In my home in 2024, I watched a delightful documentary entitled MISSION: JOY. It featured a movie camera and mic following two of my favorite old men, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, spending a week together talking about life. If you know who they are, I don’t need to tell you that they spent decades working for peace, justice, and the well-being of their fellow men and women in South Africa and Asia, respectively. And as they worked, they managed to keep a sense of joy. Real joy comes from love - not from what is happening with you on this day. AND I just watched a 'debate' between JOY and HOPE versus GLOOM and DOOM and feeling, deep in my bones,; that JOY won. So I'm feeling even more joy.
I was there that evening—in Mary’s flower garden in Nazareth. John, Paul, Joshua, Ruth, and Julie were with her. I told them my missing mention of any pictures or stories about Jesus feeling and expressing joy by smiling or laughing. Immediately, Mary threw up her hands and nearly shouted, “Your writers and artists are missing a huge part of who my son was and is. They depict only a fraction of what he is. Wouldn’t you agree, John?”
John looked at me and said, “Don, this story might help you: One time, Jesus and four of us followers walked into a small village, and we saw a very emaciated man and his young son sitting by the side of the road. Jesus stopped and asked the fellow how we might help him. He was almost too weak to answer but whispered, ‘We are so very hungry, and so are my two other children and their mother. Our dwelling burned down, and we lost everything, and all of us have been injured, so…” His voice trailed off, and Jesus said to us. ‘Let us go around the village here and see if we can find food, shelter, and maybe a healing hand for this family.’ So, two of us went one way, and Jesus and the other, newer members of our group, went another to find food and help. We were surprised to find that in this village about the size of Nazareth, no one seemed to know of this poor family. Anyway, my partner and I found an elderly couple who had a shanty in the back of their property that the family could stay in, and they would give them some clothes that their children had left them with. They were quite thin and had no extra food, but their neighbors did. Jesus and his two found food, and more was promised for the future. We all helped the family get to the shanty, and one neighbor was a sort of ‘medicine man’ who left some ointment with them after applying some of it on their most serious burns.”
John continued with a smile, “And as we left, Jesus kidded us about being so glum. He said we must always do our very best to feel the joy we have in our hearts. even when we are worried and a bit sad.”
Mary said, “Now, John, thank you for that story. I had never heard it, but it was typical of how my son was in the world. Even with the children here in Nazareth, he would check to see if they were hungry or hurt. He would laugh and smile nearly all the time. If you hear any of those so-called Christians of yours talking like Jesus was a gloomy Gus, tell them John’s story – and that will also let them know that to love Jesus is to love those in need. And for pity’s sake, do not sit around and say or sing that they love Jesus. Oh, and say all this with a smile on your face. Don, don't be so serious all the time yourself. Even though you are older than me in your life, I’m beginning to think of you as my stepson.” She laughed and added, “How’s that?”
My twenty-first-century fellow believers need an updated faithfulness and have some new two-thousand-year-old thoughts. And with that thought, I disappeared–so with joy . . .
Smile and open your eyes and heart, glance at the menus, and joyfully sit at the banquet and sing as you get to work.
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