The Joy Candle

Dr. Larry Thorson

Luke 1:46-55

December 13, 2009

⁴⁶ And Mary said:
       "My soul glorifies the Lord

⁴⁷ and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

⁴⁸ for he has been mindful
       of the humble state of his servant.
       From now on all generations will call me blessed,

⁴⁹ for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
       holy is his name.

⁵⁰ His mercy extends to those who fear him,
       from generation to generation.

⁵¹ He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
       he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

⁵² He has brought down rulers from their thrones
       but has lifted up the humble.

⁵³ He has filled the hungry with good things
       but has sent the rich away empty.

⁵⁴ He has helped his servant Israel,
       remembering to be merciful

⁵⁵ to Abraham and his descendants forever,
       just as he promised our ancestors."

⁵⁶ Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home.

Today’s New International Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society

Today we lit a pink candle in our Advent Wreath. Why a pink candle? Every Advent I’m asked by at least one person why we have a pink candle in the Advent Wreath. Some think it’s because we ran out of purple candles. Others think there’s something really mystical and almost magical about how we have one unusual candle. Others have guessed that it stands for Jesus’ mother Mary. Hmm.

Those are all good guesses, but none are based in fact. The tradition actually goes back to the earliest years of the Christian church when the only church season was Lent, the seven weeks prior to Easter. Lent was a season of fasting and prayer as the church commemorated the crucifixion of Jesus. The traditional color of banners in the church during this time was a deep purple, signifying royalty, repentance, and suffering.

During Lent the church lit seven candles, one for each week of the season. However solemn the season, the story of Lent also has a twinge of hope and joy since the death of Christ prefigured the resurrection. So, on the third Sunday of Lent, the church was encouraged not to fast, but to feast. In ancient times on that particular Sunday the Pope would honor a citizen with a pink rose, and as time passed the priests wore pink vestments for that Sunday as a reminder of the coming joy.

When the season of Advent was instituted the church viewed it as a mini-Lent, a time for reflection and repentance (thus the purple). In so doing, the church adopted the first four candles of Lent and changed the third candle of Advent to pink in honor of the Lenten tradition. This is why we have a pink candle in our Advent Wreath. Maybe that piece of information will help you in your next trivia game.

So today we have the pink candle of joy. What better Scripture to use than Mary’s song written after she realized she was going to be the mother of the savior.

Joy is often mentioned in church circles. There’s a mega Lutheran Church in Glendale, Arizona called the Community Church of Joy. There’s a Lutheran church near my home called “The Spirit of Joy”. The word is often displayed on Christmas decorations. Think how often you see the word “Joy” this time of year.

But even more so than on Christmas decorations and cards, the word joy is found 219 times in the Bible and that doesn’t even include the words “joyful” or “joyous”.

Joy is a big thing for Jesus. He said to his disciples in John 15:9-11 9 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

Jesus also knew that Proverbs 17:22 says “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Another word for cheerful in the Hebrew is joyful. As I was typing these very words on Thursday Kathy Warren, one of our long time members, called me. The day before we had talked and she told me that her son Dana had been in a horrific accident on Gilman Springs Road and was in serious condition at the hospital in Riverside.

Kathy is a woman of great faith who prays often and has overcome some challenging obstacles to her faith. The next day when she called, she wanted me to know that one of her other sons and her daughter-in-law had gone out to the wrecking yard to see the remains of Dana’s car. The yard owner told them that in his 30 years of salvage work he had never seen anyone live after an accident like that.

What Kathy realized the moment she heard that, was her son should have, by the laws of nature, died in the accident. She should have been planning his memorial service. But God kept him alive, somehow. What I heard in Kathy’s voice was renewed joy that her son was alive and that God had kept him alive for a purpose. If God brought him through that, God could bring him through his long recovery. That brings hope and joy to a mother.

“A joyful heart is good medicine.” In the midst of what could and should have been a chaotic situation, Mary a teenage girl engaged to be married but not yet married was carrying a baby and still found joy. As I was reading the Christmas story to our high school students Wednesday night and we got to the part where it says Mary was engaged to be married and she was carrying the baby Jesus, it sounded so normal for our culture. As much as I preach abstinence before marriage, the culture we live in models, screams, and flaunts the opposite.

But in those days a God fearing couple didn’t get pregnant before marriage. They knew it would be dishonoring to God. So the fact that she knew she was still a virgin and yet she was pregnant was not something easy to explain to the public. It would be hard for most to believe her. Just like Kathy Warren, joy didn’t come from her outward circumstances. Joy came from knowing that God had a purpose for her son’s life, in Mary’s case to be the savior of the world.

