Can you drink the cup – The Cup of Joy

Last week I began a series on Henri Nouwen’s book entitled Can you drink the cup? As I indicated, this is a metaphor used by Henri to describe the life we have been given to live. But to understand what that really means involves a number of steps that will lead us to not only see our life for what it is but also be able to see how to live that life.  The first step is to see the cup and come to know what is in it before we even considering consuming its contents. Henri began by challenging us to see the sorrow that is in our cup. For many people it is what they suffer that captures their attention the most.  Beginning with what causes us heartache and sorrow leads us to what may be the worst places in our lives but then we can begin to discover or rediscover the places in our lives that bring us joy,

Henri’s exploration of the joy in our cups came as the result of a decision to enter the l’Arche community in Toronto. L’Arche communities are for people with severe disabilities but they are not institutions in the usual sense. These are communities where those who have come to live there are in community with those who have been hired to care for them. Henri believed that his training as a psychologist as well as a priest would make him an ideal candidate for such a community. He felt his life experiences had given him the ability to enter that place and make a positive impact on the people there. In the beginning, he never for a moment considered that they would teach him more about what it meant to live life to the fullest by taking hold of the cup of life that was theirs.

In fact, it was the very experiences of joy that he found in their faces and in their lives that enabled him to see the cup of joy that was part of his life.  After 9 years at the Daybreak community, he reflected on how the people who lived at the heart of the community had become his friends and not just friends but something deeper.  Through his time with them, he came to think of them as brothers and sisters and found that their lives and his life were filled with more than just suffering and sorrow; they were also filled with joy.

Caring for one another, coming to appreciate that each of us has a life and that each of us has a life worth celebrating draws us into a place where we can sympathize with the struggles and challenges the other faces but it also puts us in a place where we can find the joy that is often hidden and only comes out when we are truly in a place where we have walked and talked with one another.  Letting another person into our space – particularly the space where we are dealing with suffering and sorrow – can be scary because we are conscious that we are opening ourselves up and that there is vulnerability.

In a very telling admission, Henri discovered that the true nature of priesthood is a compassionate-being-with. Jesus’ own priesthood is described in the letter to the Hebrews as one of solidarity with human suffering.  He had to be vulnerable in order to connect with the vulnerability of those with whom he lived. And so it is for us.  But being vulnerable is scary. It is out of the ordinary. It is not what is expected. But it is that radical step, it is that beyond the norm, it is that doing the unexpected that allows us to connect with one another and with others we meet in ways we may never have imagined possible. And this enables us to build bridges between us that otherwise would never have been built.  It enables us to begin to discover what being human is really about.  It enables us to begin the process of seeing each other’s cup and watching each other as we hold the cup and drink.

Through my life I have had the privilege to visit many countries both through my employment and through participation in outreach service through Rotary. Through these times, I met many people whose lives could be described as being as miserable an existence as you could imagine, and yet they always seemed to find a smile, a laugh, a hope for the future. This is what Henri discovered in his time at the l’Arche community in Toronto called Daybreak. What he discovered was that the only way to get to the joy a person has in their life is to have the courage to enter their sorrow deeply.  When we are prepared to come alongside someone in their time of suffering and sorrow, we will find – like a precious stone in the wall of a dark cave – their joy!

And so, the cup of life is the cup of joy as much as it is the cup of sorrow.  It is the cup in which sorrows and joys, sadness and gladness, mourning and dancing are never separated. If joys could not be where sorrows are, the cup of life would never be drinkable. That is why we have to hold the cup in our hands and look carefully to find the joys hidden in our sorrows.

Can we look up to Jesus and find joy amid the great sorrow we know he suffered? It seems impossible to see where there could be joy in the tortured, broken body hanging with outstretched arms on a wooden cross. There is a picture of a cross called the cross of San Damiano.  It shows the crucified Jesus as a victorious Jesus. The horizontal beam of the cross is painted as the open grave from which Jesus rose; and all those gathered under the cross are full of joy. At the top we see God’s hand, surrounded by angels, drawing Jesus back into heaven. This reminds us that being lifted up means that Jesus was not only lifted up as the crucified one but also as the risen one.  It speaks of agony and ecstasy, of sorrow and of joy.  We know the entwined snake around the staff to be a modern medical symbol of healing for this life. But the cross of Jesus is a healing not only from the physical wounds of this life but a spiritual healing not only for this world but for eternity.  Jesus, who participated fully in all our pain, wants us to participate fully in his joy.

“Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?” When Jesus asked this question of James and John, they impulsively answered with a big “We can.” To that answer, he made this terrifying, yet hope-filled prediction: “Very well, you shall drink my cup.”  The cup of Jesus would be their cup.  They would come to know the sorrow that he knew but also the joy.

By times, we see that our cup is so full of pain that joy seems completely unreachable. When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become. The sorrow can overwhelm us and make us feel that there is no hope, no future. We need to be reminded that the sorrow we find in our cup is never present without the joy

Jesus’ unconditional ‘yes’ to the Father empowered him to drink his cup, not in passive resignation but with the full knowledge that the hour of his death would also be the hour of his glory.  His yes made that surrender a creative act, an act that would bear much fruit.

As much as we may not believe it at times, joys are hidden in sorrows! If we keep forgetting this truth, we can become overwhelmed by our own darkness. We can easily lose sight of the joys and speak of only of our sorrows.  We need to remind each other that the cup of sorrow is also the cup of joy, that precisely what causes us sadness can become the fertile ground for gladness.  We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation, because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to have the courage to drink it.

And so, we now are invited to hold our cups – each of us with our cup of sorrow and joy. But to drink it, we need to lift it as a sign that we are willing to own what it contains. At that last supper, Jesus took the cup of wine that was on the table, lifted it up, offered a blessing and asked all who were present to drink from it – symbol of the blood that he would shed for the forgiveness of their sins

Lifting the cup is an invitation to affirm and celebrate life together.  As we lift   the cup of life and look each other in the eye, we say, let us not be anxious or afraid of what may happen today or in the future.  Let us not hesitate to acknowledge the reality of our lives but encourage each other to be grateful for the gifts we have received.  Every culture has a way of acknowledging this moment. In Hebrew the way is “L’chaim”, which means to life.

When we lift the cup, we affirm our life together and celebrate it as a gift from God.  When each of us can hold firm our own cup, with its many sorrows and joys, claiming it as our unique life, then we can lift it up for others to see and encourage them to lift up their lives as well – and so create and build community.

But let us not be fooled into thinking that creating community is an idyllic thing.  Community is a fellowship of people who are not willing to hide their joys and sorrows but make them visible to each other in a gesture of hope.     We want to drink our cup together, celebrating the truth that the wounds of our individual lives, which seem intolerable when lived alone, become sources of healing when we live them as part of a fellowship of mutual care.

Next week, Lifting the Cup – the Cup of Blessings

AMEN