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Sep 19-25, 2021
by Dr. "Joey" Alan Le
⬆️ Sermon begins at 44:37 ⬆️
Day 1: The Mystery of Joy
Day 1: The Mystery of Joy
Who doesn’t want joy in their lives? Everyone wants joy, just like everyone wants pleasure and happiness.
But what is joy, and how does one get it?[1]
Joy is a mystery. There is no button that can produce joy on command. Pleasure can be produced on command; maybe even happiness. But joy is not something that can be controlled. It always comes a surprise, as a gift.[2]
This element of surprise is the focus of this week’s meditation. Part of the process of defining joy is to become comfortable with one’s inability to define it. After all, joy comes from the Lord, and neither God nor God’s gift of joy is easily bound by definitions or limits.
Humans love being in control. We love labeling, and having a name for everything. But when it comes to grasping God, we eventually arrive at the edge of the cliff and are forced to make a leap of faith.
This first step of faith towards God is to acknowledge one’s lostness. The first sight of God is to realize one’s blindness.
Reflection
How might an experience of joy point to an encounter with God?
Can you recall a moment when joy surprised you?
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[1] Peter Kreeft, Doors in the Walls of the World: Signs of Transcendence in the Human Story (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2018), 78.
[2] Kreeft, Doors in the Walls of the World, 78.
Day 2: The Limits of Understanding
Day 2: The Limits of Understanding
There is a story about one’s ability to know God, from the Desert Fathers (3rd century Christians):
One day some of the disciples came to see Father Anthony, and among them was Father Joseph.
Wishing to test them, the old man mentioned a text from Scripture, and starting with the youngest he asked them what it meant. Each explained it as best he could. But to each one the old man said, “You have not yet found the answer.”
Last of all he said to Father Joseph, “And what do you think the text means?”
He replied, “I do not know.”
Then Father Anthony said, “Truly, Father Joseph has found the way, for he said: ‘I do not know.’”[1]
Reflection
What does this short story say about one’s ability to understand the Scriptures, and to understand God?
How can Father Joseph’s claim to not understand be true understanding?
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[1] Adapted from Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, Reprint ed. (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986), 12.
Day 3: Joy and God
Day 3: Joy and God
The experience of joy can connect one to God.
In the Old Testament, one does not find joy by seeking it as an end in itself, but it is a by-product of spending one’s life with God. Joy comes with being in the presence of God.
1 Chronicles 16:27 — Honor and majesty are before him; strength and joy are in his place.
Psalm 16:8–11 — 8 I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. 10 For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit. 11 You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
In essence, joy comes from God. It serves as a signpost that leads to God’s home. It is a gift for each person because God loves us so much that He wants us to share His joy.[1]
Reflection
Can you think of other ways in which joy deepens and enriches your relationship with God?
Given that God is the source of joy, and given that God wants us to partake of his eternal joy, how would you define joy now?
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[1] Kreeft, Doors in the Walls of the World, 78.
Day 4: The Darkness of God
Day 4: The Darkness of God
When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, 19 and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” 20 Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.” 21 Then the people stood at a distance, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. Exodus 20:18-21
When speaking of the divine, Christians frequently use light and brilliance as a metaphor for God. Early Christians, on the other hand, used darkness as an appropriate metaphor for one’s approach to God. From the human standpoint, God is mysterious.
In today’s everyday language, the word “mystery” means something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain. But in the Christian context, that definition would only be half right. In Timothy Ware’s terms: “mystery signifies not only hiddenness but disclosure.”[1] The mystery of God does not simply refer to how difficult it is to find God, but to the strange way in which God reveals how ungraspable He is.
Ware clarifies this a little further: “A mystery is…something that is revealed for our understanding, but which we never understand exhaustively because it leads into the depth or the darkness of God. The eyes are closed — but they are also opened.”[2] This is to say that because of the infinity of God, and humanity’s finitude, no human perception or conception or description of God can actually contain God.
For example, we declare that God is love. But God’s love surpasses our imaginations of what love should look like. God’s love is so expansive, so inclusive, so unconditional, that it might even offend our sensibilities. God may scandalously extend his love even to people we deem undeserving of love.
Every statement we make about God, every analogy we use to describe what God is like, is infinitely inadequate and needs to be qualified with, “God is … and so much more.” For every single truth we know of God, there is an infinite number of truths we do not yet know about God.
In Exodus 20:21, it says: “Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.” Moses climbs the mountain to meet God, progressing from light into darkness. Just like Moses, each person who seeks God goes from the known into the unknown. We step forward from the light of partial knowledge into a greater, more profound knowledge: the ‘darkness of unknowing.’[3]
When does one truly understand God? True understanding arrives when one realizes how little one understands, and when one’s assumptions are shattered.[4] The Christian faith does not provide easy answers to every question. Instead, the task of Christianity is to make one more and more aware of the mystery of God.[5]
“God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder,” as Ware teaches.[6] We do not grasp God; God grasps us. We are, in other words, captivated by God.
