from Taryn Mattice August 29, 2021 First Service John 15:9-11
On his last night with his disciples, this is what Jesus said.
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
On a fairly regular basis I need to remind myself that God’s intention for me is joy. Unburdened, true and boundless joy. I mean here is Jesus, two days before he was crucified, with Roman soldiers set to arrest him in a matter of hours, presiding over a last meal with his friends, and telling them that he means for them to know joy. Complete joy. That is why he said all the things he ever said to them. So that joy may be in them.
Its not just that we have so many other words we think of when we think of what God wants in us – duty, selflessness, obedience, responsibility, restraint --- and for some reason out of all of those words we use when we think of what God wants from us – joy seems the last one we name. And maybe the hardest one to accept.
Part of it is we think we know too much – for unbridled joy. I mean, we just came through almost 18 months of sickness and death and so much hardship for so many. Every one of us lost out on experiences we might have treasured. People lost their homes, their jobs, their loved ones --and its not over yet. As I speak a Category 4 hurricane is barreling towards New Orleans where hospitals are full of Covid patients. The decision was made not to evacuate them – because there is nowhere for them to go. Hospitals in nearby states are full too. It just doesn’t seem possible to know joy when you’re aware of so much anguish and pain.
Joy, we think, is that feeling you had when you were a small child in the ballpit at a McDonalds. Before you knew about germs. Before you knew about McDonalds.
Or maybe Joy, you think when you get older, is that fleeting sensation you have when you’re at a wedding, and the DJ has the good sense to play Donna Summer’s Last Dance, and gets the whole room up on its feet. Joy was opening that acceptance letter. A rare event.
I think I’ve finally figured out what all that is. That dancing-frenzy-ballpit-letter thing. Its what we might call uncomplicated joy. I’m from California and I get it in any large body of water. The ocean, preferably, but a big lake will do. Swimming in one gives me uncomplicated joy.
I forget about everything else. I just feel joy. My prayers of gratitude are never more keen than when I’m under water. I love it.
“Uncomplicated joy” was the term a black father used in an essay that was published in the New York Times this summer. He and his wife, he said, had been doing some careful thinking about how to raise their kids. What prompted a recent conversation, he said, was his 9 and 12 year old sons’ excitement about playing baseball this summer. But how to handle the conversations about masking and distancing. How much to tell them, and how to balance difficult decisions about safety and peril against a child’s longing to play. To be a kid, he said, to whom the experience of (pause) “uncomplicated joy” is supposed to be available.
As a black father and a religious man, it wasn’t an unfamiliar dilemma. How much and in what way to deliver “the talk,” which is both about the possibility of bad outcomes for young black men in police encounters, but also more generally, about the fact that the world will not always be a welcoming place.
“My wife and I have drifted to a bias toward joy,” he said. “Our children know much of the history of this country, but the focus is on Black triumph over suffering, not the suffering itself. I immerse them in the soul, hip-hop and gospel music that has lifted many a weary soul, when they would rather listen to Kidz Bop. I have told them of Moses and the Israelites, of Mary, Jesus’ mother and her dramatic yes to God. They know about Sojourner and her railroad and Martin and his dream. I remind them that God has looked upon their Black skin and bodies, and called it good. I am making deposit after deposit of Black joy and faith in the hope that it will be with them when the inevitable struggle comes. I do it because that is what my mother did for me.”
What his mother did for him, and what he is trying to do through his music playlist and in the stories he tells them, is introduce them to joy of a more “complicated” variety.
I don’t ever want to lose complete access to uncomplicated joy. Swimming in bodies of water, watching the Quidditch team skirmishes on the Arts Quad. I love a good wedding reception – and a cake that comes out of the oven just right. I’m not going to forgo that joy, and I’m not going to forget what to call it. Uncomplicated.
But I’m wrapping my head around this more nuanced thing because I believe Jesus wanted it for us. We can call it “complicated joy,” because yes, it is aware – but it is still Joy.
Please don’t ever forget, as I said to a student the other day, that God is not working against you. I mean, it is not God’s way to hide his will for you, and then be angry with you for not finding it. It is not God’s way to demand of you an overly cautious scrupulosity that robs you of spontaneity and freedom. That robs you of joy.
God’s will for you is joy, out of which you will be able to serve God’s purposes with a lighter touch, less need to protect your own ego, and oh yeah, more fun. Amen.
