The Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan
“Everything is always an invitation to joy.” Maybe that sounds like something that could only be said by a dreamer or a child, someone who has no real understanding of how the world works. Has this guy not noticed that communities across America are being gutted by an opioid crisis? That there are wars going on all around the globe? That the planet’s health is in critical condition and failing fast? It hardly seems possible that anyone in their right mind could see any of this as an invitation to joy!
Except that the person who said that “everything is always an invitation to joy” is Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who has spent the last 30 or so years working with gang members in Los Angeles, assisting in the healing and restoration of people who are seen as the toughest, most lethal criminals around. He doesn’t just work with gang members, he lives among them, welcomes them into his life.
These young men and women trust him like a father, and he gives his heart to them. The social enterprise he started, Homeboy Industries, has given jobs, hope, and dignity to hundreds upon hundreds of young people trying to get out of the cycle of violence, addiction, and trauma that has stamped them from the beginning of their lives. And, despite of all his best efforts and unconditional love, Father Boyle has also buried more than 200 young men and women, victims of an epidemic of hopelessness. This is not a man who has been sheltered from the woundedness of the world. If he can see everything as an invitation to joy, we might want to pay attention.
So many people with good intentions try to do work like Greg Boyle’s and they end up completely burned out within years or even months. It would be foolish to romanticize what he does. It is hard and dangerous and heartbreaking. And yet, it brings him so much joy. He has said that there is literally nobody he will ever give up on, nobody who will ever stop being his family because of their bad behavior, no matter how many times they return to violence or drugs. As he puts it,
“You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly, and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: The vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.”
Above and beyond his inspiring words, it is Father Gregory Boyle’s life that testifies that joy is most readily found in solidarity, in self-offering love, and in the kind of belonging that he calls “radical kinship. As opposed to a quest for the fountain of youth or even the pursuits happiness, the kind of joy that is founded in these values is available to everyone, whatever our circumstances.
If you start looking for it, you’ll find the word “joy” all over Christmas cards, hymns, and stories. It’s a constant. And it’s hard not to get a little cynical about the repeated references to joy at Christmas time. It can feel shallow, or forced, or even coerced. It can also feel like the evil workings of capitalism, seducing us with the idea that if we’re not feeling that joy it might be because we haven’t bought enough presents for our loved ones, or given ourselves enough luxurious self-care reward moments.
But, of course, the true joy of Christmas is not that kind of joy at all. It’s not about presents, or getting a few days off work, or even really about a newborn baby. The joy of Christmas is a mystery, a paradox. It is about proclaiming peace on earth even as we know that wars still rage. It is about seeking absolute, unconditional belonging, even as we know our communities are divided and in conflict. It is about the gloriously impossible story of a child born into poverty in a remote corner of the world starting a revolution of love that is still going strong, 2000 years later.
At Christmas we celebrate the Feast of the Incarnation, which is a fancy church way of saying that God showed up in the world as a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and tucked into an animal’s feeding trough. A crazy-sounding story, I know—but, properly understood, what an invitation to joy! Here’s what it means: God loves us so much that he will allow no barrier, not even our fragile flesh or our inevitable mortality, to come between us. Nothing in the whole world can separate us from the love of God, and what happened on that first Christmas is the guarantee that God is willing to give everything to prove it.
If the story ended with that gloriously impossible scene of God wrapped up in the flesh of a tiny, helpless child, it would still be cause for wonder. But it doesn’t end there. The Eucharistic Prayer we will use tonight tells the rest of the story in four simple sentences: “Living among us, Jesus loved us. He broke bread with outcasts and sinners, healed the sick, and proclaimed good news to the poor. He yearned to draw all the world to himself, yet we were heedless of his call to walk in love. Then the time came for him to complete upon the cross the sacrifice of his life, and to be glorified by you.”
That’s where all this Christmas joy finds its deepest meaning: Living among us, Jesus loved us. Living among us, God loved us. And loves us still. God is still yearning to draw all the world to himself. And more miraculous, more joyful yet, is that now God is asking us to continue that story. We are the ones who are called to break bread with outcasts and sinners, heal the sick, and proclaim good news to the poor. You and I, in all our brokenness and unworthiness. And everyone out there, even those we don’t like, they’re called too. Because when God chose us, God chose all of us—especially the deeply wounded and those whose burdens are more than they can bear.
We know that Christmas did not end all human suffering or bad behavior. And, we hold fast to the hope that the radical kinship that burst forth into the world all those years ago is continuing its work of transformation. Our hope gives us strength to continue to work for the day when “all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.” That day is coming. That day is coming and because that day is coming, everything is always an invitation to joy. As the Psalmist says, “Let heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the field be joyful and all that is therein” and let “all the trees of the wood shout for joy.”
The Christmas story is a story of radical kinship. God removed all barriers between heaven and earth, flesh and immortality, so that we could know without doubt that we are fully and eternally loved. We do not need to do anything to earn that love—indeed, we cannot do anything to earn it or to lose it. We are kin. We are family—with God, and with one another. When we see the world in this light, then we can begin to understand how everything is an invitation to joy. Everything offers us a chance to stand in solidarity with those in need, to witness to the love we have experienced, to spread the hope that is in our hearts, and to be the joy—be the joy—for one another.
*For more about Fr. Greg Boyle, see the following interviews: https://www.npr.org/2017/11/13/563734736/priest-responds-to-gang-members-lethal-absence-of-hope-with-jobs-and-love and https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/gregory-boyle-rerun
