The Melody of Lent

 Please sing/pray the fourth verse of Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee with me:

Mortals, join the mighty chorus, Which the morning stars began;
Boundless love is reigning o’er us, reconciling race and clan.
Ever singing, move we forward, faithful in the midst of strife;
Joyful music leads us onward In the triumph song of life.

 

By the fourth and final stanza, we are invited to join with God, the composer and conductor of joy.  We join with creation belting out the tune.  We join with a love that is leading us; into a song that began long before any of us were born and will continue when we are gone.  You see, we did not write the song.  We lend our voice, we offer our presence, we participate with gusto, but the credit for composition goes to the giver of immortal gladness.

In our culture we are caught in a cycle both of cynicism and individualization and wanting to show others how smart/faithful/awesome we are.  There is a challenge in this fourth verse that life is not all about you or having it your way.  We are called to be part of the choir.  The deeper truth is that today, we don’t feel like we are on the same page of music or even in the same song.  The dissonance and discord we feel is real.  And we are so accustomed to pointing out the brokenness and less-than-perfectness of life that we don’t know how to join with each other.  The cultural script we are given is to blame/shame and it is the one that our leaders too often embrace/embody.  Political parties bicker bitterly and can’t stand it if the other side does something good, so they tear down.  Churches can get caught in competition, we look around to see if another church has better attendance, a bigger budget, or more staff – constantly comparing.  Even social media is about trying to “trend” and collect “likes”, but we know that is fragile and fades the moment something because popular.  In some ways, we have been tearing down the structures around us for decades.  Pointing out the flaws (which are many).  But in deconstructing everything, we wonder why everything is in shambles and pieces, because we were too busy pointing out all the places where the whole thing was broken.  It was a vicious cycle that led us here. 

And perhaps one pathway is to try to find places of joy.  To reconcile means to be rejoined.  Joy can be the glue that starts to hold the whole project together.  Unlike some resources that are finite and will run out, joy is generative, grows with each moment it is passed along.  The more joy is offered/accepted (both are important for joy that is refused or rejected doesn’t have the same impact), the more it because a light to our lives and the world.  For example, I share these devotionals of joy, maybe you forward this to someone you know who I may never meet, that person in turn tries to offer joy to someone else, who in turn does the same.  You can start to see how joy feeds and fuels itself.  To be sure, pain can work the same way.  To be sure, being a grumpy Gus works the same way.  To be sure, as we have said all week, we need to build the spiritual muscle of “And”.  I can be hurt by the wounds of the world and amazed by the grace of others.  I can cry tears of grief and express gratitude of joy of love.  Our lives are not caught in junior high of only have one best friend, we can have two emotions sitting within us at the same time, if we are willing to lean into the beautiful tension that creates.  I was not taught or ever told this in life.  It isn’t like my Sunday School teacher had a flannel cut out of the emotions sitting in my heart and helped me process the ways the two could actually life together!  I was taught either or thinking.  If you are sad, then you can’t also be happy.  If someone else gets a new car, you must be falling behind.  If someone wins the trophy of life (as if that is actually a thing), then you must have lost.

The word, “And” refuses and rejects either/or thinking.  And says, I can be both heartbroken and heart warmed by this world.  And says, I can enjoy riding in someone’s new car without feeling like I need to go to the dealership.  And says, there is no trophy for winning life, there is a song of God’s joy that we can sing, even when our voice isn’t ever going to make a solo record.

To live the “And” of life is what joy – and I believe one of the best invitations of Lent – can be.  I pray you and I will live/explore/encounter/embrace/experience this truth every day.  Amen!