Tripping Over Joy

Less Serious. More Surrendered.

Tripping Over Joy! Photo Collage. JL Dunstan

Two weeks into the new year, how are you doing with those resolutions - declared or secret? I hope, at least, that you are not beating yourself up if you’ve failed so far. On the other hand, I really hope that you do find a way to the life and love and joy that must lie at the heart of any desire for change.

That perennial longing we have for a new start is wonderfully elucidated by the season of Epiphany. The Epiphany-tide gospel stories give us wonderful opportunities to ponder all the different ways the greater Life might be revealed to us. Sometimes through night journeys and star-like hunches, sometimes through humility and repentance, sometimes through emptiness and the unexpected gift of joy - and maybe sometimes, after faithful years of practice and prayer, when we glimpse our long-awaited salvation. In all cases, the new life is revealed rather than constructed, opened up to rather than made happen.

This week we ponder the gospel story of the wedding at Cana. It’s a great story, too rich, like so many of the others, for me to unfold its full meaning. But here are a few thoughts:

We love the extravagance of this story. We love that Jesus chose or was at least cajoled into making this his first miracle. We love that it is a celebration of love. We love thirty gallons of wine! Alas, I’ve been too close to problem-drinkers and drinking to glorify the abundance of alcohol - as such. But, of course, like so much of scripture, this is as symbolic as it is real, and read on the symbolic level, it becomes one of my favourite scripture passages.

Marriage is the occasion and love is what we’re celebrating: and the intoxicating abundance of God’s Spirit bestowed whenever we make a lasting commitment to uniting ourselves with others. Whatever form it may take, faithfulness is the source of our deepest and ultimate joy: faith kept with those around us, be they spouse or parent, sister or friend, neighbour or stranger or God. We must keep faith, too, with our truest self.

But the gospel story is essentially about how much we depend upon God’s Spirit to fill us up when we find ourselves empty, drained of the kindness or patience or generosity or creativity that we need to go on loving. This is not just about the love I need in my little individual world but the Love so desperately needed in our big world – the love that is manifested only when we acknowledge our need for greater provision than we have.

I’m often amazed and always grateful at the abundance of grace given whenever I bring my emptiness to Christ for true filling. We all have ways of denying our empty jars and thereby letting the party of love fizzle out. Or we try to fill the emptiness with cheaper options. Instead, we need to find enough humility to turn to Christ, as Mary did, and say – ‘I’ve run out. I can’t produce this for myself.’ And then say to our soul – ‘Do whatever he says…’

In the honesty of a quiet moment, I invite you to acknowledge whatever emptiness you may feel in your life or in the lives of those you love, and to bring it into your prayer. Alternatively, it is possible simply to choose and embrace the emptiness. Theologians call this kenosis. Meditation is a kind of kenosis. Offering our emptiness, we become like those big stone jar: awaiting the secret, mysterious miracle of Spirit to fill us with better wine.

A final thought, following a conversation with a lovely woman this week. Feeling her emptiness she admitted that, yes, she believed in and often glimpsed the provision of Spirit but the stories of deprivation and disappointment kept her wanting. Well then, I suggested, you need to go beyond believing in that wine and actually drink it! As well as her honest grief and earnest prayers, she needed to find daily practices of dipping her cup into the stone jar of her life and to be surprised by joy.

I think we all need to find ways to daily open to joy: practices of creativity, gratitude, dancing, poetry, meditation, prayer, wonder, beauty, baking, music, nature… We may imagine an emptiness that, with humility and prayer might be filled. But equally, we might imagine that the jars are always there and filled to brimming, waiting for us to drink deeply.

There is much sorrow at the moment. Grief is real and necessary. But what if our joy practices were not just private pleasure but a partaking of the very Spirit that will change our lives and our world. I urge you to find ways each day to savour, slow sip by slow sip, the taste of love and joy wherever you find it.

And pass it around!

A LITURGY OF PRAYER

Opening Prayer

Close your eyes if that feels okay. Take a few slow deep breaths. Take a moment to connect with any emptiness you are in touch with in yourself or in our world…In another moment, connect with something that brings you joy.

1^st Readings

John 2.1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the person in charge of the banquet.” So they took it. When the person in charge tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), that person called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.

A Time of Silence

Suggestion: 20 mins. But take even a few minutes if you can!

Silence is not always easy. The mind is hard to quiet. If you don’t yet have a way, you might find a single prayer word or phrase - and return to it each time you find your mind wandering. Your mind certainly will wander. Don’t worry. Just gently return, repeating the prayer word.

Widening the Circle

Let’s give thanks for the gift of silence and for all that brings us joy. As we remember those on our hearts tonight, let’s pray for that greater provision of love and joy, which the Spirit can bring.

The Lord’s Prayer

There’s a nice version below.

2^nd Reading

Who else for the intoxication of God’s love than a Sufi mystic poet?

What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?

The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God
And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic MOve
That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, ‘I surrender!’
Whereas, my dear,
I’m afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves

Hafiz/Ladinsky

Blessing

And so. May we surrender our serious efforts to the God who makes only extravagant moves. May we surrender and laugh and trip over joy. May we offer our empty jars for ourselves and for our world and may we drink deeply of Spirit’s wine. And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore. Amen.

Music:

A stunning voice and an unusual combination of sounds.

Question for the Week: for Journal or Comment

What emptiness do you need to acknowledge and bring to prayer?

What practices of love and joy might you be more faithful to this year?

The New Zealand Anglican Lord's Prayer

Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever.
Amen.

Jim Cotter