Surprised By Joy - Epiphany 2023

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 2023 by the Very Rev. Tyler Doherty, Dean and Rector.

 I think most of us have had the rather odd experience of being, as C.S. Lewis calls it, “surprised by joy.” Somehow, in the middle of our ordinary life where things don’t seem to be going particularly well, or how we think they “should” be going, a causeless joy sneaks through the door of the heart like a thief in the night. War still rages. The dishes are still piled in the sink, the mortgage still needs to be paid, our health hasn’t improved, and the kids won’t clean their rooms. And yet, an unmistakable peace descends–overshadows–and for no good reason at all we are surprised by joy. A basic goodness and beauty breaks through and we awaken from our slumber to discover that yes, indeed, we are and always have been standing in a stream of mercy–immersed in the pulsing, dancing heart of all creation that has love as its groundless ground. We recognize it’s not so much that we’ve been seeking God, but God has been seeking us and we stopped just long enough to let him catch us.

And Caspar, Melicor, and Balthasar are surprised by joy, too. Sure, they see a star and travel to Jerusalem—something in them (as in us) longs and yearns to worship and adore the beauty, truth, and goodness we are created to worship and adore—but remember they are also sent by fear-shriveled Herod to scope out this child. They are given an alternate mission: an assignment to embed with the Holy Family and report back with actionable intel. They emerge from their secret huddle with Herod with a task, something to do. A way to get there and an exfiltration route once they get eyes on the target. If this all sounds vaguely military, that’s because it is. Herod’s contagious fear has infected his court and all Jerusalem (presumably they all share the same Twitter echo chamber). The good thing they have going is under threat by love come into the world and there is only one way to deal with such a threat: neutralize it. The Three Wise Men’s original, rising-star yearning is at risk of being side-tracked by Herod’s demonic counter-charge. To whom will they (will we) pay homage?

They follow the leading of a star, going quietly (a little torn) on their way when interrupting love comes down: “When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.” Joy’s a funny animal. It’s different from happiness, which tends to be tied to causes and conditions. Full box of chocolates: happy. Empty box of chocolates: sad. Healthy: happy. Sick: unhappy. Joy, on the other hand, is born of steady, quiet confidence, not dependent on outward circumstances. It’s a deep, surrendered, rootedness and stabilization in the ground of being–the coursing stream of mercy bodying forth as this  limitless universe–that’s available to us, seeking us and leading us, in sickness and in health, in happiness and sorrow, in life and in death and beyond. 

The Three Wise Men–suprised by joy–are overwhelmed. The mission is scrapped. Their plans go out the window: “Herod? Herod who?” They enter into the unremarkable, holy house and, seeing the child Jesus and his mother Mary, kneel down and pay him homage. Wonder and awe erupt unexpectedly and they drop to their rubbery knees. As when we kneel in silent prayer and invoke the Holy Name of Jesus in the faith and trust that in him is mercy’s wideness holding us just as we are to touch, heal, and transfigure us into what love looks like when it tabernacles in this tent of flesh. As when we kneel to receive the richness of Christ’s body and blood at this altar–open-handed, undefended, and receiving–granted, miraculously, “access to God in boldness and confidence.” 

As when our heart kneels taking a break from grumbly shoveling and we “lift up our eyes” with Isaiah and “look around”: Behold! Mt. Olympus wreathed in cloud-shadow, rockfolds creased with ice and snow and crow caws and everything just stops. Surprised by joy. Surprised by love come down. The gift of God’s very self to us right smack-dab in the midst of this muddle. Ordinary glory face-to-face. Heirs, here and now, of the one body. Or as Thomas Traherne writes in his Centuries of Meditations: 

You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars…. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.

So we stoke and follow our yearning away from the madding crowd, from the world of getting and spending in the faith and trust that there is another way, that we are made for something more: to see and be radiant. So stilled, we stop. We shed our plans, the to-do list, and the scales of Herod’s blinding worry and fear fall from our eyes.  We see and, shoeless, enter in. We come close to the one who is closer to us than we are to ourselves. We kneel in self-forgetful homage to one through whom all things came to be: eternity wriggling cradled in a makeshift manger. We open our treasure chests and give it all to him: “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” Our King of Kings, our joy, trading breaths with sheep and oxen, with us. Breathing his peace in the manger of the heart. Finding refuge in the easy patter of his Holy Name. Resting our head like the Beloved Disciple on Jesus’ easy-yoke shoulder: “Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice.”

Any wonder the Wise Men go home by a different road? They’ve travelled to the manger to discover love living in their hearts. Being known by and knowing God–the God who will stop at nothing to draw us to Godself and shower us with love (and cover us with camels, apparently)--they can’t follow the old road home. They return to their country by a different way. And you can be sure their country is not the same one they left. Touched by their encounter with love come down, love come close, they live now in the world of blessed little ones whom Jesus tells us inherit the Kingdom of God spread out upon earth though we do not see it. T.S. Eliot captures this movement that is the movement of each of our lives in “Little Gidding” when he writes, 

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started 

And know the place for the first time. 

Like the Samaritan Woman who discovers at that midday well a place beyond shame and blame, beyond scarcity and lack–the living waters of the great I AM that no measly hole in the bucket can diminish–and who becomes those boundless Living Waters for the very people who cast her out and excluded her, the Three Wise Men return not to Herod with a situation report, but as the very love to whom they gave themselves in awestruck homage.

Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar whisper–“Dear Ones, love is calling. Let love draw you. Lay gently, ever so gently, aside fear’s shrunken huddle, those stories of not enough, of what’s missing, the if onlies, the shoulds, the cramped demands that life be other than it is. Thoughts are just thoughts. Kneel down. Be still. Open your treasure chest and give yourself just as you are (no gold, frankincense, or myrrh required): ‘Jesus! You in me and I in you!’ In the closet of the heart, breathing the peace of Jesus’s name, a joy that doesn’t come and go, that isn’t born and doesn’t die, that no Herod can persuade you from or snatch away… a joy to which no sceptre can compare.” 

The different road, the open road, the royal highway with no one shoved aside or left behind, beckons. “Quick now, here, now, always,” set out without delay and discover there who you’ve always been, beloved. Sea flowing in your veins. Clothed with the heavens. Crowned with stars. Overwhelming joy. “Quick now, here, now, always,” let’s hit the road together as beloved community’s radiant pilgrim people.