Raise Your Glass
And may the joy of Jesus be in you
And may the joy of Jesus be with you
And may you know the joy of Jesus
And may the joy of Jesus be in you.
—Rich Mullins, “The Joy of Jesus”
November 10th, 2018 was the perfect evening. All of mine and Drew’s favorite ingredients for joy were gathered in one wedding tent: the people we love most, pizza, greenery and flowers along with drippy wax candles and blue glass goblets, words that celebrated life, and most of all, the sweet fellowship of the Trinity as we breathed and laughed and cried the breath and joy and tears of God together. It was and is the most fulfilling evening of our life together.
It was also an evening of remembrance. The blessedness of our wedding feast was deepened by the suffering Drew and I had experienced in the death of our previous marriages. There was no ounce of goodness that did not contain the slight memory of sorrow—and this, I think, is a truer and more lasting joy than celebrating as though the past had never happened. The bitterness has made the healing sweeter than honey. For months and years after our wedding, our family and friends have talked about the embodied, felt, God-ordained experience of Redemption we shared on November 10th, 2018. Drew and I remain amazed.
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“As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, think of me,” she said. The woman leading our Communion practice spoke those familiar words of Christ—words I hear every week before popping the crisped piece of air we call bread and drinking the cough syrup shot of juice from our tiny pre-packaged communion cups. (Covid, look what you’ve done.) Though the words are as familiar to me as “Let us pray,” I was struck afresh by Jesus’ words last Sunday.
“Think of me,” Jesus said. What a vulnerable request made to his closest friends shortly before dying. Bread and wine were staples in ancient meals, so Jesus’ request could be interpreted as “As often as you eat, think of me.” This was not a “Could you please remember me the one Sunday a month you take communion?” No. “Often” didn’t mean “whenever;” it meant often. So I began to wonder, Did Jesus want his disciples to only remember his death when they ate and drank? Or did he have more in mind? I pictured Jesus holding up the bread and the cup mere hours before his betrayal, wanting the word “Remember” to recall actual memories for the disciples of their adventures together over the past few years:
Remember the time I multiplied the bread and fed the masses, till we were full with the wonder of it and ate until we were satisfied. . .twice?
Remember how I taught you that I AM the bread of Life, and that whoever comes to me won’t hunger again?
Remember the first miracle I ever did at Cana? How I turned water into wine, and it was the best wine we ever tasted?
Remember laughing and singing and toasting and dancing at that wedding?
Remember when I said I am the Vine, and that if you remain in me you will be fruitful?
As often as you eat and drink, remember me.
Remember my sacrifice for you—but also remember our joy.
How often do we think of joy when we take communion at church? And when we think of communion with the Trinity, do we tend to make it a somber religious encounter instead of the exuberant embrace of intimate friendship? Can you picture God laughing. . .with you? Not squelching, but multiplying your joy? In spite of the unfortunate taste of our church’s communion elements—(which I honestly have trained myself to think of as suffering for Jesus. How irreverent! I know, I know)—in spite of these, last Sunday I caught the slightest taste of the joy of Jesus and the fullness that his invitation to remember him actually contains, and I found myself wanting more. I found myself wanting a whole loaf of delicious bread and a healthy pour of good, God-created wine to raise and toast and celebrate the earthy humanity and righteous victory of Christ. In our daily walk with God, are we settling for an emaciated picture of Christ and a famished experience of the fullness of Trinitarian joy? So many of us are shuffling along, keeping our heads down and just trying to make it through the day—ultimately taking a stale wafer and counterfeit wine and calling it feasting. Imagine if life with God looked a lot more like a wedding feast than what songwriter Will Reagan calls “fast food grace.”
I’ll be the first to admit: Joy terrifies me. Because what if it is taken away? Better to play it safe and live someplace in the middle, I often conclude. One coping mechanism I have developed over years of living with depression is to prepare for disappointment—to assume that the worst will happen in secret hopes of being presently surprised. It is often easier to expect disappointment than anticipate joy. But despite my best efforts to protect myself, expecting disappointment only gives birth to disappointment. I understand what Jesus meant in Matthew 6 when he said, “If your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.” Our gaze informs our worship, which shapes our heart, which determines our life. When I am most depressed, it is because my eyes are broken. Oh, how I need Jesus, King of the eternal feast, to invite me into His joy.
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It is Holy Week, and the Man of Sorrows is on his way to the cross. Each year, I find that I am much more in tune with the suffering and grief of Christ than the joy of Easter. But Hebrews tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, because it is for the sake of joy that Christ suffered and died.
For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
(Hebrews 12:2)
The joy that Jesus set his gaze upon as he prepared to die death is the kind of joy that can be trusted—a joy that will never disappoint or be taken from us—a joy that reaches beyond the grave. If we wish to fully enter into the Passion of Jesus this week, then we must embrace a grief and a joy that are not exclusive of one another, but dependent upon each other. Just as the death of my former marriage led to the most joyful experience of redemption I have ever known, so too should the sorrow-full death of Jesus evoke in us a joy that is ultimately weightier than pain.
Joy is eternal; sorrow and disappointment are not.
As a closing prayer, I invite you to pray the words of Psalm 16 with Jesus as if they were being spoken to his Father—who is your loving Father, too.
Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge.
I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.”
I say of the holy people who are in the land, “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more. I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods or take up their names on my lips.
Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.