13: Celebration
13: The Discipline of Celebration
The Christian should be an alleluia from head to foot!
—AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Celebration is at the heart of the way of Christ. He entered the world on a high note of jubilation: “I bring you good news of a great joy,” cried the angel, “which shall come to all the people” (Luke 2:10). He left the world bequeathing his joy to the disciples: “These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).
André Trocmé in Jésus-Christ et la révolution non-violente and later John Howard Yoder in The Politics of Jesus go to some length to demonstrate that Jesus began his public ministry by proclaiming the year of Jubilee (Luke 4:18, 19). The social implications of such a concept are profound.* Equally penetrating is the realization that, as a result, we are called into a perpetual Jubilee of the Spirit. Such a radical, divinely enabled freedom from possessions and a restructuring of social arrangements cannot help but bring celebration. When the poor receive the good news, when the captives are released, when the blind receive their sight, when the oppressed are liberated, who can withhold the shout of jubilee?
In the Old Testament all the social stipulations of the year of Jubilee—canceling all debts, releasing slaves, planting no crops, returning property to the original owner—were a celebration of the gracious provision of God. God could be trusted to provide what was needed. He had declared, “I will command my blessing upon you” (Lev. 25:21). Freedom from anxiety and care forms the basis for celebration. Because we know he cares for us, we can cast all our care upon him. God has turned our mourning into dancing.
The carefree spirit of joyous festivity is absent in contemporary society. Apathy, even melancholy, dominates the times. Harvey Cox says that modern man has been pressed “so hard toward useful work and rational calculation he has all but forgotten the joy of ecstatic celebration. . . .”1
Celebration Gives Strength to Life
Celebration brings joy into life, and joy makes us strong. Scripture tells us that the joy of the Lord is our strength (Neh. 8:10). We cannot continue long in anything without it. Women endure childbirth because the joy of motherhood lies on the other side. Young married couples struggle through the first difficult years of adjustment because they value the insurance of a long life together. Parents hold steady through the teen years, knowing that their children will emerge at the other end human once again.
We may be able to begin tennis instruction or piano lessons by dint of will, but we will not keep at them for long without joy. In fact, the only reason we can begin is because we know that joy is the end result. That is what sustains all novices; they know there is a sense of pleasure, enjoyment, joy in mastery.
Celebration is central to all the Spiritual Disciplines. Without a joyful spirit of festivity the Disciplines become dull, death-breathing tools in the hands of modern Pharisees. Every Discipline should be characterized by carefree gaiety and a sense of thanksgiving.
Joy is part of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). Often I am inclined to think that joy is the motor, the thing that keeps everything else going. Without joyous celebration to infuse the other Disciplines, we will sooner or later abandon them. Joy produces energy. Joy makes us strong.
Ancient Israel was commanded to gather together three times a year to celebrate the goodness of God. Those were festival holidays in the highest sense. They were the experiences that gave strength and cohesion to the people of Israel.
The Path to Joy
In the spiritual life only one thing will produce genuine joy, and that is obedience. The old hymn tells us that there is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to “trust and obey.” The hymn writer received his inspiration from the Master himself, for Jesus tells us that there is no blessedness equal to the blessedness of obedience. On one occasion a woman in the crowd shouted out to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” Jesus responded, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:27, 28). It is a more blessed thing to live in obedience than to have been the mother of the Messiah!
In 1870 Hannah Whitall Smith wrote what has become a classic on joyous Christianity, The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life. The title barely hints at the depths of that perceptive book. It is no shallow “four easy steps to successful living.” Studiously, the writer defines the shape of a full and abundant life hid in God. Then she carefully reveals the difficulties to this way and finally charts the results of a life abandoned to God. What is the Christian’s secret to a happy life? It is best summed up by her chapter entitled “The Joy of Obedience.” Joy comes through obedience to Christ, and joy results from obedience to Christ. Without obedience joy is hollow and artificial.
To elicit genuine celebration, obedience must work itself into the ordinary fabric of our daily lives. Without that our celebrating carries a hollow sound. For example, some people live in such a way that it is impossible to have any kind of happiness in their home, but then they go to church and sing songs and pray “in the Spirit,” hoping that God will somehow give them an infusion of joy to make it through the day. They are looking for some kind of heavenly transfusion that will bypass the misery of their daily lives and give them joy. But God’s desire is to transform the misery, not bypass it.
