Christmas joy

Editor’s note: My contribution to our annual Advent series was this sermon on joy. You can hear it here. Or watch below.

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The Christmas story is full of joy. 

When the wise men saw the star, we are told they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 

The angel tells Zechariah that his son John would prepare the way for Messiah and that Zechariah and Elizabeth would have joy and gladness. Later, when Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaped for joy.

In Mary’s Song of Praise, The Magnificat, she prays: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

An angel comes to the shepherds and says I bring you good news of great joy.

The story is about joy.

And the season itself is full of joy. This is a uniquely Christian festival, like the festivals of the ancient Hebrews which Deuteronomy 16:15 says were given “so that you will be altogether joyful. (ESV)”

In Nepal, a Hindu country with hundreds of religious festivals, Christians take advantage of the Christmas season to celebrate as loudly and joyfully as their neighbors. They meet on roof tops to sing carols late into the night, building fires and banging on drums. They parade through the street, singing and dancing joyfully. They are, as Deuteronomy puts it, altogether joyful.

I asked our congregation to write down things that brought them joy at Christmas.  They wrote about the nativity of course.  And the carols.  One young man spent almost an hour drawing a picture of Mary and Joseph and the baby in a manger.

But they also wrote down favorite movies, including, for reasons I’ve never understood, White Christmas. Someone else chose It’s a Wonderful Life. They wrote about favorite foods, including, mysteriously, Sarah Lee Coffee cake. Sausage and gravy.  Aunt Jenny’s signature crepes. Family, of course. Christmas lights. Christmas music. Traditions. Cozy vibes. Matching pajamas. And snow, although as a native Floridian, I still haven’t quite got the hang of that. They had experienced all these things as unexpected delights, and the memory of them and the anticipation of them brought joy.  At some point, we experienced these things for the first time, and each of them, in its own way, revealed a glimpse of grace.

One thing that brings joy at Christmas is a gift we didn’t expect but, when we got it, it was something we didn’t even know we wanted. It was exactly right.  These days I send my kids money for the grandkid’s gifts. They all live at some distance and it’s hard to know what they need or like. Their parents know them better than I do.  But when our own kids were home I did better. I would watch them all year, noticing the things that made their eyes sparkle, things which invited a lingering touch or gaze.  A gift is, after all, a very intimate thing. When we bought an American Doll for our daughter Margaret, we hoped it was what she wanted, but also what she needed— a window to wonder, a reflection of her heart and its desires.

Each gift is a risk, of course.  But it is also a grace, a reaching out of hearts toward each other.  It is an embrace without arms.  Sometimes you get it exactly right.  Sometimes you don’t.  But always you find that joy pervades.  There is the tearing of paper, and the laughing of parents, and the squeals of children. These meager efforts to imitate God’s grace leave us with a taste of transcendence, however brief.  These are all dim shadows of a God who delights in giving good gifts to his children. 

I spent some time trying to decide if joy was an emotion or an action.  And I finally decided it is neither. Joy is a response to an unexpected but perfect gift, a gift that satisfies a deep and perhaps even unrecognized desire. Such a gift conveys that we are known and that we are loved. This is not only the joy of Christmas.  it is the essence of joy itself. 

James 1:17 tells us every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow of change.  All joy is a response to his good gifts, even if we experience them as Sarah Lee coffee cake. All joy reflects our longing for eternal delight in the presence of God.  As C.S Lewis notes, “All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be’.”

In this way, then, joy is different than happiness.  They may coexist, but they are not the same.  Happiness is often a consequence of our own efforts or achievements. True joy is a response to God’s love and action. Joy is a wave of wonder and awe in response to God’s goodness and grace, to His knowing us and loving us. Joy is a flicker of recognition, a moment of insight into something eternal and holy.

Isaiah 61:10 -11 enumerates three of these gifts we didn’t deserve, plan, or expect.  They all turn out to be perfect gifts.

¹⁰  I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;

my soul shall exult in my God,

       for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;

he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,

       as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,

and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

¹¹    For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,

and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up,

       so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise

to sprout up before all the nations

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exult in my God.,: the prophet begins.

But why?  What gifts might elicit this response?

