“Joy is the most important Christian emotion … the joy that is of God is not opposed to earthly pleasures. Rather, it infuses them with a foundation of meaning.”
1. Joy
There are some people who would say that we do not do “joy” well. I don't mean this congregation – I'm talking about mainline American Christianity. We take our religion seriously. Especially here in New England . With us sober New Englanders, and that long joyless parade of Calvinists starting with the Pilgrims onto Cotton Mather and to Jonathan Edwards always telling us we were hanging by a thread of the pit of hell.
You do know what they all us in other parts of the country, don't you?
They call us God's frozen people.
It is my hope, today, that we will thawed by God, singing in joy, praying in joy, clasping each other's hand in joy. Not frozen but chosen!
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We are one of the few cultures that does not recognize this need for release, this need to be joyous. All around the world right now, in Christian countries, Carnival – some form of Mardi Gras – is being celebrated in preparation for Lent. In Italy , there is the Carnival in Venice , Brazil – the Carnival in Rio de Janiero. In Mexico , in Spain , in Canada , in Holland – Holland , for God's sake!! – Carnival is celebrated.
The word “carnival” comes from the Latin “carne” – meat, and levare – to take away. Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday – from the ancient custom of parading a fat cow through town – Tuesday before Ash Wednesday's supper. Carnival was a time of release, a time of joy, a time when all things were turned upside down. When the lowest in society were elevated to positions of power. Beggars became the City Council. Everything was shared. There was enough to eat for all. All lived in joy and harmony.
It was, in a sense, like a little preview of the kingdom of heaven that Jesus is continually talking about.
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2. The last are first, and the first are last.
So what, exactly, does the gospel reading from Matthew have to do with all of this? Well, I think the secret to joy is in here. It's a little disguised, but it's there:
Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God .' 25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, ‘Then who can be saved?'
You have to love the disciples. Here we are in the nineteenth chapter of Matthew. And this hits them like big news? Where have they been? Across all four gospels, the number one word that Jesus uses is … (?)
… kingdom.
The number two word?
… money. Or variations on money.
-- What does Matthew 19:21 say?
-- Luke 6:20?
-- Luke 14:13?
Theologians, who love to make up big phrases for very simple ideas, refer to this as the “preferential option for the poor.” This is just another way of saying that Jesus is more concerned with the poor, the outcast, the disenfranchised.
So what does this have to do with joy? A lot. Where does the gospel message spread the fastest – even today? Among the poor. Could there possibly be better news – more “good news” – if you are poor than to hear your situation will be reversed? That someone is going to take you from the end of the line and move you to the very front – at the very time that it matters most. That you were last, but now you will be first. Not here on earth, the three score and ten years we are allotted. But in eternity.
Oooh. That is good news. That is cause for joy.
Christianity spreads like wildfire when it is released among those who have very little. Because it offers soooo much.
I'm gonna be in that number when the saints go marching in.
That's why gospel music is so filled with joy. It came out of people singing in chains. When they heard the first would be last, and the last would be first – how could they keep from singing?
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Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God .
Now, this is the point where this passage starts to go in one ear and out the other. Unlike the apostles, we are not astonished at this. The camel and the eye of the needle is a metaphor that has lost its bite, we've heard it so many times.
Not only that, by the time we get to the end of the passage and we hear the first shall be last and the last shall be first, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference to us, does it? Yes, by the world's standards, we are incredibly well-off. But, being human, that is not the calculator we carry around in our minds. Our frame of reference is here. Our neighbors. Our friends. Our relatives.
And I would be willing to bet that if we were to plot this out on a scale of one to ten, one being the last and ten being the first, we would all fall into the four to six range. That means when the first goes to last and vice versa, we won't be doing a whole lot of shifting around.
As a result, we don't necessarily jump for joy when we hear this passage. In fact, we mostly sit on our hands while we watch the drama played out on the front pages. Martha Stewart is a perfect example of this. Why? She is the poster child for the first becoming the last. The prospect of Martha Stewart decorating her jail cell has become part of the national consciousness.
That is not to say we don't have egregious examples to remind us that, even here on earth, the first and last occasionally do a shuffle dance.
I asked Cindy to bring in the front page of the Globe today. I haven't seen the paper yet, but I'm willing to bet there is at least one or two examples:
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So this leaves us in a sort of limbo land, doesn't it? We're still missing the boat on joy. That most precious of Christian emotions. The thing that makes you want to sing, the thing that makes you want to pray out loud, the thing that – quite frankly – makes you want to come here. You don't want to come here to be depressed. You want to take home a bit of joy. A bit of good news. Something that will make you smile and make you want to do something good and positive and kind during the week.
You see …
I had a dream. I dreamed of the Kingdom of Heaven . And in this Kingdom, there was … a Dunkin' Donuts. Yes. Dunkin' Donuts. Some people imagine meeting their loved ones, being reunited with their pets. I want all that and a Dunkin' Donuts, too. I'm sorry, but it just won't be the Kingdom of Heaven without Dunkin' Donuts. So, I walked into this Dunkin' Donuts – which looked remarkably like the one at the Shell station across from Victory – and got in line. At first, I was a little surprised to find a … line in heaven, but … OK.
And then, the waitress said to the young fellow at the front of the line, “Can I help you?” I noticed, with some alarm, that he was wearing a pullover sweatshirt with the name of a construction company, jeans with cement stains and work boots. He said, “Yea,” and pulled out a piece of paper on which there were at least 32 different coffee break orders, involving virtually every possible size and shape of coffee as well as breakfast sandwiches, pastries and Munchkins.
At that moment, I realized – with great joy, I may add – that we were in the kingdom, and I was – yes – last in line. Whereupon, I walked to the counter, said to the waitress, “The last shall be first. Large, cream, two sugars.”
There is, I realize, a kind of idiosyncratic nature of this joy that the rest of you may not share. So let us return to camel and the eye of the needle.
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4. The Good News
I'm glad that Jesus used a camel in this story. Anyone who has ever had any contact with a camel knows that they are smelly, fly-covered, and not particularly pleasant creatures.
What if, in this story, Jesus is not simply referring to money, but to all the other smelly baggage that we carry around. The smelly baggage that won't fit through the eye of the needle.
Things like: not feeling that we're good enough.
Things like: not feeling that we're worthy of being loved.
Things like: not feeling that we're connected to God.
Those are roadblocks to joy. Throw them away. Send those camels to bed. And you will be so light and airy that you will slip right through that needle's eye to joy.
And I'm afraid we're about to be hit with another dose of seriousness in the form of Mel Gibson's new movie. Like everyone else who has reviewed the movie, I haven't seen it yet. But I will make a comment. I have no gripe with Mel Gibson. But there are two things I would throw into the already over-heated argument. First, there is no such thing as the “literal” story of the Passion, unless you choose one gospel account. That is, unless you go by Matthew or Mark or Luke or John. It's like four witnesses on the witness stand. Each has a different story, each has a different agenda. You cannot do a “composite.”
But that's almost beside the point for me. For the story of Jesus to make any sense to me, I need to believe He came here to show us how to live. Not how to die. That's why the gospel is called the “good news.” That's what it means in Greek. Good news.
The gospel stories are not four long, drawn-out obituaries. They are a guide to a way of life that will bring us joy.
