December 2024
The ECLIPSE OF JOY?
Luke A. Powery
In The Hungering Dark (1968), Frederick Buechner writes, “We need to be reminded that at its heart Christianity is joy….”[1] To be honest, based on many current media representations of Christians, this may be the last virtue associated with the Christian faith. Even after the resurrection of Jesus, on the other side of Easter so to speak, there is little joy bubbling up from the disciples.
In the Gospel of Luke chapter 24, when the resurrected Jesus stands among them and says, “Peace be with you” (Luke 24:36 ), the disciples are terrified, and they think he’s a ghost. They don’t recognize him initially. Jesus was dead to them yet now he was alive, fully present, and fully aware of their struggles. He asks a pertinent question: “Why are you frightened and why do doubts arise in your hearts?”(Luke 24:38). Even after the resurrection, Easter day, life isn’t full of an abundance of lilies, chocolate bunnies or eggs. Post-resurrection life for the disciples is full of fear, doubts, and questions. The disciples were disbelieving what they were seeing, revealing that the resurrection or Easter doesn’t erase all of our human concerns and problems. All is not right with the world even after the resurrection.
This is the honest truth about Christian discipleship. A word of peace from Jesus creates anxiety in the disciples and is a reminder that genuine disciples struggle and question. Fear and doubt are characteristics of disciples, then and now, even on the other side of Easter. However, if we aren’t careful we will overlook a key virtue and experience in the life of discipleship. If you feed on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for your daily bread, you might think Christians are only hatemongers and issue debaters, but if you read the Gospel of Luke, you should actually think of Christians as people of joy, which is what Buechner’s point is in the earlier quote.
Luke uses the word, ‘joy,’ more than any other gospel writer. The danger is that all of the world’s struggles and conflicts can eclipse joy in the Christian life; they can cover up joy to dim this light of God. Joy may not be the first thing you think of when you hear the word ‘Christian,’ but this doesn’t make it any less real.
The truth about joy is that it doesn’t mean everything is perfect in the world. Buechner notes,
“joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes. Even nailed to a tree.”[2]
Even for the disciples, after seeing Jesus’s hands and feet, we learn that “in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering” (Luke 24:41). They experienced joy even amid their disbelief and doubts. Their joy doesn’t erase their struggles, questions or concerns. Joy blooms in deserts. Our problems are not deleted even when we experience joy. Professor John Brown, Duke University’s Vice Provost for the Arts, speaks of the blues as played by jazz musicians as a vehicle to express “joy inside my pain.”[3]
The musical genre of the Spirituals expresses a similar sentiment: “Nobody knows the trouble I see, nobody knows my sorrow…glory, Hallelujah!” Even in the spiritual “There is a Balm in Gilead,” we see this dynamic of what former Princeton University historian Al Raboteau would call a “sad joyfulness.”[4] The verses of this spiritual reflect the tensive relationship between joy and sorrow or struggle. “Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work’s in vain, but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again… If you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul, you can surely tell the love of Jesus and say he died for all… There is a balm in Gilead…” The verses are a descent and an ascent, sorrow and joy.
This particularly spiritual—"There is a Balm in Gilead”— became the theme song in a divinity school course I taught on the Spirituals in a federal men’s prison. The class was made up of ten divinity school students and twelve incarcerated students. Every Thursday morning, we had to pass through security to reach the human flesh of those in prison. For one class session, we were having a conversation about lament and hope in this Spiritual.
When the discussion was over and we took a break, one of the incarcerated students showed me something he had written down. He had written the word ‘lament’ on a white piece of notebook paper but around four letters in that word, he drew a box. Those four letters inside the word ‘lament’ made up the word ‘amen.’ He showed me that there is an ‘amen’ inside of every lament. For him, it meant hope in the midst of trials. I had been researching lament in preaching and theology for twenty years and had never seen this! A so-called threat, a prisoner, became my professor on that day. Amen inside lament. Joy inside pain. Joy in sorrow. Joy even while jailed. “In their joy they were disbelieving.”
