Episodes
Sunday Dec 02, 2012
Suddenly...Joy, Zechariah
Sunday Dec 02, 2012
Sunday Dec 02, 2012
Rev. Dean Snyder Luke 1:11-23
I’ve been thinking for a while that I want more joy in my life. And I want more joy in the lives of those I love. I want more joy here at Foundry. I want to laugh more. I want to worry less. I want to be happier. I want more joy. I want you to have more joy.
But the question is: how do you get joy? How do we get joy?
We can’t just say to ourselves: Be joyful and make it happen. At least, that has never worked for me. I don’t think you can manufacture joy.
I don’t think we can make ourselves be joyful, but I do think we can put ourselves in the position where joy is more likely to come to us and where we will be more likely to receive it and experience it when it does.
I don’t think we can manufacture joy but I do think we can manage or mismanage it.
The Christmas season is about joy … joy to the world. If you read the first chapters of Matthew and Luke where we find the stories leading up to Jesus’ birth, there are lots of stories about joy coming to people and people managing or mismanaging it.
So this Advent I want us to look at some of these Christmas stories and see what they teach us about how we could have more joy in our lives.
I need to say that these sermons are not just based on the Bible. I have also been doing some reading in the field of positive psychology or happiness studies. The first book I read some time ago was by a professor at the University of Virginia Jonathan Haidt who wrote a book entitled “The Happiness Hypothesis.”
Reading Jonathan Haidt introduced me to the writing of the father of the positive psychology movement, a man named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "chick-sent-me-high-ee"). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi came up with the concept of flow.
He has a great TED talk entitled “Flow … the secret of happiness.” Before we look at the scripture lesson, to help us understand the lesson, I want us to understand the concept of flow.
When Csikszentmihalyi ("chick-sent-me-high-ee") did his studies of happiness, he discovered a mental state he called “flow.” Flow is when a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what you’re doing.
He discovered flow by interviewing artists and composers and musicians who talked about getting so caught up in their art or music that they got lost in it. The art or music carried them.
Then he interviewed athletes and discovered they experience flow. Dancers experience flow. Then he interviewed businesspeople and they experience flow too. Then he studied the rest of us and we have the capacity to experience flow as well.
The word ecstasy that we use to describe “great joy” literally means “to be outside oneself” … to be so caught up in something larger than ourselves that we both lose and find ourselves at the same time.
Csikszentmihalyi ("chick-sent-me-high-ee") did an interesting experiment. He gave a group of people beepers, and he beeped them randomly ten times a day. Every time they were beeped, the people filled out a two page questionnaire about what they were doing at the moment and what they were experiencing and feeling. His students studied all of those questionnaires; thousands and thousands of them.
What they discovered was when people are least likely to experience flow. What two activities are people doing, do you think, when they are least likely to experience flow? Turn to someone near you and discuss for 60 seconds when you think people are least likely to experience flow.
OK, here is what Csikszentmihalyi ("chick-sent-me-high-ee") discovered. People are least likely to experience flow when they are watching TV. It is not impossible people watching TV experienced flow 8 percent of the time, but I’d bet that it was when they were watching a game or a good movie or maybe CNN during a presidential election. 92 percent of the time they watched TV they did not experience flow.
The other time they were least likely to experience flow was when they were in the bathroom which I don’t want to discuss.
Now, flow and joy are not exactly the same thing, but we are most likely to experience joy when we are in a state of flow. Joy is most likely to find us when we are in a state of flow.
So I want to look at the story of Zechariah in the Gospel of Matthew. Zechariah is John the Baptist’s father. His wife Elizabeth is related to Jesus’ mother Mary, perhaps an aunt.
Zechariah is a priest. He is serving in the temple as a priest one day when the angel Gabriel appears to him. Gabriel says to him "Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son [they’d been praying for a child] and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth.” And the angel goes on to tell him how important and special his son will be.
Now, here is what could have happened. Zachariah could have gotten caught up in this amazing news. He could have given himself to the news. He could have said to his associate priest, watch the temple for me, I’ve got to go see Elizabeth. He could have run home and lifted Elizabeth off of her feet and swung her in the air and said, Sweetheart, we are going to have a baby and he is going to be a very special boy. He could have thrown a party. That’s what could have happened. He could have given himself to the flow of joy.
