Holidays and traditions go hand-in-hand. For Thanksgiving, we might have traditional foods we prepare or activities we do following the meal every year. There are Easter traditions like dyeing Easter eggs or attending a worship service. We’ve even got Labor Day traditions like hunting for Labor Day sales at various stores. 

Christmas traditions are different, though. Christmas traditions are meant to fill a whole season–at least a month long–and we put all kinds of pressure on ourselves to make these traditions count. We do Secret Santa gift exchanges, bake and decorate cookies, take a trip to Santa’s village, send Christmas cards or newsletters, decorate the tree, and go shopping. We attend Christmas concerts and pageant plays, community craft fairs, and matinee movies. Not a one of these things is bad. They can delight us and help us carve out time for making precious memories. But, I often get the sense that we expect these traditions to get us into the Christmas spirit. We pressure ourselves to keep all of our traditions alive, lest we lose the joy of the season and turn into grumpy, before-meeting-the-ghosts Ebenezer Scrooge.     

One of our family’s traditions revolves around Christmas movies. You probably all know about Jeff’s enthusiasm for Hallmark Christmas movies, but you may not know that we have to watch the movie Elf the day after Thanksgiving every year. We make sure we watch A Charlie Brown Christmas at least once in the month of December. And I always look forward to watching the original animated version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. 

I’m not the biggest fan of the live action movie The Grinch. I struggle with the Grinch’s sad backstory in the movie, though it’s probably more realistic than the simple Dr. Seuss vision of the Grinch who hates Christmas for no apparent reason, apart from being a thief of joy. But, even though The Grinch is not my favorite movie–apologies to you if it is your favorite–I love the song sung by Cindy Lou Who called “Where Are You Christmas?”

Cindy Lou Who remembers the delight she felt at Christmas time when she was younger. She recalls the feelings of wonder and anticipation. As she is growing up, she realizes how stressed and anxious all the grown-ups are. She sees the commercialism and the frenzy around buying the best gifts and having the most extravagant decorations. And she sees the way the town has demonized the Grinch. Cindy Lou Who struggles to understand why everyone thought this stressed out, mile-long-to-do list season was the most magical time of the year. How could this be a season of love and giving when everyone is miserable and the Grinch is stuck all by himself on Mount Crumpit?

Cindy Lou Who starts singing:

Where are you Christmas
Why can’t I find you

Why have you gone away

Where is the laughter
You used to bring me
Why can’t I hear music play

My world is changing
I’m rearranging
Does that mean Christmas changes too

What do you do when you are keeping all the traditions, checking all the boxes, and trying to keep up with all your expectations, and you still aren’t feeling the joy? When we are hungry, we know to eat, and when we’re cold, we know to put on another layer of clothes. But, what do you do when you need joy? What simple thing do we do then? I have a friend who was recently told they needed to add more joy to their life. And, while that sounds like an insightful recommendation on the surface, what steps can a person take to add joy back into their lives?

It’s hard to believe it’s already the third Sunday of Advent. We aren’t even halfway through the month of December. Yet, here we are with three of our Advent candles glowing in the Advent wreath. Here we are on Gaudete – Rejoice! – Sunday gathered around the song Mary sang after going to visit her relative Elizabeth. Elizabeth was in her sixth month of pregnancy, despite being beyond childbearing years. Mary enters Elizabeth’s home, and when she greeted Elizabeth, the child Elizabeth was carrying “leaped for joy” in the womb. Elizabeth blesses Mary, and then Mary sings a psalm of praise to God. 

There’s so much that could be said about Mary’s song. We could look at the way Mary’s song is a lot like the psalms in the Old Testament. We could compare Mary’s song to the song Hannah sang. Seriously. You should take a look at that some time this week. They have striking similarities. Hannah’s song can be found in 1 Samuel 2:1-10. We could go line by line through Mary’s song and highlight the revolutionary and prophetic things she sings about: the way God feed the hungry, topples the powerful from their thrones, and lifts up those who had been pushed down by the world. All of these could make interesting sermons. But today, I want to focus on the joy in Mary’s song. More specifically, I want to focus on the joy in this passage.  

First, the joy comes from within. Mary’s song begins, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” The word for “magnify” is a word that means to make great, to enlarge, or even to make conspicuous. Mary says her soul is doing this. The word “soul” in the Greek is the word psyche. We might think of the soul as being separate from our physical bodies. But, the word used here is a word that is connected with the word “breath.” The soul is the breath of God within us which makes us live. Remember in the Garden of Eden when God breathed life into Adam? That life breath is our soul. Mary says this part of herself, her very life breath given to her by God, glorifies, magnifies, rejoices in God. 