This tensiveness is even on the resurrected body of Jesus because although he’s resurrected, he still has scars. It’s why poet Mary Oliver can pen these words:
We shake with joy,
We shake with grief.
What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.[5]
Joy is not only tensive, occurring amid suffering, but joy is grace. As Buechner writes, “We never take credit for our moments of joy because we know that they are not man-made and that we are never really responsible for them. They come when they come.”[6] We can’t take credit for joy, manufacture it, clone it, or demand it. In the gospel story of Luke, the joy the disciples experience is the Greek word charas, which is linked to the word for grace, charis. Thus grace is at the root of joy and only by grace can we experience joy. Some might say that joy is ‘grace recognized.’
Moreover, charis is also used for the word ‘gift’ throughout the scriptures (for instance, charism) thus joy is a gift. The disciples, in their unknowing and disbelieving encounter with Jesus, experience joy, as a sign of grace. They are confused and at the same time receive the gift of joy. They are awestruck, even if still perplexed. Yet their deep doubts do not destroy the possibility of deep joy.
To experience and express joy in the world is revolutionary because grace is revolutionary while judgment is ordinary. No one expects joy these days, but it can spring up at unusual times.
It did for Ena Zizi. During the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, there was a lot of crying, screaming, moaning, and groaning on the streets, but there was also lots of singing. Ena Zizi was a 70-year-old woman, who had been buried for a week in earthquake rubble that was at least three stories high from the ground. When she was pulled out of the rubble, she was seriously dehydrated, had a broken leg and a dislocated hip. When they pulled her out of the rubble, she didn’t ask about the latest Facebook wars. When they pulled her out of the rubble, she didn’t ask how many unread emails she had. When they pulled her out of the rubble, she didn’t ask whether her rescuer was Republican or Democrat. When they pulled her up and out of the rubble, Ena began to sing. Her body was worn, and her throat was weary, but life was singing. Her song was a sound of “glad defiance”[7] bubbling up. Joy resurrected up and out of the rubble mound. I don’t know what she sang but her joy inside her pain was a sign of grace amid the rubbles of human existence, or as Buechner put it: “nailed to a tree.”
It’s hard to explain joy because it’s hard to explain Jesus. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is the reason for the disciples’ joy. As the English title for a J. S. Bach chorale posits—“Jesu, joy of man’s desiring.” As the psalmist said, “In [God’s] presence is fullness of joy”(Psalm 16:11). It’s after the disciples encounter his physical presence that they experience joy, suggesting that joy comes through tangible means. The disciples weren’t looking for it but are found by it through their encounter with Jesus as they walk on a road or eat fish.
Joy comes through a meeting with holy materiality; in this case, the incarnational presence of Jesus. His presence is the context for the potential of joy in our lives—for the disciples, through his resurrected body; for us, through remembering his body and blood as we commune with bread and wine at the Lord’s table. Through the senses of seeing, touching, tasting, hearing, and smelling, the disciples meet God in the flesh. This is the genesis of their joy and the genesis of our own.
It is pure grace. No wonder that the communion meal is called the ‘Eucharist’ which means ‘thanksgiving.’ The word charis—grace, gift, joy—helps to make up the word ‘eucharist,’ meaning it is a meal of joy and grace. A joyful feast. La fiesta of faith. A joy unspeakable because it’s joy incarnational, joy in ordinary bread and wine, joy in Jesus, even with our stubborn disbelief at times. No matter how harsh the human struggle, there is always the hope of joy and “where you have known joy, you have known [God].”[8] And God will never be eclipsed.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thank you for reading The Buechner Review. If you would like to receive future articles in your email inbox you can sign up here.
Works cited:
[1] Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 101.
[2] Ibid., 102.
[3] From a conversation with John Brown in 2015 and thereafter.
[4] See Albert J. Raboteau, A Sorrowful Joy (New York: Paulist Press, 2002).
[5] Mary Oliver, “We Shake with Joy,” Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (New York: Penguin, 2020), 70.
[6] Buechner, The Hungering Dark, 102.
[7] James Weldon Johnson, “The Gift to Sing,” https://poets.org/poem/gift-sing
[8] Buechner, The Hungering Dark, 102.
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