But what actually happens in the story is that he starts arguing with the angel. He says: How do you expect me to believe this. I’m an old man and Elizabeth’s no spring chicken either.
He argues with joy. Which is sort of what priest do. They have theological debates. He debates joy.
Because Zechariah argued with Gabriel, he is struck speechless. His ability to speak is taken from him. What would it mean for a priest to lose his voice? What would I do if I lost my ability to speak? What would Dawn do if she lost her ability to speak?
Zachariah was not given his voice back until 9 months and six days later when the baby was circumcised and named. When Zechariah wrote on a piece of paper the words His name will be John, he was given his voice back and Matthew says: “He began to speak, praising God.” (Matt. 1:64)
He was finally able to give himself to the joy.
To get Zachariah to let himself go with the flow of joy, God had to give him a sabbatical. God had to give him a Sabbath. Otherwise he would have spent the whole time arguing theology with joy. God had to shut Zachariah down from his normal daily routines of life.
One of the things I love to do most is to fly. In airplanes, I mean. The reason I love to fly is because when I get on a plane I think to myself There is nothing whatsoever I can about whatever it is I am worrying about. And I am free to lose myself in a good book or a movie. What a joy, to be able to give myself to a good story without reservation or holding back. If something pops into my mind, I just say, There’s nothing you can do about it up here. I am very unhappy that they are putting wireless on airplanes.
I try to take a Sabbath day every week. I am not good at it. Something I forgot to do pops into my mind, and I say to myself, I’ll just do an email so I can get it off my mind. But then 5 minutes later something else pops into my mind and I do another email. And, of course, if I am emailing other people they start emailing me back. Soon my Sabbath is gone and I didn’t get the book read I’d been dying to lose myself in.
Really orthodox Jews are very serious about not working on the Sabbath, so much so that they will not even turn a light switch, nonetheless use an iphone. You might think this is extreme but Rabbi Michael Lerner says in his book Jewish Renewal that orthodox Jews, who have as much to do as anybody else, learn to say when things pop into their mind on the Sabbath, Well, there is nothing I can do about it today. He says eventually things stop popping into their minds so much on the Sabbath.
And they can devote themselves fully without distraction to their families or friends or to their study or their prayers or to the sex orthodox Jewish couples are required to have with each other every Sabbath.
The Sabbath is a day reserved to be available for joy.
So Zachariah teaches us that sometimes we have to be shut down from the ordinary business of our days to be available for joy.
Here’s one more thing. Often when we are shut down from the ways we ordinarily fill our days, we will experience withdrawal before we can experience joy. And that withdrawal often takes the shape of boredom.
I find the first 10 or 15 minutes of a yoga class very hard. I keep trying to figure out how to check my iphone while I’m doing a downward facing dog. It takes me 10/15 minutes before I can get into the flow of yoga. Sometimes I will go through a whole class and never get into the flow. I will be bored the whole time. But unless I work my way through the boredom that comes from taking away the things I use to distract my mind superficially, I will not make it to be available for joy.
The first five miles of a bike ride I usually find to be tedious and boring. I struggle with impatience and distractions. But if I can make it to mile 10, sometimes I get into the flow of riding and it can be a joyful high. Although this rarely happens the first 2 or 3 rides of the spring; I need to keep going through the boredom and tedium.
It often takes me a chapter to get into a good novel. I have to force myself to keep reading. If I give up too soon I miss the joy of a great read.
To be available for joy Zachariah had to stop arguing and take a Sabbath.
I want more joy in my life. So I am thinking about the superficial ways I fill up my life, preoccupy myself, and what I need to do to let some of that go so that I will be available for joy. So that I will really be available to lose myself in conversation with others rather than sneaking peeks at my text messages and tweets. Giving up email on my Sabbath so that I can lose myself in a good book or a movie and so others can be free of me for a day. Being really present in worship so that I can lose myself in singing, and prayer and communion.
I invite you this Advent to think about these things with me.
Comments (0)
To leave or reply to comments, please download free Podbean or
No Comments
To leave or reply to comments,
please download free Podbean App.