2nd century Greek bishop Irenaeus is quoted as saying, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.” When we are truly who God created us to be, when we are fully alive and thriving as God’s children, God is glorified. “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.” We don’t find joy from the outside in. It doesn’t matter if we sing loud for all to hear–sorry, Buddy the Elf–or if we pick the right Advent calendar, or watch the right movies. We won’t find lasting joy if we get that gift at the top of our list, or if all the kids or grandkids smile exactly right for the family photo. Joy comes from within; it comes from the work God is doing in us. It comes from embracing who God made us to be.

The Atacama desert in Chile is considered the most arid desert in the world, with the exception of polar regions. The Atacama desert will sometimes go without rain for ten years at a time. Recently, the area received rain, and soon after the desert erupted with blossoms. The Atacama desert typically is a vast area of browns and taupes. After the rain came, the taupes were replaced with purples, whites, and greens. This year is the second year in a row that the desert bloomed, which prompted the government of Chile to take action to protect this flowering desert. Maisa Rojas, environment minister of Chile said that people must, “respect the desert even in its dormancy … because the seeds and bulbs are still there waiting for the new cycle.” The seeds for life are already there. They are dormant for a time, and when the conditions are right, they explode with new life. It reminds me of our reading from Isaiah 35: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.”

Joy comes from the inside. We cannot buy our way to joy. We can’t tradition our way to joy. We might find happiness and satisfaction in some of these things, but ultimately, the seeds for joy are within us because of who God made us to be.

Joy comes from the inside, and joy leaps in a shared, earthy moment between two unlikely people brought together by the movement of the Holy Spirit. The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and shared with her two amazing things: Mary would conceive a child through the Holy Spirit, and Mary’s relative Elizabeth would have a child even though she was beyond child bearing years. When she heard the news, Mary rushed to be with Elizabeth, and the child leaped in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary greeted Elizabeth. The word used for “leaped” is a word that means “to leap for joy” or to “jump for joy.” 

What I find interesting about that is that later on when Mary sings her profound song of praise about the way God is turning the world upside down, she says that her soul magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices in God. The word “rejoices” that is used here is not the typical word used for joy or rejoice. Instead, Mary chooses a word for “rejoice” that literally means to be so overwhelmed with joy that you leap, or to exult because you have experienced so much joy. This new thing God was doing in the world was so overwhelmingly joyful that Mary couldn’t stay still. Just like the baby leaped in Elizabeth’s womb, Mary leaped for joy and sang a powerful song to God. 

Mary and Elizabeth were two people who wouldn’t have been seen as powerful or important in any way. Mary was young, unmarried, and now an expectant mother. Elizabeth had spent her whole life as the wife of a priest and unable to have any children, which was seen by the community at that time as a shameful thing.  The only power women had in their culture was in childbearing. God chose to work through these women the only way their society would have accepted, yet what God did shattered expectations. These women were called to give birth to the one who would prepare the way for the Lord and to the one the people had been waiting on to save them.

This week, in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Christmas planning and expectations, I hope you will pause for a moment to consider the breath God has given you. Slow down for a moment and listen to the miracle of your breath, and allow this moment of pause to water the seeds of joy in your heart. And then, celebrate with someone in your life the tangible, earthy things God is working in your life. If you can’t think of someone to share this with, I hope you’ll find someone right after church here in the building.  

In closing, I want to leave you with a poem by Symeon the New Theologian, 10th century Eastern Orthodox monk and poet. This poem has impacted me in a profound way this week. I’m still sitting with it and trying to discern what it means for me, but there’s something in here so profoundly true that I wanted to offer it to you, too.

We awaken in Christ’s body

as Christ awakens our bodies,

and my poor hand is Christ, He enters

my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully

my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him

(for God is indivisibly

whole, seamless in His Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once

He appears like a flash of lightning.

Do my words seem blasphemous? — Then

open your heart to Him

and let yourself receive the one

who is opening to you so deeply.

For if we genuinely love Him,

we wake up inside Christ’s body

where all our body, all over,

every most hidden part of it,

is realized in joy as Him,

and He makes us, utterly, real,

and everything that is hurt, everything

that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,

maimed, ugly, irreparably

damaged, is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,

and radiant in His light

he awakens as the Beloved

in every last part of our body.