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Meet Father KempThe First Sunday after Christmas – 27 December 2009
Twas the day after Christmas and all through the house
Not a creature was silent, not even a mouse.
The stockings were flung without care on the floor,
And permeating the air were cries, “I want more!”
The children were fighting and jumping on their beds,
While visions of greed pulsed through their heads.
And mamma on her couch and I on my chair,
Had just scrambled our brains and pulled out our hair.
When up in the playroom there arose such a clatter,
But I did not stir, did not care what was the matter.
“Away with this season!” I uttered in a flash,
“Next year the kids will get nothing but mash.”
The moon does not reflect off dirty old snow
Where is joy Christmas used to bestow?
What my tired eyes want to behold,
Is joy warming my heart that’s so bitterly cold.
We have now entered the melancholy season of post-Christmas. A season that in the words of C.S Lewis begins, “on the day after [Christ]mas [when we] are very grave, being internally disordered by the supper and drinking [of the night before] and reckoning how much [we] have spent on gifts and on the wine.”[1] The splendor, glory and joy of Christmas vanish when the last piece of wrapping paper falls discarded on the ground. The joy we felt burning in our souls igniting our dormant faith quickly evaporates leaving behind a cold crystallized heart. We know or at least we should know that the joy of Jesus’ Incarnation is the source of joy blossoming and blooming in our lives through the whole year. Yet, at times, it seems that Christians are content with their joylessness, as someone has said, “When believers do a little self-reflection, not many of us point to joylessness as the thing that needs attention. Mostly we flagellate ourselves for our undisciplined discipleship. We issue calls to repent of our consumerism, sign ecumenical concords to heal our division, and issue manifestos to care for the poor and the planet. No one has yet issued a joint … statement on the need for Christians to be more joyful.”[2] We have forgotten about joy even though the Scriptures are replete with commands, yes commands, to be joyful.
Part of our joylessness may be that we have confused joy with happiness. Happiness is a feeling of pleasure or contentment, while joy is a deep emotion of pleasure and gladness. The difference between happiness and joy is the difference between a feeling and a deep emotion. A feeling is often a superficial response to something while a deep emotion is often the visible outgrowth of a person’s soul. Happiness is taking a quite dash around to block to compensate for all the food consumed on Christmas while joy is getting up every Tuesday and Thursday at 5:30 a.m. to go walking. So when the Psalmist sings, “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth” (Psalm 100:1), when St. Paul commands, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4) and when the heavenly angels announce, “I bring you good new of great joy,” this joy is not a fleeting act of feeling but a deep emotional response produced in our soul. A person cannot be happily sad that is a contradiction, but a person can joyfully mourn and that is praise.
For these reasons, G.K Chesterton once said a person is fully human “when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.”[3] I believe Chesterton’s comment provides insight as to why the Incarnation is the great moment of joy. Joy becomes our fundamental identity when we have fellowship with God, as St. John wrote in our Epistle, “truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.” John’s statement is an echo of Jesus’ words in John 15 when he said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. … I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” In order be joyful we must be in fellowship with the Father. In order to be in fellowship with God the Father, Jesus, God the Son, had to be made a man so that he could, through his death and resurrection, atone for man’s sin. The Incarnation is joyful because God the Son became a man so that man might have fellowship with God. St. Athanasius put it rather boldly when he said, “For he was made man that we might be made God.”[4] Athanasius clarifies this statement saying that we are not god’s in our nature, but god’s in our sonship for through Jesus Christ we are all made sons and daughters of God living in intimate fellowship with our creator. Therefore, joy is being a son or daughter of God and Christmas is the season of joy because it is the celebration of the Incarnation, which is the bedrock upon which our joy rests.
If Christmas is the season of joy, how can this joy survive the melancholy of the year, how can our joy not be discarded like used wrapping paper? I think St. Joseph may provide an answer. St. Joseph seems to be an odd example since we know little to nothing about him. We know only a few things about St. Joseph. He was of the house and lineage of King David. He lived in Nazareth a town near the Sea of Galilee. He was a carpenter or a worker of wood by trade. He was a righteous and kind man who did not desire to publicly humiliate Mary as a result of her pregnancy and he was obedient, faithfully following the directions God gave him through the angel Gabriel. Furthermore, Joseph is silent in Scripture. This is quite striking since Scripture records the words of Jesus’ cousins, Zechariah, Elizabeth and John the Baptist. We can read words that Mary spoke and words spoken by Jesus’ disciples but no words of Joseph. Yet, in spite of his silence and obscurity, he was a crucial part of Jesus’ life, so crucial that without Joseph Jesus could not have been the Messiah. When Joseph took Mary to be his wife, he was claiming Jesus to be his own. He was publicly saying that the child in Mary’s womb was his own child. In the eyes of the law and his contemporaries, Joseph was Jesus’ father and this meant two things: for Joseph this meant he would always be regarded as a fornicator and for Jesus this meant that he would be a son of David, a true heir to the Davidic throne and without this kingly lineage, Jesus could not have been the Messiah.[5] We could say that Joseph claimed responsibility for a child that was not his own, so that his son could be king and claim responsibility for sins that were not his own. Without Joseph there is no Messiah named Jesus. Yet, Joseph was obscure known only on account of his adopted son, but his obscurity shows us that joy is found not in our independence from God, but in our dependence; joy is found not in our identity apart from God, but only in our identity resulting from God. Without Joseph there is no Messiah named Jesus. Yet, Joseph is silent and his silence shows that joy comes when we do not justify ourselves through our works and words, but when God’s grace is our only justification.
Joy is not a virtue that grows through deadly serious discipleship. It is not a virtue that grows with good works. It is not a virtue that blossoms through our labors. It is a virtue that is given to us as a gift, a gift named Jesus. So, this Christmas just stop, stop trying to justify yourselves and recognize God’s grace given through Jesus as your only justification. Stop trying to be known for the things you do and the words you say and pray to be known for the only thing that really matters, your fellowship with God the Father, Son and Spirit to whom all praise, honor and glory belong, not just in this life, but in the life to come.
[1] C.S. Lewis, “Xmas and Christmas” in God on the Docks, ed. by Walter Hooper, Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, reprint 1999, pages 301-304.
[2] Anoumous auther, “The Joy-Driven Life” in Christianity Today, December 2009, pg 53.
[3] Quoted in the “Joy-Driven Life.”
[4] Athanasius, On the Incarnation, The Library of Christian Classics Vol. 3 “Christology of the Later Fathers,” edited by E. R. Hardy, Westminster Press: Philadelphia, 1964, pg 107.
[5] If Joseph had acted according to the letter of the law, Mary and the child in her womb could have been killed. Yet Joseph, with a little encouragement from Gabriel, took responsibility for Jesus.
