Luke 1:39-45
December 12, 2010
In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
You know, I’m not much of a baseball fan. Other than when the Pirates won the World Series in 1971, and again in 1980, no one in my family paid much attention to baseball. I think that to develop a passion for baseball it helps to grow up in a family that loves baseball.
Don’t get me wrong. I still loved it when the Pirates won the World Series, but I think I loved it as much for other reasons than just a love of baseball or a love of the Pirates. For example, one thing I loved about them winning the 1971 series is that my friends and I, all age 12, got to jump on our bikes and ride around town screaming, “We WON!” at the top of our lungs, and we weren’t going to get in trouble.
What I loved about 1980 series win is that at the time I was in college with a lot of people from Baltimore. And when the Pirates went down 3 games to 1 to the Orioles, the Baltimore fans got very obnoxious, including grabbing a friend of mine’s Terrible Towel and throwing it into the fire in the fireplace. It was really fun to see the smugness wiped off their faces when the Pirates won.
Still, I’ve always been the proverbial “jump-on-the-bandwagon” type of baseball fan. In fact, I was also a bit scared to play baseball. That’s an odd thing to hear me say because I loved playing physical sports lacrosse and hockey, and even backyard tackle football, sports that really do hurt. It’s just that the idea of standing still while someone whips a hardball in my direction,… well,… all I could ever think of while standing in the batter’s box was that the ball was really going to hurt if it hits me.
Despite my ignorance about baseball, there are a lot of things about baseball to really like. For example, my favorite sports movies are all baseball movies. For some reason, baseball plays well on the silver screen. Also, baseball legend has some great stories. And despite my lukewarm feelings about baseball, I was really touched this past week by the death of the great Cubs second baseman Ron Santo.
Those of you who follow baseball know that he was a great baseball player for the Chicago Cubs. Nine times he was on the all-star team, and he won five golden gloves for being the best defensive player in the league at his position. But it wasn’t his feats on the baseball field that made him great. It was how he lived his life that made him great. You see, he wasn’t supposed to be able to play baseball. At age 18, which was in the early 1960s, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Treatments for diabetes at the time were nowhere near what they are now. The doctor told Santo to forget about playing baseball. His condition wouldn’t allow for it. Instead, he needed to focus on doing whatever he could to extend his life. He was told that if he was lucky he could live for 20 or 25 more years, but that was it.
Santo was devastated, but he also didn’t let the doctor define his life. He kept playing baseball, while also self-monitoring his disease. He kept it hidden from others, knowing that the team probably wouldn’t understand, nor support him, if they knew. Despite the threat and burden that diabetes posed to his life, he never let it get him down. He was known for always being filled with joy as both a teammate and a leader. He never complained no matter what he faced.
After baseball, he became a color analyst for Cubs baseball. He was an effervescent figure. In an age when analysts were supposed to be calmly critical, he was a homer. When the Cubs did something great, he cheered. When they didn’t, he pouted and moaned. He wore the love of the Cubs on his sleeve. Over time the ravages of diabetes led to him have eye surgery, heart surgery, and twelve leg surgeries. Finally, they had to amputate both legs below the knee because of chronic circulation problems. Again, he never complained and never let it dim his spirit. The first spring training after his amputations he showed up with Cubs colors wrapped around his prostheses, and joyfully asked how people like his legs.
When Monsignor Daniel Mayall did his funeral last week, he said of Santo that he embodied three virtues: joy, hope, and courage. And of these three the greatest was joy. As he said, “Joy was a virtue for Ron… joy was a part of his life, every day and every season. …Ron Santo was a joyful man.”
When he died last week at age 70, it wasn’t from diabetes. It was from complications of bladder cancer. He died not as a victim of disease, but as a man of joy. He exuded the kind of joy that we hear about in our passage for this morning. Think about the joy of Elizabeth and Mary in our passage. They were in situations that didn’t necessarily evoke joy.
Elizabeth was older. Today she might be considered somewhat young, depending on who you are. She was probably in her mid-forties or early fifties, but she was clearly past normal childbearing age for that day. In an age when the life span was the early fifties, she was old. Think about what it would be like for you if you were in your sixties or seventies today and got pregnant. Would you be joyful? You’d be scared, but she was filled with joy. Mary was at the other end of the spectrum. She was probably in her mid- to late teens. She was pregnant before marriage. Typically a woman in that situation would be quietly dismissed by her fiancé and left to fend for herself. She would also be rejected by her family because of the disgrace she would have brought on them. But she wasn’t scared. She was filled with joy.
Elizabeth, Mary, and Santo all displayed an attitude that is so essential to being a Christian, an attitude that many Christians have a hard time with. We are called to joy, but the problem is that we keep pursuing happiness, and that pursuit gets in the way of our joy. We have all been brought up on the belief of the Declaration of Independence, which says that we all have a right to the pursuit of happiness. And I agree with that belief. But I also know that the pursuit of happiness doesn’t necessarily lead to a sense of joy. There’s a difference between happiness and joy.
What’s the difference? Happiness is brought on by external events. We are happy because of what is going on around us. We are happy when we buy a new car, but as soon as the new car smell goes away, our happiness fades. We are happy when the Steelers or Penguins or Pirates win, but happiness fades if the win wasn’t dominating enough, or till after the next loss. We are happy whenever we get something new, or when something good happens to us, but we aren’t necessarily joyful.
Joy is different. Joy is an internal condition that is a by-product of real faith. We have joy because we sense God with us, and this joy is there no matter what is taking place around us. Joy is something we can feel, even when bad things are taking place. I’m not saying that we are joyful because we are ill, fired from our job, or struggling in our marriage. But we don’t let those things diminish our interior joy for long. Being joyful means that even if someone close to us dies, we can still find good and beauty in life. Being joyful means that even if we become ill, we still find reasons to smile and find what’s good in life around us—the love of others, the abilities of the doctors. Joy comes from within. Happiness comes from without. Joy persists. Happiness is temporary.
Let me give you an example of the difference between the two. Do you remember the Steelers-Buffalo Bills game from two weeks ago? We eventually won in overtime, but it was close. We could have lost. At one point in overtime, the Bills’ young receiver, Stevie Johnson, got free in the end zone. The ball was thrown to him, and he was wide open. The ball hit him right in the hands for an easy catch, but he dropped the ball. He sat dejected in the end zone for a while, and then went on the bench and sulked. Later he tweeted on Twitter the following message to God and his fans: “I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO..”
This is a man who has pursued happiness, but not joy. A joyful person would have recognized that this was just a game, and that he has a lot to be grateful for: having the talent to be a world-class athlete, having the ability to make millions of dollars for catching a football, being cheered on by tens of thousands of fans, and having more opportunities to make game-winning touchdowns. Like Johnson, though, we can confuse happiness and joy.
A mature faith, a faith really rooted in trusting God, being open to God, and serving God, doesn’t depend on events for joy. A mature faith has joy in all circumstances. And it realizes that we face a choice: will we react with joy or something else to life around us? Remember, reacting with joy doesn’t mean ignoring pain. It means having joy in God despite pain, turmoil, struggles, and grief.
Do you pursue happiness in your life, or do you cultivate joy? Your answer makes all the difference in what you experience in life.
Amen.
