Now’s the Time for Joy
reflection — Brian Zahnd’s sermon on Nick Cave’s song Joy
Reader, I feel joyless. I hate this feeling quite a lot, and I want Joy RIGHT NOW.
For reasons mundane and unimportant I have felt sh1tty these past few days — locked inside a dark night of tearless weeping. It feels quite awful. You can’t tell from the outside when you look at me, and maybe not even when you have a conversation with me. I have learned over the years to compensate for my winds of sorrow because I think people don’t want to see or know about them. Even if it’s fake, even if it’s shallow, people want fake + shallow happy. They want a Stepford Wife. I’m a sh1tty Stepford Wife, try as I might to fill that role at times, as I navigate humankind. Reader, repressing my sorrow only serves to prolong the agony of these dark moments. Sorrow should function like a tunnel I travel through, and not a talisman I cleave to my chest. Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
In my solitary moments, I can be, no pretend, just being. In my tunnel.
I cry out in silence, Joy where you at? When I still my heart, a glimmer appears. Be still and know that I am g-d, it whispers. I remember the co-suffering g-d, from my study of
’s work. The load feels a bit lighter when I remember that my sorrow can lead me to g-d. Walk through the tunnel, don’t try to carry the tunnel. I think of tumbling into this sorrow-stained moment like a skier trains to tumble downhill, loosened and not tensed or contracted in muscle tone. Reader, that’s difficult. It takes stretching to remain open when I want to close myself off. Blah blah blah—but I want Joy RIGHT NOW. So, right now I’ve decided I will (for the second time) listen to preach about Nick Cave’s song Joy (part of his Finding G-d in the Music sermon series).
Maybe guarding my heart means listening to Zahnd right now? Maybe if I listen to Brian Zahnd preach about Joy, it might seep into my heart and my brain? It’s worth a shot to open myself up to the possibility. The Ramones shirt Zahnd has chosen to wear under his tan coloured leather jacket for the delivery of this sermon lends him an air of realness and authenticity. It’s kinda punk, and I like that a lot. (Confession to readers — I love the Ramones, Robert and I have some Ramones in our vinyl collection).
Zahnd introduces the song. He shares a bit of background and context—mentions Nick Cave losing his son in 2015. He talks about Bob Dylan seeing Nick Cave in Paris. “We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for Joy. Yeah, that’s about right”, tweeted Dylan after seeing the show at the Accor Arena.
Zahnd shares Nick Cave’s reply.
“Disenchantment and feverish obsession with politics”, that line grabs me. This week I’ve written about what I call Terminal Despair in the fever dream that has become Canadian political discourse. It felt very ‘Stealers Wheel’ to me, at one point. (See my previous essay for that).
“That holy place where Joy resides,” strikes me like a bright light after a long darkness. Like morning. Like the light at the end of the tunnel, (see video above). Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Terminal Despair cannot, must not, serve as the breastplate that shields my heart.
“Antidote to despair … that transports people to a place beyond the dreadful drama of the … moment.” Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life, says Proverbs 4:23. In the Hebrew primary source text, the author chose the word נָצַר natsar as opposed to שָׁמַר shamar. Natsar means more than protecting, it means actively watching and attending—with a focus on and a view to preservation of the integrity of the thing under our watch.
So, reader, I will get into my spiritual TARDIS and travel back to that Sunday morning, when the women went to the tomb and found it empty and saw the risen Christ, fully alive, wounds and all.
And all across the world they shout bad words, they shout angry wordsAll across the world they shout out their angry wordsAbout the end of love, yet the stars stand above the earthBright, triumphant metaphors of loveBright, triumphant metaphors of loveBlind us all who care to stand and look beyondAnd care to stand and look beyond aboveReader, we can only see the glory of the stars in the night sky when we retreat from the city and venture into the abject darkness of the remote and lonely wilderness. Maybe there’s a lesson in that. What if we could see and feel and embrace Joy like this? What if that’s what the Divine calls us to do, in our daily lives?
“We’ve all had too much sorrow,” Zahnd says, “now’s the time for Joy. Weeping may endure for a night. Joy comes in the morning. The long night of sorrow will not endure forever,” he continues. Zahnd quotes LOTR character Samwise Gamgee speaking to Gandalf, “everything sad is going to come untrue.” Zahnd reminds us, that even when the winds of sorrow waft all around us, g-d is with us and this is not the end. Think Revelation 21:4, also Isaiah 2:58.
The end is joy. We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy. Now is the time for joy, Zahnd says to me through the screen. He looks straight at me, through the screen and, with the softness of compassion in his visage, Zahnd repeats the words, “now is the time for Joy.”
“Now is the time for Joy,” he tells me, “jump for it if you have to.”
I catch my breathe and my eyes sting with tears that I’ve been stuffing down and choking back for a few days now. The floodgates have opened, I cannot close them. Reader, in these dismal quiet moments with sorrow, we give birth to ourselves. It’s a messy ugly business, this deconstruction and birthing of faith and Self. That’s life. Zahnd delivers the zinger, “don’t let the politics and its leaders throw a palisade that prevent you from experiencing the spirit, the sacredness, the transcendent, the holy place—where joy resides.” I can’t help but feel as though that message has my name on it, reader. To make sure I fully understand and drink it in, Zahnd repeats himself, reminding me not to let the acrimonious politics of our time and its leaders prevent me from experiencing the spirit.
Zahnd reads the lyrics of the last song on the Wild G-d album, As The Water Covers The Sea.
As The Waters Cover The Sea
She sits at the windowHer hands folded in her sleeping lapAs He steps from the tombIn His rags and His woundsInto the yellow light that streamsThrough the window, He bringsPeace and good tidings to the landPeace and good tidings to the landAnd as the water cover the seaAnd as you wake and turn to mePeace and good tidings He will bringGood tidings to all thingsCome to the table, Christ awaits. Zahnd closes his powerful and joyful sermon reminding listeners of the Co-suffering G-d, of the Risen Christ. When Zahnd tells me “in the name of Jesus Christ your sins are forgiven” I cannot fathom the graciousness on which that forgiveness delivers itself. G-d’s mercy humbles. My heart staggers, drunk with all the ecstasy of Divine compassion.
Borrow Joy from Sunday morning. The end is Joy.
Brian Zahnd, thank you. 🙏🏽