. Holy Spirit. Her dear friend who just had twins made a smart and courageous choice to reach out for some counselling post partum… and the counsellor she ended up with is also a mom of twins. Holy Spirit. She was looking for a new teammate to collaborate on a project this fall, and I picked up the phone really out of nowhere to call someone I had never worked with and didn’t know that well… and they agreed to give the idea a try, which was a real act of trust on their part. Holy Spirit. Someone who was incredibly opposed to the remit for autonomy within the Indigenous Church attended an info session and had their heart changed while listening to the courageous and grace-filled Elders and is now explaining to others why it’s important. Holy Spirit. Making this list as she goes about her days fills her with joy and that truly does spill out as praise to God – she might not stop and sing a hymn, but she’ll certainly offer a “hey thanks for that, God.”
God is complete and perfect and fulfilled without us. God doesn’t need our praise or our joy or our good works or our service. But when God’s joy overflows into creation and humanity and we encounter whatever it is that God is up to in the world, whether it’s through relationships or connections or sunrises or orchids or freshly squeezed orange juice, WE experience joy… and even though God doesn’t need it, our joy bubbles over and is lifted back to God in the form of our praise, laughter, and loving service to the world… and the whole cycle starts again.
“This joy that I have… the world didn’t give it to me” wrote Shirley Caesar, but her lyrics require a little footnote. The world on its own didn’t give us this joy. Without God’s love and goodness and joy and beauty, the world itself wouldn’t exist to give us joy of any kind. Shirley reminds us through her song that true joy comes from God and can’t be taken away – it doesn’t rely on anything we do or say, it doesn’t rely on the actions of others around us. It simply exists because God is filled with joy and it overflows through the world into our lives. On this third Sunday of Advent, as we bask in the glow of the newly lit pink candle, may we be reminded that even when we find ourselves feeling weary we are surrounded by the love of our God whose very essence is goodness and joy, and nothing in this world can take that away. Amen.
[1] People Weekly, November 9, 1987.
[2] Don Schweitzer, Jesus Christ for Contemporary Life (2012) chapter 4
[3] Don Schweitzer, Jesus Christ for Contemporary Life (2012) chapter 4
[4] Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)