The first gift is a new righteousness.  Messiah has clothed us with the garments of salvation, we are told. Lots of families get new pajamas for Christmas, but the incarnation opens the door to robes of righteousness. They fit perfectly and they last forever.  These robes are the very righteousness of Christ. This is what we have truly and always longed for, even when we didn’t realizie it. 

In Job 29:14, arguably the oldest book in the Bible, the suffering patriarch defends himself, saying “I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; My justice was like a robe and a turban.”  But as righteous as he was, God comes to him in a whirlwind, humbling him and convicting him of sin until Job finally says, in Job 42:6, “Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

When we come to that point, God can and will clothe us with righteousness, not our own righteousness but Christ’s righteousness. Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, and Galatians all speak of putting on Christ like a garment.   Repentance and contrition are certainly part of this. Our righteousness is filthy rags, Isaiah says. But God has been providing clothes to cover our shame since creation when he made garments for Adam and Eve.  It is the righteousness of Christ himself that covers our sins.

Romans 5:19 says, For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” That one man is Jesus whose coming we celebrate today. Can you imagine anything more startling or more wonderful than this? A holy God looks on you, a fallen and broken creature of clay, and sees you clothed in the glory and brightness of his own Son?

But the prophet envisions something even more startling and wonderful.  God not only sees us differently, he loves us differently, as members of his own family. As His own bride. The second gift is the gift of a new relationship.  Isaiah uses the imagery of a bridegroom and a bride to suggest a level of intimacy between God and his people that is beyond our comprehension. God doesn’t just cover our wickedness. 

Rather He invites us home, nurturing us and comforting us as the bride of his own Son. This picture of our collective relationship to him as his bride is fundamental to any New Testament understanding of God’s love for us and our joy in him. In Ephesians 4, Paul says marriage itself is a picture of Christ and his church.

A couple of weeks ago we had a memorial service at Countryside for Norma Carpenter,  George’s wife of 80 + years. A few weeks earlier at a men’s prayer breakfast, George was asked if it was hard to care for her as her health declined. He said it was not, because they were one flesh. “Her pain is my pain,” he said. “It’s like caring for myself.” It was such a tender and gracious word, pointing us directly to Ephesians 5:28–32:

[28] In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. [29] For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, [30] because we are members of his body. [31] “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” [32] This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (ESV)

This is a mystery, not because we can’t understand it, but because we couldn’t understand it until Christ showed us on the cross what it looks like and what it means.  And it is profound.

Unlike George, I’ve only been married 49 years. 50 years ago this Christmas  I asked Katie to marry me. And now, decades later, there is no greater earthly joy than moments alone with her, sipping a cup of tea in the morning silence and talking about a day to come in which we will sustain and encourage each other.  She is my sanctuary.  She is my own flesh.  However, this is merely a shadow of the joy we have in Christ.

Across the centuries the presence of God the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit has brought fullness of joy to his people.  James 1:2 says, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” Across the generations and across the continents, Christians have been able to rejoice in disease or in dungeons because Jesus was present with them. He is their source of joy. And our relationship with him is also a source of joy to Christ himself.  This restored relationship is part of the joy before him for which Christ endured the cross.

Because of this intimacy we are told in 1 Corinthians 13:12 that we will someday be fully known.  You have never really experienced that.  You have never been fully known, not by your spouse or closest friend.  But you can now and always be fully known by Christ, who longs to be united to his people, more than any bridegroom has ever longed for his bride.

It would be a mistake to think of the marriage supper of the lamb as merely a great feast at which Jesus takes the cup with us again, as he did when he instituted the Lord’s supper.  It is much more than a wedding feast.  It is a wedding.  Our ultimate joy is in the final and complete union with Christ himself.

In Revelation 19:6–9, John writes

[6] Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

            “Hallelujah!

            For the Lord our God

                        the Almighty reigns.

            [7] Let usrejoice and exult

                        and give him the glory,

            for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

                        and his Bride has made herself ready;

            [8] it was granted her to clothe herself

                        with fine linen, bright and pure”—

            for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

[9] And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” (ESV)

This is exactly what Isaiah is writing about in our text when he says:

he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,

       as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,

and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Let this sink in and be glad.  Be like John the Baptist who leapt for joy in his mother’s womb and who later rejoiced to hear the voice of the bridegroom.  We are betrothed to Jesus, and we experience increasing intimacy as we long for that sacred consummation in which we are fully known, once more naked but not ashamed.

