Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter
people and hallelujah is our song. – Pope John Paul II
Is it just me, or does the church have difficulty expressing
joy? I ask because I’ve begun to
associate the celebration of Easter directly to the notion and experience of
joy. Easter is the epitome of the
unexpected, joyful plot twist in the story.
It’s in essence the source of Tolkien’s notion of “eucatastrophe”, the
joy of the unexpected, unforeseen happy ending.
Given the stakes at play in Jesus’ life and death, the Divine killed by
humanity, and the apparent failure and defeat of the Father, unadulterated,
astonished, overwhelming joy seems to be the only appropriate response to the
resurrection. Victory was literally
wrenched from the sure, clenched jaws of defeat. I get choked up when I spend time meditating
on it. The reason I bring it up is
because I don’t recognize that joy in our liturgy. Our worship tends to accommodate prayer,
confession, adoration, and praise pretty well.
But we seem to have a difficult time accommodating Easter joy. I will confess to contributing to this
joylessness.
I have the opportunity in my church to put together and
arrange the worship songs once a month.
A few years ago my Sunday fell on Easter. I was excited about this. Easter is the Christian “main event”, and I
was going to get to contribute to the Easter experience. I flubbed it completely. It’s that year that I understood the joy of
Easter for the first time, because my choices contrasted so starkly with the
rest of the service. I remember 2 of the
songs I picked, “Here I Am to Worship”, and an arrangement of “When I Survey”,
both of which are Good Friday songs.
They deal with the death of Jesus, not his resurrection. They’re both somber and introspective. I would submit that neither is joyful. Those responsible for this year’s Easter
service did a much better job. They
chose “Jesus Messiah”, “Glorious Day”, and “Mighty to Save”. All three carry the content of Easter much
better than my choices had; however upon playing them Easter morning I realized
though the content may have been “right”, the music didn’t embody the joy of
Easter. Now this is no slight to those
who put the worship set together. I
might suggest that there choices were limited by our own liturgical limitation
in relation to joy. It seems to me we don’t
write it well, and so it isn’t available to be drawn on.
This begs the question of why, which I suppose would be the
point of this particular blog. Why this
difficulty? I’d be interested to get
input in this regard. I’ll confess that
up until that Easter experience a few years ago I had an excruciatingly hard
time with joy. After that experience I
came to recognize it when it appears in my life and it’s become an important
part of my faith experience. Playing
drums has helped. As I’ve said in a
previous blog, I experience joy most completely when I’m playing. From there I’ve been able to recognize it
when it appears in my life (it feels like playing drums). At any rate, any ideas for why our liturgical
joy is often incomplete?
2 comments:
My question would be "What is one's definition of joy?" You speak in your first paragraph about becoming choked up meditating upon the resurrection, (sounds like joy to me, personally). In your second paragraph you say that somber and introspective is not joyful, (did I read that correctly?). I've grown tired of the perception that joy should look and sound at certain way. Musically that would mean: upbeat, major key and you can clap to it. While I've certainly sung through the a collection of songs that, by the end, make me want to slit my wrists, I don't necessarily think that upbeat, major key, clappy songs are "joyful." Why does joy have to put a smile on my face? Can't it make me crumble into tears? Have I completely misunderstood your post?
You'll come across this definition in Keller's Counterfeit Gods (when you start to read it...Jason...I know you haven't started): : “To rejoice is to treasure a thing, to assess its value to you, to reflect on its beauty and importance until your heart rests in it and tastes the sweetness of it” (Counterfeit Gods, p 173). Love me some Keller.
I say all of this couched in the confession that I'm not a big fan of Easter Sunday. I always feel manipulated to be happy. I am, however, a big fan of the resurrection.
I agree that joy isn't necessarily "major key, upbeat". I mean my experiences of joy most often involve some kind of teary-eyedness; however I do think that cultural expectations come into play in the manner in which we collectively express joy, particularly as a faith community. Culturally we tend to express joy as "major key, upbeat" and so to express something like joy it's necessary to express it in a way it will be understood.
Apart from that Easter is in reality the biggest smile/tear inducing event in the Bible, and really in history. It's full body dancing, and leaping for joy joyful. I didn't make it clear in the blog, but I do think there's an extra joyfulness at the heart of Easter... it really is the source of all joy, and so it should be at least the one time a year where we go all out to embody and express that... notice I still haven't defined joy...
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