We need to understand that God does at times give us an infusion of joy even in our bitterness and hard-heartedness. But that is the abnormal situation. God’s normal means of bringing his joy is by redeeming and sanctifying the ordinary junctures of human life. When the members of a family are filled with love and compassion and a spirit of service to one another, that family has reason to celebrate.
There is something sad in people running from church to church trying to get an injection of “the joy of the Lord.” Joy is not found in singing a particular kind of music or in getting with the right kind of group or even in exercising the charismatic gifts of the Spirit, good as all these may be. Joy is found in obedience. When the power that is in Jesus reaches into our work and play and redeems them, there will be joy where once there was mourning. To overlook this is to miss the meaning of the Incarnation.
That is why I have placed celebration at the end of this study. Joy is the end result of the Spiritual Disciplines’ functioning in our lives. God brings about the transformation of our lives through the Disciplines, and we will not know genuine joy until there is a transforming work within us. Many people try to come into joy far too soon. Often we try to pump up people with joy when in reality nothing has happened in their lives. God has not broken into the routine experiences of their daily existence. Celebration comes when the common ventures of life are redeemed.
It is important to avoid the kind of celebrations that really celebrate nothing. Worse yet is to pretend to celebrate when the spirit of celebration is not in us. Our children watch us bless the food and promptly proceed to gripe about it—blessings that are not blessings. One of the things that nearly destroys children is being forced to be grateful when they are not grateful. If we pretend an air of celebration, our inner spirit is put in contradiction.
A popular teaching today instructs us to praise God for the various difficulties that come into our lives, asserting that there is great transforming power in thus praising God. In its best form such teaching is a way of encouraging us to look up the road a bit through the eye of faith and see what will be. It affirms in our hearts the joyful assurance that God takes all things and works them for the good of those who love him. In its worst form this teaching denies the vileness of evil and baptizes the most horrible tragedies as the will of God. Scripture commands us to live in a spirit of thanksgiving in the midst of all situations; it does not command us to celebrate the presence of evil.
The Spirit of Carefree Celebration
The apostle Paul calls us to “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice” (Phil. 4:4, KJV). But how are we to do that? Paul continues, “Have no anxiety about anything,” or as the King James Version puts it, “Be careful for nothing.” That is the negative side of rejoicing. The positive side is “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” And the result? “The peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6, 7).
Paul instructs us on how we can always rejoice, and his first word of counsel is to be “full of care” for nothing. Jesus, of course, gives the same advice when he says, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on” (Matt. 6:25). In both instances the same word is used, which we translate “anxious” or “careful.” Christians are called to be free of care, but we find such a way foreign to us. We have been trained since we were two years old to be full of care. We shout to our children as they run to the school bus, “Be careful,” that is, be full of care.
The spirit of celebration will not be in us until we have learned to be “careful for nothing.” And we will never have a carefree indifference to things until we trust God. This is why the Jubilee was such a crucial celebration in the Old Testament. No one would dare celebrate the Jubilee unless they had a deep trust in God’s ability to provide for their needs.
When we trust God we are free to rely entirely upon him to provide what we need: “By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Prayer is the means by which we move the arm of God; hence we can live in a spirit of carefree celebration.
Paul, however, does not end the matter there. Prayer and trust by themselves are not adequate to bring us joy. Paul proceeds to tell us to set our minds on all the things in life that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and gracious (Phil. 4:8). God has established a created order full of excellent and good things, and it follows naturally that as we give our attention to those things we will be happy. That is God’s appointed way to joy. If we think we will have joy only by praying and singing psalms, we will be disillusioned. But if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will be joyful, that is, full of joy. And what about our problems? When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.
The decision to set the mind on the higher things of life is an act of the will. That is why celebration is a Discipline. It is not something that falls on our heads. It is the result of a consciously chosen way of thinking and living. When we choose this way, the healing and redemption in Christ will break into the inner recesses of our lives and relationships, and the inevitable result will be joy.
The Benefits of Celebration
Far and away the most important benefit of celebration is that it saves us from taking ourselves too seriously. This is a desperately needed grace for all those who are earnest about the Spiritual Disciplines. It is an occupational hazard of devout folk to become stuffy bores. This should not be. Of all people, we should be the most free, alive, interesting. Celebration adds a note of gaiety, festivity, hilarity to our lives. After all, Jesus rejoiced so fully in life that he was accused of being a winebibber and a glutton. Many of us lead such sour lives that we cannot possibly be accused of such things.