The world has gawked at the travails of Tiger Woods in recent weeks. Earlier this year I showed you pictures of Tiger’s beautiful Florida home; one of the most beautiful homes in the world. He’s married to a former Swedish model with two beautiful sons. He’s the best golfer in the world, on the top of a big world. But once again we have a demonstration that joy doesn’t come from our circumstances, our beautiful home, our beautiful family, our successful career, it comes from finding and living in God’s purpose for our life. My prayers and hopefully yours are with Tiger and Elin as they try to repair the present circumstances of their lives and find that purpose for their life.

Webster's New World Dictionary specifically defines joy as "a very glad feeling; happiness; great pleasure; delight." But that only defines the expression of joy. It fails to consider the causes of joy, the circumstances in which it is expressed.

Recently in doing some readings on people with deviated behavior I read of convicted murderers on death row who stated that in their drug-induced state of mind could experience a sexual thrill every time they drove a pick-ax into the body of their victim. They actually feel pleasurable satisfaction in murder!

Our minds can become so perverted and twisted in its response to stimuli that what we feel or what another sees on the outside cannot be blindly trusted as the righteous response of a righteous cause. The cause may be the very reason the joy is neither enduring nor satisfying.

Proverbs 24:17-18 says “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles; lest the LORD see it, and it displease Him, and He turn away His wrath from him.” Because it seems natural to do so, a lot of times we do precisely what God warns not to do! God implies that God’s wrath will be turned from the enemy to us if we rejoice over someone falling.

Scripture doesn’t say, in the words of a song a few years back, "Don't worry, be happy." Scripture says, "Don't worry, rejoice." And there is a world of difference between the two. Just as we have two different words--happiness and joy, so the Greek language, the language of the New Testament also has two different words. The Greek word for happiness is “makarios” and it refers to the freedom of the rich from normal cares and worries. It is the word used to describe a person who has received some form of good fortune--money, health, children and that sort of thing. And that is what our word happiness is about. If I am happy, it is because things are going well for me--my outward situation is good. There are no crises, I feel good, there's money in the checking account, nobody is out to get me, my job is going well, and so forth.

When those things start to change, however, I don’t remain happy. Jesus got so angry that he went on a rampage through the temple. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus and over the city of Jerusalem. Jesus sweat drops of blood in the garden. And of the seven recorded sayings of Jesus from the Cross, not one of them was "Hey, isn't life good! Why the long face, Mom? Cheer up!"

We don’t have a direct command in the Bible to always be happy. Neither do we have an example of an always-happy Jesus. What we do have is the promise of joy.

Happiness is the great feeling that you get when everything is going smoothly. Joy is what God gives you in the midst of trouble when you put that trouble in God's hands. Another way we might put it is that we have happiness because of our situation, we have joy in spite of our situation.

With happiness, fear and destruction might be just around the corner. With joy, the very things that others fear have become, in God's hands, a sign of God’s presence.

Joy is having purpose in life. Joy is the knowledge that everything I do when my life is committed to Christ has a purpose and will be a part of the divine plan for the world. Even Oprah Winfrey, one of the wealthiest and most well known women in America says “I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace - a connection to what matters.” [1]

We don't really know joy until we really want God's will more than our own. And we don't come to want that, until we have learned to know and love God.

Anne Robertson writes that it “was about midnight, November 1, 1980. I was back at home, having just graduated from college in June. I woke up, hearing noise in the hallway outside my bedroom. I opened the door and heard my mother on the phone. She was half yelling, half crying--almost incoherent -- saying over and over again "I can't wake him up! I can't wake him up!" I ran down the hall to my parent's bedroom and saw my father lying on the bed, his eyes glassy with the look of death. My mother was still on the phone and I remember thinking, "Jesus raised the dead, and he promised that we would do even greater things. I can pray for him to live again."

I got down on my knees and I prayed for Jesus to put life back into my father. And as I prayed, my voice got more and more desperate. I remember feeling that I was about to go over the edge into hysteria at any minute. But before I fell over the edge, I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I heard a voice say, "No." Immediately, I was flooded by peace. I finished my prayer by giving my father permission to go and to be with God, and then I looked up. There was no one in the room. My father's glassy-eyed stare was gone as his eyelids were now closed, and I got up and went to my mother. I was not happy--not by a long shot. But I had joy, because I knew that God was at work. I didn't understand--and still don't, why it had to be him--47 years old, at the height of his career. But I do understand that God's purposes are beyond my understanding.”[2]

What things are keeping you from joy this morning? Are there things in your life that you are anxious about, things that you're still trying to find some way to control? When we truly don't care whether we live or die...whether we are suffering or comfortable...just so long as God's will is being done, there is nothing left to fear. Joy enters our soul. That joy no one can take from us.

That’s the joy the Christ child came to bring. I hope you find that joy awaiting you this season despite whatever your circumstances? It starts by giving this moment and this day of your life to Jesus Christ.

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[1] O Magazine – reference date lost

[2] 1999, Anne Robertson at St. John’s United Methodist Church in Dover, New Hampshire