Joy to the world, the Lord is come;
Let Earth receive her king!
Let every heart, prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing…
Joy to the World
The message of Christmas is clear—Things are going to be different now! The 17th century Southampton hymn writer originally wrote this hymn about Christ’s triumphant return. Yes, things were going to be different and it was that sentiment that was picked up when the tune was composed reflecting Handel’s Messiah in the four opening notes.
And just as we embrace that message—Things are going to be different now!—we look out and see last night’s swat action in Crown Hills. Behind the decorations we see things aren’t different out there at work, school, in our communities and even in our homes. If “out there” is going to be different this Christmas, it needs to be different “in here,” in our hearts. Joy to the World will only come as “every heart prepares him room.”
Christmas joy is short lived if our worship, our showing God our love doesn’t last beyond our singing Silent Night after Communion. It is the same as when we feel Baptism just doesn’t seem to take hold if we don’t actually become Jesus’ disciples. The difference Christmas can make is when we notice a gap, a disparity between the hope of life expressed in Jesus and the actual life, the day-to-day in our inner and social lives. The Joy of Christmas isn’t about just remembering what happened that night in Bethlehem. It is about receiving the Lord who has come into our hearts, into that place of our desire, our hopes, and our dreams from which we live our daily lives.
You may have heard about the neighbor next door. The neighbor always complains about having trouble with his car. So, you might figure that it is a lemon, one of those factory defects. And it might be. But if you found out that he was adding a quart of water to his gasoline every now and then, you might not blame the car that it sometimes runs very poorly or not at all. You might be able to explain to your neighbor that his car wasn’t made to run on a mixture of gas and water. And that cleaning out the water from the tank, fuel lines, engine, and doing some restoration the car would like run just fine.
When it comes to our walking with Jesus, we need to know that the spiritual life as God created human beings doesn’t “just run” on anything you give it. We need to give your life the fuel that God designed for you and created so you would run well.
So with what are we filling our hearts? What are we putting into our spiritual tank, into our Christian life, for what are we preparing room? As much as you may enjoy a jaccuzzi, adding a little water over your forehead, or immersion, if you prefer, is going to guarantee disappointment if that is all that goes into your spiritual life.
What we need is to make room in our heart for Jesus so that our lives will sing, not only with the coming of Christmas, but will join in sing on earth with in heaven, not just now, but into eternity. What I love about Anglican style of liturgy is my life is caught up with the decades, centuries, and millennium of faithful Christians who knew Christ and were looking toward life in God’s Kingdom.
So, like them, I have to put good fuel into my spiritual life. Peter described it as
“growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2Peter 3.18 ESV)
Or from Titus
…looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and Saviour Jesus Christ…
(Titus 2.13 KJV)
If you haven’t learned what fuel to put into a car, you might experiment. And it might take you a long time to figure it out once you’ve added water to the tank.
If we are to make room in our hearts, we need to learn from Jesus, we need to be disciples of Jesus, to learn from Him. Spiritual Formation isn’t a human project. We need to learn from Jesus, to have God teach, shape, form, and guide us. But we have to not just sign up for the course, we need to come to the classes, do the homework, turn in our work, and be shown how to do the work.
Jesus was pretty explicit about what we are to do. Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. Be faithful in Fellowship, in the Teaching of the Apostles, the Prayers, and Holy Communion. Go baptize all the world and teach them.
I love being a prayer book Christian in our Anglican expression of the faith. The prayer book is a tool for spiritual formation, a delivery system for reading the Bible and growing in the faith handed down from the Apostles. The Prayers, Communion, and Baptism are all built in. But it isn’t about the prayer book. It is about Jesus, each and every day, not the Daily Office. Every Sunday is about seeing Jesus, not the Eucharistic rite in our beautifully modernized Elizabethan English.
Joy to the world will only come as I’m ready for Jesus to teach me and direct my life. I will only be able to sing the song when I’ve not only received Jesus as King but as I show up to be taught, and learn what God’s love truly looks like as I am with my family, when I go to work next week, and when I show up at Church. But it starts today, this Christmas night. Now is the time to give yourself to Jesus, to place your life into his hands, pushing aside the junk, the obstacles, the frustrations, the disappointments, the priorities, and make him room. Today that Joy comes to us. Jesus comes to us, so that we might sing.