Now I am not recommending a periodic romp in sin, but I am suggesting that we do need deeper, more earthy experiences of exhilaration. It is healing and refreshing to cultivate a wide appreciation for life. Our spirit can become weary with straining after God just as our body can become weary with overwork. Celebration helps us relax and enjoy the good things of the earth.
Celebration also can be an effective antidote for the periodic sense of sadness that can constrict and oppress the heart. Depression is an epidemic today and celebration can help stem the tide. In his chapter titled “Helps in Sadness,” François Fénelon counsels those who are bowed low with the burdens of life to encourage themselves “with good conversation, even by making merry.”2
Another benefit of celebration is its ability to give us perspective. We can laugh at ourselves. We come to see that the causes we champion are not nearly so monumental as we would like to believe. In celebration the high and the mighty regain their balance and the weak and lowly receive new stature. Who can be high or low at the festival of God? Together the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless all celebrate the glory and wonder of God. There is no leveler of caste systems like festivity.
Thus freed of an inflated view of our own importance, we are also freed of a judgmental spirit. Others do not look so awful, so unspiritual. Common joys can be shared without sanctimonious value judgments.
Finally, an interesting characteristic of celebration is that it tends toward more celebration. Joy begets joy. Laughter begets laughter. It is one of those few things in life that we multiply by giving. Kierkegaard says that “humor is always a concealed pair.”3
The Practice of Celebration
If celebration is primarily a corporate Discipline, and if it brings such benefit to the people of God, how is it practiced? The question is a good one, for modern men and women have become so mechanized that we have snuffed out nearly all experiences of spontaneous joy. Most of our experiences of celebration are artificial, plastic.
One way to practice celebration is through singing, dancing, shouting. Because of the goodness of God, the heart breaks forth into psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Worship, praise, adoration flow from the inner chambers. In Psalm 150 we see the celebration of the people of God with trumpet and lute and harp, with timbrel and dance, with strings and pipe and loud clashing cymbals.
What do little children do when they celebrate? They make noise, lots of noise. There is not a thing wrong with noise at the appropriate time, just as there is nothing wrong with silence when it is appropriate. Children dance when they celebrate. When the children of Israel had been snatched from the clutches of Pharaoh by the mighty power of God, Miriam the prophetess led the people in a great celebration dance (Exod. 15:20). David went leaping and dancing before the Lord with all his might (2 Sam. 6:14, 16). The folk dance has always been a carrier of cultural values and has been used repeatedly in genuine celebration. Of course, dancing can have wrong and evil manifestations, but that is another matter entirely.
Singing, dancing, and noise-making are not required forms of celebration. They are examples only, to impress upon us that the earth indeed is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. Like Peter, we need to learn that nothing that comes from the gracious hand of God is inherently unclean (Acts 10). We are free to celebrate the goodness of God with all our viscera!
Laughing is another way we practice celebration. The old adage that laughter is the best medicine has a lot going for it. Indeed, Norman Cousins in his book, Anatomy of an Illness, discusses how he used the therapy of laughter to help him overcome a crippling disease. In his hospital bed Cousins watched old Marx Brothers films and “Candid Camera” shows, and the genuine belly laughter he experienced seemed to have an anesthetic effect and gave him pain-free sleep. Doctors even confirmed the salutary effect of laughter on his body chemistry.
Why not! Jesus had a sense of humor—some of his parables are positively comical. There is even such a thing as “holy laughter,” a frequent phenomenon in various revival movements. Although I have not experienced holy laughter myself, I have observed it in others and its effects appear altogether beneficial. But whether God gives us this special grace or not, we can all experience times of wholesome laughter.
So poke fun at yourself. Enjoy wholesome jokes and clever puns. Relish good comedy. Learn to laugh; it is a discipline to be mastered. Let go of the everlasting burden of always needing to sound profound.
A third way to encourage celebration is to accent the creative gifts of fantasy and imagination. Harvey Cox observes that “man’s celebrative and imaginative faculties have atrophied.”4 In another place he writes, “There was a time when visionaries were canonized, and mystics were admired. Now they are studied, smiled at, perhaps even committed. All in all, fantasy is viewed with distrust in our time.”5
We who follow Christ can risk going against the cultural tide. Let’s with abandon relish the fantasy games of children. Let’s see visions and dream dreams. Let’s play, sing, laugh. The imagination can release a flood of creative ideas, and it can be lots of fun. Only those who are insecure about their own maturity will fear such a delightful form of celebration.
