Lighting the Advent Candle
The first candle of Advent is the candle of Hope; the second is the candle of Peace; the third is the candle of Joy. We light this candle to remind us that Christ is the source of full and overflowing joy.
Let’s pray: Loving God, thank you for the joy you bring us. In the wideness of your loving welcome we have found wonder and joy as your children. Help us to prepare our hearts to receive this gift. We ask in the name of the One born in Bethlehem. Amen.
Call to worship
Great God of the Universe, your voice called forth all things into being.
You have called us to follow and you call us now to worship.
Awaken us, Great God,
awaken us to a sense of your presence.
As your love goes before us
help us to follow with joy.
Music for the soul
Catch up and check in
Scripture Reading
Ruth chapter 3 – you can find the reading here.
Some threads to reflect on
The theme for week three of Advent is joy, and at first sight, that seems a poor fit with this chapter, which is full of promise and a bit of mystery and intrigue. You’d be forgiven for thinking that joy is around the corner with (spoilers!) chapter four’s resolution of the tension and fulfilment of promise. But actually, this is the perfect place for us to pause and recognise the opportunity for joy.
Because joy often seems elusive. I was told, early in my faith journey, that joy is different from happiness in that joy is not dependent on circumstances. It’s possible to be in a dire situation and to be overwhelmed by joy ‘in the Lord’. The example of Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi is given. A letter which was written from prison – definitely a dire situation – and which not only encourages the folks of the church to rejoice but offers plenty of evidence of Paul’s joy.
Happiness, by contrast, is purely circumstantial. Happiness is just this moment of pleasure, of getting that job I wanted, or winning a competition, eating a refreshing ice block on a hot afternoon, finding a treasure in an op shop or meeting a friend for coffee. Those things might make you happy, but joy, I was told, is something more.
I think this is true but not true. I think happiness could be a doorway to joy, but often we choose not to step through.
Joy is a response to goodness, whether it is a goodness that is present with you now, a remembered goodness from the past, or a goodness that is ahead and coming your way. When we open to the goodness, when we hold that goodness or hold our hope for it and we let joy wash over us, we are experiencing the most vulnerable emotion we can feel. That’s why we often settle for happy. Happy is much less demanding of our heart.
Joy makes us vulnerable because in the words of Brene Brown, “it’s beauty and fragility and deep gratitude and impermanence all wrapped up in one experience.” Just think about that for a moment. Beauty, fragility, deep gratitude and impermanence.
Often when we find ourselves in a place of deep delight in something or someone, when joy rises in response to the presence of goodness, when that tender connection is shining brightly, it becomes too much to bear. Instead of cradling that shivery feeling of knowing how precious this moment is, instead of holding it and being grateful for it and soaking it in, knowing it won’t last- we shut down. We imagine losing this treasure, or being hurt or remembering disappointments and problems or we just remind ourselves that this won’t last, so there’s no point enjoying it – it will hurt you when it’s over.
So instead of being joyful, you can guard your heart, choosing to be happy about getting that job but not really taking it in, not celebrating it and letting your hopes for what you might be able to do really take root. You hold that goodness at arm’s length just in case you don’t get to keep it. Just in case it turns out awful.
I think joy is scary. For example, sometimes it scares me how much I love my kids. When they were younger I would occasionally catch myself imagining them being hurt or lost and working myself into a fearful agony. It’s hard to spot the logic here, but we kid ourselves that if we keep something back, or if we prepare for tragedy then it won’t flatten us if it happens.
Joy is beautiful and scary but if we hold those tender moments at arm’s length, we aren’t protecting ourselves from being hurt. We’re actually wearing down our capacity to weather real hardship. We’re cheating ourselves of resources to draw on when we need courage and perseverance. Ruth doesn’t hold back, she goes all in. She’s experienced Boaz’s kindness all through the harvest time, but he’s held back on taking the next step. Naomi tells her how to break that stalemate, and Ruth agrees.
In this chapter, we see Ruth put herself in a place of absolute vulnerability. She takes a great risk joining Boaz on the threshing floor but she knows what she’s doing – even if the text isn’t very clear about what we might consider the most important details. There is risk, but there is also possibility and, I imagine, quite a bit of excitement…. joy rises in response to the presence of goodness.
Ruth and Boaz, we have seen, are both beacons of goodness. So here they are with this tender connection shimmering between them. And they stay with it all night, cradling that shivery feeling of knowing how precious this moment is and this is joy. I doubt Ruth slept much that night, and once Boaz knew she was there, I doubt he slept either. I imagine they were both buzzing with energy, listening for signs of danger, aware of the closeness of their bodies and staying with the intensity of the situation. Either one of them could have shut the door on joy. It’s so easy to do. But neither of them wanted to.
And here’s something else that we know about joy – joy is the child of gratitude. When we practice thankfulness, when we pause and take in the goodness, and are grateful for this moment of goodness in our life, joy wells up. You might expect that would go the other way around – joy leads us to gratitude, but it’s not so. It’s when we recognise the gift, the goodness, the grace that is right there for us – that’s when joy starts to bubble.
So Ruth and Boaz on the threshing floor…What do you think they would be feeling? Because I rather think that they are both grateful for the gift of the other and the opportunity that life is presenting them and the possibilities before them. And so, joy is there. Boaz hasn’t stepped in to ‘claim’ Ruth before now. It may be partly because he knows that the obligation does not fall to him first, but to another. And it may be that he needs some encouragement to take the risk of bringing Ruth the Moabite into this family. Up til now, he has been good and also safe. This night of vulnerability on the threshing floor changes that.
We are in a time when it is harder to find reasons for gratitude. Where things we take for granted have been taken away, or are under threat, where we feel more vulnerable generally to all kinds of possible risk.
And yet, in a way, this makes those ordinary daily delights more precious, more wonderful, and definitely more fragile.
Gratitude is the gateway to joy. The more we practice gratitude – receiving our lives with thanks, treasuring this fleeting moment, holding the precious now, the more we will find bubbles of joy rising. And here’s one more thing we know about joy – it’s best when it is shared.
Conversation questions
Do you have a story about staying with the joy of a moment, soaking it in instead of holding back or reaching for a camera to capture it and hold on to it? What helps you to hold a joyful moment rather than shut it down or step outside of it?
How do you lean in to joy? How do you think gratitude may help you to find a deeper response to life than ‘happiness’?
Who do you share your joy with? Who might you reach out to?
Prayers of the people
Blessing
Go in peace, go in patience, go in expectation.
Live in love, live in hope, live in anticipation.
May joy be present and warm your heart.
Be blessed in the name of God,
source of all life and inspiration.
Be blessed in the name of the Christ,
whose birth liberates our expectations.
Be blessed in the name of the Spirit,
who breathes new life upon us all. Amen