On his last night with his disciples, this is what Jesus said.
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
On a fairly regular basis I need to remind myself that God’s intention for me is joy. Unburdened, true and boundless joy. I mean here is Jesus, two days before he was crucified, with Roman soldiers set to arrest him in a matter of hours, presiding over a last meal with his friends, and telling them that he means for them to know joy. Complete joy. That is why he said all the things he ever said to them. So that joy may be in them.
Its not just that we have so many other words we think of when we think of what God wants in us – duty, selflessness, obedience, responsibility, restraint --- and for some reason out of all of those words we use when we think of what God wants from us – joy seems the last one we name. And maybe the hardest one to accept.
Part of it is we think we know too much – for unbridled joy. I mean, we just came through almost 18 months of sickness and death and so much hardship for so many. Every one of us lost out on experiences we might have treasured. People lost their homes, their jobs, their loved ones --and its not over yet. As I speak a Category 4 hurricane is barreling towards New Orleans where hospitals are full of Covid patients. The decision was made not to evacuate them – because there is nowhere for them to go. Hospitals in nearby states are full too. It just doesn’t seem possible to know joy when you’re aware of so much anguish and pain.
Joy, we think, is that feeling you had when you were a small child in the ballpit at a McDonalds. Before you knew about germs. Before you knew about McDonalds.
Or maybe Joy, you think when you get older, is that fleeting sensation you have when you’re at a wedding, and the DJ has the good sense to play Donna Summer’s Last Dance, and gets the whole room up on its feet. Joy was opening that acceptance letter. A rare event.
I think I’ve finally figured out what all that is. That dancing-frenzy-ballpit-letter thing. Its what we might call uncomplicated joy. I’m from California and I get it in any large body of water. The ocean, preferably, but a big lake will do. Swimming in one gives me uncomplicated joy.
I forget about everything else. I just feel joy. My prayers of gratitude are never more keen than when I’m under water. I love it.
“Uncomplicated joy” was the term a black father used in an essay that was published in the New York Times this summer. He and his wife, he said, had been doing some careful thinking about how to raise their kids. What prompted a recent conversation, he said, was his 9 and 12 year old sons’ excitement about playing baseball this summer. But how to handle the conversations about masking and distancing. How much to tell them, and how to balance difficult decisions about safety and peril against a child’s longing to play. To be a kid, he said, to whom the experience of (pause) “uncomplicated joy” is supposed to be available.
As a black father and a religious man, it wasn’t an unfamiliar dilemma. How much and in what way to deliver “the talk,” which is both about the possibility of bad outcomes for young black men in police encounters, but also more generally, about the fact that the world will not always be a welcoming place.
“My wife and I have drifted to a bias toward joy,” he said. “Our children know much of the history of this country, but the focus is on Black triumph over suffering, not the suffering itself. I immerse them in the soul, hip-hop and gospel music that has lifted many a weary soul, when they would rather listen to Kidz Bop. I have told them of Moses and the Israelites, of Mary, Jesus’ mother and her dramatic yes to God. They know about Sojourner and her railroad and Martin and his dream. I remind them that God has looked upon their Black skin and bodies, and called it good. I am making deposit after deposit of Black joy and faith in the hope that it will be with them when the inevitable struggle comes. I do it because that is what my mother did for me.”
What his mother did for him, and what he is trying to do through his music playlist and in the stories he tells them, is introduce them to joy of a more “complicated” variety.
I don’t ever want to lose complete access to uncomplicated joy. Swimming in bodies of water, watching the Quidditch team skirmishes on the Arts Quad. I love a good wedding reception – and a cake that comes out of the oven just right. I’m not going to forgo that joy, and I’m not going to forget what to call it. Uncomplicated.
But I’m wrapping my head around this more nuanced thing because I believe Jesus wanted it for us. We can call it “complicated joy,” because yes, it is aware – but it is still Joy.
Please don’t ever forget, as I said to a student the other day, that God is not working against you. I mean, it is not God’s way to hide his will for you, and then be angry with you for not finding it. It is not God’s way to demand of you an overly cautious scrupulosity that robs you of spontaneity and freedom. That robs you of joy.
God’s will for you is joy, out of which you will be able to serve God’s purposes with a lighter touch, less need to protect your own ego, and oh yeah, more fun. Amen.
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