In the end, God’s mysteriousness is not due to the fact that there is too little of God to detect, but because there is too much of God for our limited vessels to contain. Our cup overflows.
Joy, like God, is mysterious. It comes from God, and opens one up to the reality and presence of God. But joy is both a revelation and a veil. It points to God, but it also leaves one in wonder. That wonder, that feeling of awe, captivates a person, and makes them yearn for God even more.
Reflection
How are ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ appropriate metaphors for describing God?
Why is it that God both reveals and hides himself at the same time?
Would you agree or disagree that spiritual maturity and a greater awareness of God is like stepping from light into darkness?
Recall a time when you felt a sense of wonder.
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[1] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 17.
[2] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 18.
[3] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 16.
[4] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 15.
[5] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 16.
[6] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 16.
Day 5: Universal Joy
Day 5: Universal Joy
Since God is a mystery beyond human understanding, we will never know God’s essence or inner being.
But does that mean that God is entirely unknowable and that we should throw up our hands in despair? Should we just become agnostics?
Certainly not. God is, indeed, knowable. God is Person, and only persons can reveal themselves and be known. Through his energies, or his activity and work, God has revealed enough for us to be saved, and to guide us on how to live in the world.
God’s activity, his grace, gifts, life, and power fill the whole universe, and are directly accessible to us.[1] That means that, for the Christian, wherever he or she looks, God is found everywhere and joy can be experienced in any circumstance.[2]
Reflection
Recollect an event when you realized that God had been working behind-the-scenes for your good.
Provide some examples in which God and joy can be found everywhere.
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[1] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 28.
[2] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 29.
Day 6: Signposts
Day 6: Signposts
Given how God is not directly or fully accessible, then the only way to approach God is by mediation. Someone and something mediates the divine. The Christian may develop spiritual eyes of faith to perceive the universal presence of God in the world. God can be present through acts of love, in the beautiful, and in moments of joy. In a way, joy is an excellent signpost that points a person to God.
God reveals himself through moments of joy.
C. S. Lewis considered joy, first, as a byproduct of one’s earthly life lived with Jesus, and, second, as a foretaste of one’s eternal life with Christ.[1] Lewis said this about joy’s purpose:
It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer. … When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries, ‘Look!’ the whole party gathers round and stares. But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare. They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up. But we shall not stop and stare, or not much; not on this road, though their pillars are of silver and their lettering of gold. ‘We would be at Jerusalem’”.[2]
In other words, our fleeting moments of joy in this lifetime truly point us to God. But it is not a substitute for God. It certainly cannot satisfy fully. But its purpose is to provoke within us wonder, awe, laughter, and worship. Rather than causing us to despair, the mystery of God deepens our hunger and thirst.
Tasting joy makes us desire the Source of joy. We learn to want more and more of God, knowing, first, that there is so much more we don’t know. Second, we know that only God could satisfy our insatiable hunger because only in God is love, beauty, and joy inexhaustible.
Reflection
How have you experienced the presence of God mediated through a person or a thing?
How does one discern if an experience of joy is a true “sign” that points to God?
Have you ever caught yourself ‘staring at the signpost’ rather than continuing the journey towards the destination which the signpost pointed at? (Have you paid more attention to gifts rather than the Giver of the gifts?)
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[1] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955), 238. Cited in Colin Duriez, Douglas Penney, and Daniel G. Reid, in Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, ed. Leland Ryken, Jim Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III (Electronic, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 466.
[2] Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 238. Cited in Duriez, Penney, and Reid, 466.
Day 7: Conclusion
Day 7: Conclusion
The goal of this week’s study is to sit for a week in the mystery of God. Mysterion, remember, is not just about the hiddenness of God but also his disclosure.
Experiences of joy move us to a place of wonder. We began by connecting joy with mystery because God is the source of joy, and God is mysterious. We confess our finitude and ignorance. We cannot know everything, and we cannot grasp or contain God. So instead of claiming to know everything there is to know about God, or worse, becoming bored with God, the proper posture to maintain is one of constant curiosity, wonder, and perpetual learning.
God reveals himself through love, beauty, and joy. Therefore, we must pay attention to those moments when God appears. Every time God reveal himself, it is a gift that overwhelms the human sense and mind and heart. The experience of joy evokes wonder, and prods us to long for more of God. Throughout this series, we will begin to notice the flashes of joy that God sends our way, to serve as signposts that lead us to heaven.
Reflection
What are enhancers of joy?
What are inhibitors of joy?
What about the world sparks your curiosity and wonder, making you a perpetual learner?
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