Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again, Rejoice.” And I have to admit that I would not say that joy has been at the top of my list of emotions over the past 6 months. In fact, joy has felt like a commodity in very short supply…like toilet paper or hand sanitizer or honesty in politics. Paul’s words feel almost like a critique. “Sure, life may be hard, but rejoice anyway.” “Yeah, there might be a global pandemic raging, but still you should rejoice.” “I know it’s election time when the division in our nation is most evident, but don’t let that stop you from rejoicing.” I have to admit that the rebellious spirit in me wants nothing more than to respond to Paul with the immortal words of the great philosopher, Bart Simpson, “Eat my shorts.” I don’t really feel up to rejoicing. Joy feels unattainable. There is too much stress and anxiety and anger and hatred and exhaustion and fear that seems to get in the way of joy. How are we to rejoice when it feels like the world is crumbling all around us?

As I’ve been doing a lot lately when studying a New Testament text, I decided to look to the original Greek for help in better understanding Paul’s statement here. And what I found was really interesting. The word translated as “rejoice” is chairo. Which comes from the same root word as charis which means grace. And the root word char means to lean toward. So, chairo essentially means “lean into joy.” As I thought about that, I was immediately reminded of one of my favorite scenes in the movie “While You Were Sleeping.” The scene takes place outside of Lucy’s apartment. Lucy is talking with her sort-of-fiance’s brother and he asks her about her relationship to the son of her landlord. And she asks him what he’s talking about and he says, “The leaning thing.” And she says, “What are you talking about? When he gave me flowers?” And Jack says, “When he gave you flowers and then you leaned.” She doesn’t understand what he means, so he leans toward her and says, “Hugging’s very different. Hugging — that involves arms and hands; and leaning is whole bodies moving in like this. Leaning involves wanting… and accepting. Leaning…” And then he is interrupted by the son of the landlord asking Lucy if Jack is bothering her because “it looks like he’s leaning.”

Leaning, like Jack said, involves wanting and accepting. It involves moving toward the object of that desire. So, when Paul says to “lean into joy” I think that means that we choose joy, we move toward joy, we accept joy into our lives. That sounds a little different to me than simply telling myself to rejoice. It feels like less pressure. It feels a bit easier to do in difficult times. Instead of trying to force ourselves to be joyful, we simply lean into joy. It seems sort of like falling onto the bed. We just lean until gravity pulls us onto it. In the recent movie version of Dr. Suess’s “The Lorax”, the Lorax is talking to the Once-ler and asks him, “Which way does a tree fall?” The Once-ler responds, “Uh – down?” The Lorax looks at the Once-ler very seriously and says, “A tree falls the way it leans. Be careful which way you lean.”

Therein lies what I think is the crux of Paul’s words here in Philippians 4. ”Be careful which way you lean.” Paul tells us to Rejoice in the Lord always. And then he gives three directives that I think help us to lean into joy. First, he tells us to “Let [our] gentleness be known to everyone.” The word translated as gentleness here more accurately translates as equity or fairness. Strong’s concordance describes the word this way, “properly, equitable; ‘gentle’ in the sense of truly fair by relaxing overly strict standards in order to keep the ‘spirit of the law.’” Wow! What would our world look like right now if all Christians followed that teaching? Perhaps we would have a few less Pharisees. This teaching of Paul stood in stark contrast to how he’d learned to live as a Pharisee. He’d been trained to follow the law strictly. But now here he says to be gentle in the requirements for others. “Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” Do you let your gentleness be known or do you let your anger and frustration be known. Do you blow up on Facebook on in your life when things don’t go the way you think they should? What would happen if you relaxed those standards a little, not ignoring the overall goal, but allowing others to achieve that goal in their own way? If we did that, we might find that it actually takes a burden off our shoulders that we didn’t even know we were carrying and it might allow us to lean into joy a little more.

Second, Paul says, “Do not worry about anything” Yep. How much of the joy in our lives is sucked away from us by our worry and anxiety? A lot. Author and speaker, Leo Buscaglia, once said, “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.” There is a story of “A bassoon player [who] came up to his conductor, Arturo Toscanini, and nervously said that he could not reach the high E flat. Toscanini just smiled and replied, “Don’t worry. There is no E flat in your music tonight.” Many of our worries are like that– unfounded and unnecessary.” How do we lean into joy? By leaning away from worry. As we find ways to do that, we may find that the things we were worrying about were not such big concerns after all. “J. Arthur Rank, an English executive, decided to do all his worrying on one day each week. He chose Wednesdays. When anything happened that gave him anxiety and annoyed his ulcer, he would write it down and put it in his worry box and forget about it until next Wednesday. The interesting thing was that on the following Wednesday when he opened his worry box, he found that most of the things that had disturbed him the past six days were already settled. It would have been useless to have worried about them.” Worry saps our joy. When we lean away from worry and give those things to God in prayer, we may discover that we are leaning into joy.

Finally, Paul tells us, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” How do we lean into joy? By focusing on the good stuff of life: the things that are true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, or worthy of praise. It is so easy for us to focus on the bad stuff in life. All we have to do is look on social media or in the news and we can find a plethora of things that are the opposite of joy: things that are false, dishonorable, unjust, impure, disgusting, disreputable, or just plain bad. And when we inundated ourselves with those things, we can become mired in it. And we can lose heart and lose joy. But if we can lean away from those things and lean toward the things that are good and helpful to us, we may find that we are also leaning into joy.

Have you found yourself struggling during this pandemic with anger? Frustration? Sadness? Despair? Maybe it’s because you’ve been inundated with negative messages and have not been leaning into joy. “Be careful which way you lean.” “Leaning involves wanting…and accepting.” When we lean toward division and enmity, we will fall into that. We will find ourselves accepting it and maybe even wanting it. But if we lean into joy, we will find the presence of God with us and we will discover that the world is not as hopeless and lost as it feels. Some days it may be harder for us to lean into joy. And for some of us there are physical or mental barriers that need to be addressed in order for us to fully lean into joy. But when we do, we will fall into it like falling on a soft, warm bed. And joy will envelope us and become a part of us. So, may we give our worries and cares to God, may we be gentle in how we treat others, and may we focus on all the good things around us. And may we find that in doing so, we are leaning into joy and therein finding God who truly is our Joy. Amen!