Let us also relish the creativity of others. Those who create sculptures and paintings and plays and music are a great gift to us. We can organize art shows to display their work. We can sing their music in intimate gatherings and formal concerts. We can arrange for dramatic productions of our friend’s works. We can have a family art show and feature the kid’s paintings from school. Why not! It is great fun and builds community.
Another thing we can do is to make family events into times of celebration and thanksgiving. This is particularly true of the various rites of passage in our culture like birthdays, graduations, marriages, anniversaries. One couple I know plants a tree for every wedding anniversary. On their farm they now have a little forest of some forty trees that bear silent witness to their love and fidelity.
We can also celebrate lesser, but equally important events like finishing a major project, securing a job, receiving a raise. In addition, why not form regular rituals of celebration that are not connected with special events. Spend more time around the piano as a family and sing out! Learn the folk dances of various cultures and enjoy them together. Set up regular times to play games or watch movies or read books together. Turn visits to relatives into celebrations of your relationship. I am sure you can come up with many other ideas that belong to your family alone.
A fifth thing we can do is to take advantage of the festivals of our culture and really celebrate. What a great celebration we can make of Christmas. It does not have to have all the crass commercialism connected to it if we decide that we do not want it that way. Of course the giving of gifts is a great thing, but we can give many kinds of presents. Several years ago our young son Nathan, who was learning to play the piano at that time, gave every member of the family a special gift—playing a song he had learned. He had great fun gift wrapping huge boxes and trying to get everyone to guess what their gift was. And then when they opened it, a note said that he was going to play some little piece for them on the piano. How delightful, how fun!
And what about Easter? Forget the spring style show and celebrate the power of the resurrection. Make family Easter plays. Revive the May Day celebrations. Go pick flowers and deliver them to your neighbors and friends. Rejoice in the beauty of color and variety. Why allow Halloween to be a pagan holiday in commemoration of the powers of darkness? Fill the house or church with light; sing and celebrate the victory of Christ over darkness. Let the children (and adults) dress up as biblical characters or as some of the saints through the centuries.
In the Middle Ages there was a holiday known as the Feast of Fools.6 It was a time when all “sacred cows” of the day could be safely laughed at and mocked. Minor clerics mimicked and ridiculed their superiors. Political leaders were lampooned. We can do without the excessive debauchery that often accompanied those festivities, but we do need occasions when we laugh at ourselves. Instead of chafing under the social customs of our day, we might do well to find ways to laugh at them.
We are not limited to established festivals; we can develop our own. One fellowship held a celebration night in appreciation of their pastors. Each family designed a homemade card. Various groups prepared skits, plays, readings, jokes. As one of those pastors, I can say that it was a hilarious night. Why do we wait until our pastors are ready to leave before we throw a party for them? If we will show our appreciation more often, they just might be encouraged to stay longer.
I know of one church that has a “festival of lights” for Christmas. They have music, they have drama, and most of all they involve lots of people. I know of another group that meets quarterly to celebrate the foods of other countries. On one occasion they will have a Swedish meal, at another Irish, and at another Japanese.
Where I teach we have an annual event called “Symphony of Spring,” and the good it does for the human spirit is impossible to calculate. It is the most anticipated event of the year. Music, costumes, color—it is a mini-extravaganza with all the expertise of a professional production without the plastic superficiality. This event is not cheap. There is a considerable expense in time, energy, and money. But we all need such festivals of joy as together we seek the kingdom of God.
Celebration gives us the strength to live in all the other Disciplines. When faithfully pursued, the other Disciplines bring us deliverance from those things that have made our lives miserable for years which, in turn, evokes increased celebration. Thus, an unbroken circle of life and power is formed.
Finis
We have come to the end of this study, but only to the beginning of our journey. We have seen how meditation heightens our spiritual sensitivity which, in turn, leads us into prayer. Very soon we discover that prayer involves fasting as an accompanying means. Informed by these three Disciplines, we can effectively move into study which gives us discernment about ourselves and the world in which we live.
Through simplicity we live with others in integrity. Solitude allows us to be genuinely present to people when we are with them. Through submission we live with others without manipulation, and through service we are a blessing to them.
Confession frees us from ourselves and releases us to worship. Worship opens the door to guidance. All the Disciplines freely exercised bring forth the doxology of celebration.
The classical Disciplines of the spiritual life beckon us to the Himalayas of the Spirit. Now we stand at the timberline awed by the snowy peaks before us. We step out in confidence with our Guide who has blazed the trail and conquered the highest summit.