December 13, 2020 Sermon | “On Your Left” – Becoming the Joy We’re Awaiting
Preached for Glencliff UMC's (Nashville) Sunday, December 13, 2020 Worship Service. Feel free to donate to our justice ministries, and thank you!
Sermon Text | John 1:6-8; 19-28 (NRSV)
Sermon
I think the best thing for all of us is for me to go ahead and confess up front that I’m deep in my spirit right now, which is not atypical, but this moment more than most. I have to confess this because, right before I got on to record this, life happened, and I saw an article warning us that we need to expect that daily fatalities from COVID-19 for the next 60 days will outstrip the number of fatalities on September 11.
To be clear, we are being warned that we are about to experience 60 consecutive September 11ths. And for so many reasons, that makes me feel less than joyful, when Joy is both my name, and the focus of Week 3 of Advent—and so today’s sermon!
And I’m trying to remember one of the things that I’ve had to learn over the course of my life because my name is Joy, is that there is this distortion that was created within me because folks had had me convinced that joy is about people being happy, and so I should make them happy.
And I discovered that joy has nothing to do with happiness. Literally not at all. We can be sad and even sorrowful, and still joyful. Because, while happiness is a fleeting emotion, joy is soul-dwelling faith in the hope, peace, and love of God. That no matter what has happened or is happening, dwelling in God means that we are journeying on our beloved journey in wholeness and wellness.
It may still and is probably still going to hurt. If it was hurting, it's not suddenly going to stop hurting. It's often not what God hopes or intends for us. But God is beyond and above that situation, and God is guiding us beyond and above that situation towards healing.
We are going to talk about the Joy of the Lord today, not the human lowercase joy that we too often conflate with the lovely but nowhere near as powerful “happiness.”
There is a video on the interwebs of viewers watching Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame when the movie premiered in theaters. It's a video of them watching the battle scene at the end between Captain America and Thanos. Huge spoiler alert coming if you’ve never watched it. (To be fair, it’s been 18 months. This entire sermon is going to be a spoiler alert, so turn it off now if you're planning to watch it. Or just go with God.)
So Cap, Iron Man, and Thor had been battling Thanos to keep him from the glove, and this is the epic out and out, where Thanos has promised he’s not only going to snap away half the universe, he’s like, "I'm through wit y'all. Imma gone head and disappear erebody!" He literally says--"down to the bacteria" so there's no one to remember what he did to try and undo it. He's basically salty that they undid his evil plan. And the point is: this is the battle that will literally ends all battles—it’s gonna be Thanos, or it’s going to be all of the universe.
At this point in the battle, Iron Man and Thor have been beaten to a pulp, Captain America’s vibranium shield has been shorn to shards, and he’s been knocked down yet again. And as Thanos summons his army down from the atmosphere, Cap realizes he’s all that’s left. And because he’s all that’s left…and because justice and love are the things he believes in most…he gets up one more time and takes his battle stance as this entire army descends upon him. Because all he knows to do…is what he can do. And that is stand.
And in this moment of complete and seeming hopelessness, we hear a disembodied voice say through Captain America’s earpiece: “On your left.”
And in the video clip of the fans watching in the theaters, the audience goes wild. Why? Because that voice in his ear, teasing us with the injoke of, “On your left,” is the voice of his sidekick, Falcon—who along with myriad heroes had been snapped out of existence at the end of the last movie. And portals open. And portals open. And portals open. And the audience is going wild as we watched folks who vanished into thin air at the end of the last movie remanifest in full gear to take this battle on—together.
If “weeping endureth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” was a cinematic moment, this would be that moment.
One of the fans is actually in tears, the expression on their face relaying that they are so moved with joy and excitement—with the understanding, belief, and peace that, although there is yet an inevitable battle to come, and there will be pains and losses because that’s an unfortunate reality and consequence of battles--no one is inherently safe--there is a saving and healing outcome beyond and above this particular battle. And this battle has to be fought so all won't be lost. Some people will be lost so that everyone won't be lost.
And I had chills as I was watching the excitement and the joy displayed by the viewers.
