A colleague of mine, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Virginia, on the Sunday after the election, the first words out of his mouth to his congregation were those I just spoke.
They are not going to steal our joy!
When I recently told this story to a group of congregants gathered here to strengthen our moral imagination in preparation for what is coming next (and frankly, what is already upon us), one of them wisely, and delightfully, invoked a well-known Christmas lesson. You might know it. It goes like this:
“Pooh Pooh to the Whos!” he was grinchishly humming. “They’re finding out now that no Christmas is coming!”
You know who’s talking, right? Yes, the Grinch! Because he’s tried to take Christmas away from all the Who’s down in Whoville, by taking away all their tags and tinsel and trimmings and trappings.
“They’re just waking up! I know just what they’ll do!” “Their mouths will hang open a minute or two, Then the Whos down in Whoville will all cry BooHoo!” “That’s a noise,” grinned the Grinch, “That I simply MUST hear!” So he paused. And the Grinch put his hand to his ear. And he did hear a sound rising over the snow. It started in low. Then it started to grow. But the sound wasn’t sad!
Why, this sound was glad! Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small, Was singing! Without any presents at all He HADN’T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME! Somehow or other, it came just the same!
For those of you who grew up in the United States and were born after 1960, it’s likely that you can hear the singing of the Whose made famous by the 1966 animated show.
Fahoo forays, dahoo dorays Welcome Christmas! Come this way Fahoo forays, dahoo dorays Welcome Christmas, Christmas Day
Welcome, welcome, fahoo ramus Welcome, welcome, dahoo damus Christmas Day is in our grasp So long as we have hands to clasp
Their joy was not stolen. They held onto their joy.
In times like these, there is something subversive about not letting our joy be stolen. Yes, it is subversive to not obey in advance as historian of authoritarian movements, Timothy Snyder, admonishes us to do. Yes, there is something subversive about investing in institutions from the hyper local to the national ~ institutions that protect the vulnerable, that defend the marginalized, that resist growing inequities. Yes, there is something subversive about building mutual aid amongst neighbors, even ones with whom we don’t necessarily politically agree.
And, as our earlier reading noted, there is something subversive about the sturdy holiday of Christmas,
it comes anyway, even if there are hardly any presents, even when there isn’t much food to make a feast with, even if you’re sad, even if the world around you is at war, even if you are living in fear and danger and oppression, Christmas still comes. (“Christmas is Subversive” by Kendyl L. R. Gibbons)
The story of Jesus’ life shows him to be a radical teacher in solidarity with those cast outside the mainstream. Even his birth story has its subversive parts.
In Matthew, chapter 2, (earlier we heard from chapter 1) we meet the Grinch of that time – King Herod – who is actually more than a grinch. He’s an outright tyrant; and a murderous one at that. He fears the child who has been born under a star in the east for there is a prophesy that the Messiah, king of the Jews, would be so born. Verses 7 through 11 tell us more:
7 Then Herod secretly called for the magi[e] and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
Friends, that tyrant is lying. He doesn’t want to pay homage or praise. He wants to dispatch of his rival, his opposition. He wants to dispatch the heart of what would become resistance to Empire. The passage continues
9 When [the magi] had heard the king, they set out, and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen in the east,[f] until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped,[g] they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
It is in the 12th verse we learn of the magi’s subversion of Herod’s tyranny:
12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Those magi would not let the tyrant take their joy, nor the joy of the world, for that is what they understood the birth of this child in a lowly place to be.
And we don’t even have time to explore how Jesus’ conception is subversive – and not because of immaculate conception, but how Mary, his mother, foretold how he would call for the mighty to be cast down when she sang her song, often referred to the Magnificat.
Not letting our joy be stolen isn’t simple. It comes in many forms and can take many appearances. It can look like letting tears flow from our eyes and feel the depth of sadness or fear so that we can move through difficult emotions, in order to make space for genuine joy. It can look like service being the rent we pay for our lives here on earth.
At this time of year, we often talk about Joy to the world. And at the end of this service, we will sing those very lines. But right now, I am talking about joy DESPITE a world on fire. Claiming joy, as a song this congregation sings,
This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me; this joy that I have, the world didn’t give it me; this joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me; the world didn’t give it and the world can’t take it away.
Joy DESPITE a world (on fire) is not and cannot be joy to spite our fellow inhabitants on this planet. Joy DESPITE the world cannot be joy at the expense of others. It cannot be greed. And it most definitely cannot be use of our privilege to wall ourselves off from those struggling more than we.
It’s going to take courage to subvert the wrong that is already here, that is on the way, that is being fomented by those already in power, and those coming into even more power.
The magi practiced such courage, such subversion, by not obeying the tyrant king’s directions, thus keeping the baby Jesus safe – and joy, too.
Though not particularly a Christmas story, one of my favorite depictions of subversion comes a GenX childhood of watching, once a year (and only once a year – there was no streaming back then), when network television would air The Sound of Music. The von Trapp family has fled the nunnery where they had taken refuge, but the Nazis are in hot pursuit. Yet, the Nazis’ cars won’t start. Scene change: the two uptight nuns, confessing to Mother Superior that they have sinned. In their hands: pilfered parts of the cars’ engines. That, my friends, is some holy subversion.
I think we’re going to find ourselves at an increasing number of crossroads, having to choose our part in abiding and abetting subversion, which is another way of saying, generating both joy and justice. Let us take inspiration from the inherently subversive Christmas story.
Friends, let us make a joy that knows how to sing when there seems little cause, knows how to hope when there seems little cause. Let us not let them steal our joy!
