December 15, 2024

Poetry for Advent “Let joy kill you!” On Joy

It seems almost like trying to gild the lily to offer a sermon after the beautiful sky, the wonderful music, and the lighting of the Advent candle this morning. But I am, after all, a preacher, and you can’t put me in the pulpit without expecting to hear me prattle on about something.

But, seriously, folks, this morning we are continuing the Advent pulpit series in which I am focusing on not only scripture but poems I have selected to deal with the Advent themes of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. Today, instead of prattling on, I am sharing some words about something that is at the very beating heart of everything I hold dear and, in some form or another, what I preach about every Sunday: Joy. And in doing so, I’m lifting up a marvelous poem by Carl Sandburg, titled simply, “Joy.” You’ll find it printed on the insert in your bulletin:

Let a joy keep you.
Reach out your hands
And take it when it runs by,
As the Apache dancer
Clutches his woman.
I have seen them
Live long and laugh loud,
Sent on singing, singing,
Smashed to the heart
Under the ribs
With a terrible love.
Joy always,
Joy everywhere –
Let joy kill you!
Keep away from the little deaths.

This poem has been swimming around in my head in one way or another for a long time. It is an elegant statement of something that pervades and animates every sermon I try to deliver. I believe there is something – call it God if you like – that calls to us from the deepest place of our souls and pleads with us to, as Sandburg puts it, “reach out with your hands” and take joy “when it runs by”, to “let a joy keep you.” Being kept by joy is indeed a treasure worth grasping. It becomes a way of life. It is not a fleeting burst of excitement like an eight-year-old running downstairs into the living room on Christmas morning. Those moments are indeed wonderful and not to be diminished. But joy is something much deeper and more profound. To be kept by joy is to discover that wondrous gift of divinity being born within you. That is, I believe why Elizabeth and Mary were so overcome when it was found that Mary was pregnant with Holiness itself. And Mary was wise enough to know that this joy she had found was larger than the moment, larger than herself. It was offered “from generation to generation.” And it had to do with filling “the hungry with good things,” and with the kind of “mercy” that lived in “the promise made to ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” Joy is larger than the moment. It takes you beyond yourself. It is deeper than any occasion or feeling.

In the immortal poem “An die Freude” or “Ode to Joy” Friedrich Schiller addressed joy, referring to it as a “schöner Götterfunken,” or “beautiful Godspark” I love that turn of phrase. It describes joy as something totally divine and totally beyond comprehension. He says that “Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!” or “We trespass, drunk with fire, on heaven your sanctuary.” For Schiller (and for me) joy is so holy a thing that we can so easily stumble our way through life recklessly disregarding its wonder and life-giving power. And that power is also the glue that can, if everyone is open to it, bring people together as if in a family. He writes:

Deine Zauber binden wieder
Was die Mode streng geteilt;*
Alle Menschen werden Brüder*
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Your mystical power binds togeher
What routines of habit tear apart,
All men become brothers
Where your soft wings sway.

Joy – the kind of joy that blows away our habitual disregard for one another, and wells up from the Divine image that lives in every human breast – the kind of joy that abides in the midst of all trials and traumas, heartaches and losses – that holy joy can be the glue that holds together people of differing backgrounds, races, nations, opinions, and personalities. This morning, as I was wandering around in Face Book, I saw something Judy posted that caught my attention. It was a quote from Teddy Roosevelt: “Comparison is the thief of joy.” That’s it! When we stop sizing up other people and making ourselves feel greater or more gifted, we can be open to the joy that lives in every heart if it is only awakened.

The immortal Howard Thurman, in his book, Deep Is the Hunger, offers a rich description of the kind of joy I’m talking about. “What is the source of your joy?” he asks. “There are some who are dependent upon the mood of others for their happiness. They seem bound in mood one to another like Siamese twins. If the other person is happy, the happiness is immediately contagious. If the other person is sad, there is no insulation against his mood. There are some whose joy is dependent upon circumstances. When things do not go well, a deep gloom settles upon them, and all who touch their lives are caught in the fog of their despair. There are some whose joy is a matter of disposition and temperament. They cannot be sad because their glands will not let them. . . . There are some who must win their joy against high odds, squeeze it out of the arid ground of their living or wrest it from the stubborn sadness of circumstance. . . . There are still others who find their joy deep in the heart of their religious experience. It is not related to, dependent upon, or derived from, any circumstances or conditions in the midst of which they must live. It is a joy,” he says, “independent of all vicissitudes. There is a strange quality of awe in their joy, that is but a reflection of the deep calm water of the spirit out of which it comes. It is primarily a discovery of the soul, when [God’s presence is made known], where there are no words, no outward song, only the Divine Movement.” He concludes, “This is the joy that the world cannot give. This is the joy that keeps watch against all the emissaries of sadness of mind and weariness of soul. This is the joy that comforts and is the companion, as we walk even through the valley of the shadow of death.”

No one could more eloquently get to the heart of things than Thurman. This joy he writes about is the “abundant life” of which Jesus spoke in our reading from John, an abundance in living that he said was why he was doing everything he did; it was what he came to offer. It is found in the unshakeable connection to the Heart of Being that is faith. And it can hold a person securely as might infinite, divine arms through all the high mountains and dark canyons of life. But such joy, treasure that it is, does not come cheaply. It does not make the “valley of the shadow of death” vanish among the hills. It does not vanquish the “emissaries of sadness of mind and weariness of soul.” Indeed, true joy opens itself to such pain, because it need not hide from it. Sandburg offers this truth in the powerful image of an Apache dancer who:

Clutches his woman.
I have seen them
Live long and laugh loud,
Sent on singing, singing,
Smashed to the heart
Under the ribs
With a terrible love.

Sandburg is wise enough to know that grasping joy is akin to seizing love, knowing that your hands finally will be burned. Love that is full and rich and powerful is terrible; it can smash you to the heart; it never comes without some ultimate pain. My life is not a bed of roses, neither is yours; noone’s is. And so joy that holds a person through life never offers shelter from the hurricanes. Carl Sandburg knew that. He left school at age thirteen and worked from that time on: as a milk wagon driver, a porter, a bricklayer, a farm worker, a hotel servant, a coal heaver before he ever took up writing. He knew even as a small child how hard life could be. But clearly he found something in life that convinced him that the cost of joy, like the cost of love, was worth every farthing. Looking into the eyes of one another, we find the truth we are seeking. We know that other lives, like our own, will not be without traumas. But we also know that there is something to be found here when we lift up our hearts together and touch the holiness of Divine Joy that will bind us together and hold all of us securely through all our days.

Carl Sandburg’s final word of advice is ours, and it is seasoned with a caveat. You can try to escape from life’s pain by burying your soul in greed, or work, or frivolous escape, or alcohol, or self-pity. But those are all simply “little deaths.” If you must succumb to something in the end, “Let joy kill you.”