And then I had dismay. And it took me a bit to name why that was, but I finally realized after several days—I kept going back to watch the viewers watching and reacting to this part of the movie.
And I finally realized that part of my struggle with the Marvel movies in the US society is that we love heroes too much.
We love the idea that someone else is coming to save us from what we’re struggling with.
That there will be a saving solution that falls out of the sky, and we don't have to be any different or change at all from how we've been.
Somebody is gonna come, and fix it for us, and we won't even have to be touched by what's happening. Or we'll be touched as little as possible while someone else handles it.
What that means is we often fail to see ourselves as part of the healing solution, and so we often fail to act in compassionate, loving, and healing ways as a collective society—even, and sometimes especially our churches.
We do this with Advent, the hero thing. Christmas season doesn’t actually begin until December 25th. And yet every year, so many of us hop, skip, and leap over Advent straight to Christmas, because we don’t want the journey. We just want to receive the joy.
Advent as a liturgical season is meant to help us reflect not on the coming of Christ to us, but the growth of the Spirit of Christ within and through us. Yet so many of us who even observe Advent speak of it as our awaiting the coming of Christ. Y’all—Christ has been here. Christ was born; Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.
So as John did while he was in his mother Elizabeth’s womb, in this text that we read for today's sermon, John is heralding the joy of the coming of the physically embodied Christ.
Now, in our time, during Advent, we, the body of Christ, are the heart, hands, and feet of our Savior here on Earth. We are continually learning to become filled with to faithfully live the joy that John was heralding with one another.
We are become the joy that John is shouting to the heavens, despite the naysaying of the Pharisees. We are not creating perfection, because we can’t.
We are, to the best of our faithful discernment and ability, co-creating with the Holy Spirit Christ’s empathy, compassion, healing, justice, and love.
So when I see that reaction video I am filled with the joy of what we recognize that we need.
That we need a team of folks who are committed to standing with one another against definitive harms and evils. To help bring hope and peace to the world.
And I’m filled with the hope—Hope is back to Advent’s week one—that we are not simply called to be those be those people, but that in our baptismal vows and communion remembrance, we agree that we are those people.
That when it comes to facing the holy relational destructiveness of white supremacism and the bodily destructive global virus that is COVID-19, we are the ones called to stand up one more time, and face it down because there is nothing that we desire more than to stand in alignment with the glory of God’s unfailing love and care.
We are the ones who show up with those have been standing alone—racial justice and healing activists who do this work all day everyday when many of us only pay attention when it blips across in the news.
The doctors, nurses, teachers, grocery store workers.
We stand with those who have already been standing, and cry out, “On your left!” as we faithfully join in the stand.
And God bless us, we agree to be among those who may need to, when evil and harm look us in face, believing they’ve won, and jeer, “I am inevitable,”
We are the ones who agree look it back in the face and declare, “I. Am a child of God” and make the sacrifices that may seem otherwise unthinkable because it preserves so much life beyond our own.
The gift of Advent is that we are agreeing to become with one another. The joy of advent is that we are agreeing to become with another the gifts that Christ has been to and in us: Hope. Peace. Joy. Love.
My joy this Advent is in every person who can find the strength to stand up, to fly in, and to join in with the healing and hope that we are called to be with one another.
My joy is learning how Christ is calling that forth within me. That we will agree to together to hold back the tides of evil and harm, and that we believe in God that we will overcome them--because we believe God.
To every person who will be called to be put on that glove—who has been called to put on the glove—to put your life at risk and even lose it so that others may live—I’m sorry. Thank you. We act like you don't exist.
And this lies in the assumption that I’m not called to be one of you: Those of us who believe in living the joy will make what you have shared with and for us worth it, in and with the Spirit of God.
We will continue to live and strive for a greater world of holy love, peace, and proactive care with one another.
May we all answer as we are called. May we be those not stuck in just cheering the arrival of our own joy, but also those willing to say, “On your left,” and to show up and help co-create that joy. That hope. That love of Christ.
May it be so. May it be us. Amen and axè.
Closing Meditation | ‘Speak Lord,’ Kurt Carr | Lyrics