The Life of the Party--May 7, 2024

The Life of the Party--May 7, 2024

[Jesus said:] "I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete." [John 15:11]

Jesus wishes our joy. How about that?

No, more than just that.  Jesus does more than "wish" our joy, like the empty gesture of someone looking up to the stars for help or blowing out candles on their cake with a heaping helping of magical thinking.  No, Jesus does more than merely wish for, hope for, or dream about joy for his followers: he makes it possible.  Jesus enacts it. He initiates it.  Jesus fills us with his own exuberant life, so that we, too, may be full of his joy.

Honestly, I don't know that we talk, or even think, in those terms very frequently... or very well.  All too, often, I hear people talk about Christian life and faith as some joyless matter of drudgery, like we are signing on for miserable lives in the present in order to avoid damnation when we die.  All too often, I hear Respectable Religious Voices talking about the Christian faith like it's all dour-faced scowling at sinners for not measuring up (while being secretly jealous that we're missing out on all the "fun").  And to be honest, the way some folks describe heaven as a never-ending church service floating on clouds as disembodied souls, even that picture of eternal life doesn't sound all that appealing--it somehow sounds like being less alive than we are now, rather than more alive.  And for a lot of people, that's exactly how the Christian faith has been presented: a trade-off of quantity for quality--like you get less fun in life if you're a Christian, but you get to live forever. By that description, Christianity might sound like the safe long-term bet... but somehow it still doesn't sound very satisfying.  You know the old Billy Joel lyric: "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints--the sinners are much more fun, you know that only the good die young."  Fair point, Piano Man.

The thing that gets me, though, is that Jesus doesn't seem to buy any of that hogwash about following him being all misery and malaise.  Jesus says, in these words many of us heard this past Sunday, that his message, his mission, his community, and his life in us are all meant to bring us joy... to the fullest.  Jesus doesn't think that being in his company requires the silencing of laughter and the stifling of our lives, but rather just the opposite.  Where Jesus is, there is joy.  Being in his beloved community is to be where joy is embodied more and more completely.

Now, it is worth noting that there is a real difference between Jesus' life of genuine "joy" and the fleeting, flighty, and often ephemeral thing we call "happiness," which is often just a matter of brain chemistry reacting to the endorphins released by ordering something new on Amazon, getting a sugar and caffeine rush from your mocha latte, or getting a good parking space.  The things that make for the short-lived feeling we call "happiness" rarely offer us that good feeling for very long, and soon enough we need to buy the next shiny new thing, climb the next rung of the corporate ladder to win a sparkly trophy or a corner office, pour another drink, or distract ourselves with the next glamorous vacation, just to keep treading the same emotional water.  Jesus hasn't promised us a golden ticket to the chocolate factory, or a shortcut quick fix in the pursuit of the mirage called "happiness."  But he has come, he says, that our joy might be complete.

Joy doesn't depend on getting free shipping or extra whip and chocolate shavings on your frappuccino.  Joy is not a commodity for sale, and therefore cannot be "super-sized" for an extra $0.99.  Joy, rather, is the word for being fully enlivened by the One who truly is the Life of the Party himself, and being brought into connection with the whole motley crew of his Beloved Community.  And when you actually stop to think about the experience of people around Jesus in the Gospel stories, you rediscover that they weren't moping in misery, but constantly whooping it up at unlikely dinner parties where the misfits were welcome guests, passing loaves and fish with delight at surprise picnics by the sea, and raising glasses of water-turned-wine at wedding receptions.  The people around Jesus may not typically have the wealth, the luxury, the technology, or the status that are often associated with "the pursuit of happiness," but they sure do have joy.  Joy himself is there at the table next to them, and he's the one who welcomed them to the party.

That's the kind of life we are pulled into because of Jesus.  That's what the Christian life is really all about--the beginnings of the big party, the first notes of the parade, and the first course of the resurrection feast that has no end.  It is a raucous good time, in other words, and we have been let in on the glorious and hilarious work of telling everybody we meet that there's a place set for them there, too.  That's what we're inviting a friend to share in, what we tell a neighbor about, and what we offer to the strangers around us who are aching to belong.  And it's all real, all there for the having, because Jesus does not merely wish for us to be joyful--he activates joy to the full within us now.

Who will you tell... today?

Lord Jesus, let your risen life bring us joy to the full, so that it even overflows to the people around us.