But wait. There is more. Because these robes of righteousness and this holy intimacy are not just for you or me.  As the angels sang to shepherds, this is the good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

Isaiah sees this too. In verse 11 he says:

For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,

and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up,

                 so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise

to sprout up before all the nations.

This is the basis of peace on earth.  The whole world will be filled with his glory. This is a new reality, in which all creation is reconciled to God. Romans 8:21 says “creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

But first, the children themselves must be set free. Jesus once went to a synagogue in Nazareth and read from this very chapter in Isaiah. This is what he read, in Luke 4:

     [18] “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

             because he has anointed me

             to proclaim good news to the poor.

     He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

             and recovering of sight to the blind,

             to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

     [19] to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (ESV)

And, when he finished reading, he said to the congregation that this scripture had been fulfilled in their hearing. In fact, all this chapter is fulfilled in Christ.  All of it. Those poor, blind, broken-hearted captives?  That’s us. But to those who mourn in Zion, he says he will give the oil of gladness and garments of praise.

Isaiah goes on the say, in verse 8 and 9:

I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

     [9] Their offspring shall be known among the nations,

             and their descendants in the midst of the peoples;

     all who see them shall acknowledge them,

             that they are an offspring the LORD has blessed. (ESV)

If joy is a response to an unexpected gift, how does this feel?  All the nations of the world are blessed in Christ.  Every tribe and tongue will gather around the throne in heaven to offer ceaseless praise to the lamb who is worthy.  Yes, we are part of that celebration. But we just don’t get to be there. We get to invite others. 

Go out in the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, because there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. We not only have the joy of being clothed in his righteousness and the joy of an intimate relationship with him, we have the joy of inviting others into his family, into his church to be part of his bride.

These gifts are the ultimate reality that any other gift only helps us anticipate.  And these three gifts come to us wrapped in swaddling clothes, as a baby in a manger on his way to a cross for our redemption. Because he came, we receive all this: A new righteousness. A new relationship.  A new reality. 

There is only one appropriate response:  Joy. 

Take joy in these gifts. Live each day in communion with Jesus, more intently than anyone ever did in wooing or loving a spouse.  A Hallmark Movie is only a lame effort to imitate this. Let the joy of his grace delight you every day.  Regardless of the circumstances, find joy in his everlasting kindness and mercy. You are known and you are loved. You are his son or daughter. You are his brother or sister. But you are also his bride.  Adorn yourself with fine linen bright and pure. Adorn yourself with the jewels of obedience and praise. He has chosen you and reconciled you to himself. He is sanctifying you and purifying you, preparing to present you to His Father in heaven. Be in awe. And let your soul exult in your God. 

Isaiah 61: 6 and 7 says: [6] you shall be called the priests of the LORD;

                        they shall speak of you as the ministers of our God;

            you shall eat the wealth of the nations,

                        and in their glory you shall boast.

            [7] Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion;

                        instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot;

            therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion;

                        they shall have everlasting joy. (ESV)

God’s gift to you this Christmas is more than joy.  It is everlasting joy.  Such joy makes us dance and sing. It makes us laugh or cry. It manifests itself in merriment and generosity. We should celebrate loudly and passionately. Shout it from the mountaintop and sing it loudly on your roof. Our joy brings us together and warms our hearts.  It is the joy of the Lord. And it is our strength and our song.

If you don’t know this joy, perhaps you are not a believer. Accept your invitation to the marriage supper of the lamb, not as a guest but as part of the bride, as part of his church.  Come to Christ and find complete forgiveness.  Discover an intimacy you have always longed for. Become part of the family of God, where you will grow and invite others into inexpressible joy.  Charles Spurgeon said,“ you can not tell what showers of mercy, what streams of benediction, what mountains of joy, …. shall be yours when Jesus comes and reigns in your soul.”

These are the gifts that matter, unexpected delights you can not earn or even comprehend. They are our joy, good and perfect gifts that come down from above, from the Father of lights in whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning.

May your joy this Christmas be as extravagant as the grace of God.