Co-missioners, 

We are headed towards the Third Sunday of Advent. In the old lectionary (used by most Lutherans up until the retirement of the Service Book and Hymnal and The Lutheran Hymnal, and even today among some Missourians and Germans), this Sunday was known as Gaudete, named so because of the introit’s antiphon based on St. Paul’s admonition in his letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always…” Below now are a few meandering thoughts on a concept I associate with “JOY” Sunday: Vorfreude. 

In this piece you will probably also find one or two thoughts that are making their way into my presentation on social justice at the upcoming Crossings Conference in January. If this sounds like something you’d like to hear more about, please register if you haven’t yet – or invite a friend to do so! Hope to see you there! 

Peace & joy (truly!), 
Co-editor Robin Lütjohann 
for the Crossings Community

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

Gaudete: Vorfreude as a Way of Life 

by Robin Lutjohann 

 

We Germans have lots of words that express subtle states of being for which English requires a sentence or more. For example: Vorfreude. Literally, “pre-joy”! It means being joyful with anticipation for something that is going to happen. 

Vorfreude is, of course, one of the main “vibes” of the Advent season. With every door opened in the Advent calendar, every candle lit on the wreath, we sense that we are moving closer and closer towards the eagerly awaited day. And even though it’s not here yet, we start getting a little giddy with the knowledge that it is coming soon! The thing longed for is present already right now in the longing – not yet fully, but really. 

Vorfreude can encounter us in many ways: 

• You’ve packed your bag, checked your travel plans, and now you’re lying in bed thinking about seeing someone you love—a partner, a dear friend, or family you haven’t hugged in years. You’re not with them yet, but your heart is already smiling. 

• You haven’t eaten the cookies yet, but the aroma is already giving you joy, reminding you of someone or something from your childhood. Your body and spirit are leaning toward the joy that’s almost here, as your mouth is watering with anticipation. 

• The due date is still far off, and there’s plenty you don’t know—fears, questions, late-night worries. And yet, joy keeps sneaking in. You feel it in the little kicks, in the way your hand rests on your belly, in the whispered conversations with a life you haven’t yet met. Long before baby arrives, love is already forming—tender, real, and full of hope. 

• That moment when the weather app says snow is coming, and you see the first few flakes fall. Especially as a child (or a teacher!), there’s joy not in what has happened, but in what’s about to happen. Blankets, cocoa, no school! The wonder starts before the snow even sticks. 

One amazing feature of this kind of “pre-joy” is that it can exist side by side with stress and sorrow. In fact, having something to look forward to can make it possible for us to persevere even when the circumstances around us are bleak.  

Viktor Frankl said of his time in a Nazi concentration camp, “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold” (Man’s Search for Meaning). He goes on to describe a kind of grim acquiescence that he would sometimes observe in fellow-prisoners who had lost all hope for the future. Having nothing to look forward to, not even for others they cared about, they would shut down psychologically and physically and give in to the death-dealing forces all around them. 

Vorfreude is more than a quaint feeling. It is one of the things we need to live.  

Vorfreude is also a good way to describe the sort of life that emerges from faith in Christ’s promises. A Christ-truster – or, more colloquially, a Christian – is one who has heard a promise and lives towards its fulfilment. Think of the “great cloud of witnesses” in Hebrews 11-12, whose faith was “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1) because they “saw [the promises] and greeted them from afar” (v.13), and whose “pioneer and perfecter” is our Lord Jesus himself, “who for the joy [!] set before him endured the cross” (12:2). 

The Gospel (which is the joyous announcement of salvation’s gift, of peace and eternal life) makes it possible for us to not be entirely subsumed and consumed by the clamoring voices and the immediate demands all around us. Because of the Gospel we are not totally victims of our circumstances. We have agency and dignity beyond what happens to us here and now, because, ultimately, we belong to a world that is still in the process of becoming. As we journey through this present aion (age/world), we are “strangers and foreigners (xenoi kai parepidēmoi)” (v.13; cf. 1 Pet 2:11). We never quite fit in. So we keep going, with Vorfreude, toward our journey’s destination, “a better country” (Heb 11:16), our true homeland, of which we are “ambassadors” here and now (2 Cor 5:20). 

And, ironically, I think that people whose ultimate allegiance is with a Kingdom that is not of this world, are more useful in this world, because they do not need it to fulfill ALL of their needs, dreams, and hopes. They have a joy that comes from beyond. Through them, this holy joy enters into this world as a strange, yet attractive light, a kind of campfire around which many gather for warmth.  

My pet theory is that people with such an out of this world joy tend to make better citizens here, better advocates, neighbors, parents, siblings, and coworkers. Why? Because neither their work nor their community is for them the ultimate source of meaning or belonging. So, our fellow creatures no longer need to justify their existence or ours—they no longer have to make life “all right” (justificare). They can simply be what they are: neighbors, siblings, beloveds—not tools for our fulfillment, but gifts to be received, persons to be loved. 

For all of these reasons, it makes so much sense to me to have one Sunday three quarters of the way through the Advent season that hits a note of anticipatory joy: Gaudete – “Rejoice!” It is a summons to rejoice not just once the good times have arrived, but right now, while we’re still waiting for them: Gaudete in Domino SEMPER (always!), says the old introit with the words of St. Paul: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 4:4-6 NRSVUE) 

Remember, Paul says this from prison! He says so in different words in 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” In both cases, he is echoing a counterintuitive exhortation found elsewhere in the Scriptures as well, e.g. in Psalm 34: “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall ever be in my mouth.” The Hebrew leaves no wiggle room for exceptions: B’chol eit – in every season! In prison, in debt, in heartbreak, in uncertainty, in sickness, in distress, in loneliness, in frustration… “Rejoice always!” Why? Because “this is the will of God in Christ Jesus – for you”! We must hear this not as a pollyannish or toxically positive demand to “turn that frown upside down” or to “grin and bear it,” but rather as a manifesto that life without joy is no way to live! And there is never a season in your life in which God expects you to live entirely without joy. Instead, God has given you this Gospel, so that even in the worst and most awful times, you would have at least this little light left, this little candle to hold up into the night, this one reason to still give thanks, to claim your personhood and to reclaim joy from the ashes of what happened to you. “Rejoice!” is not a command from on high; it is an invitation to a giddy, goofy, merry, jokey, breathing-in-deeply, dancing, prancing, shouting, singing, laughing defiance in the face of joyless drudgery. 

And because this joy must often come to us from the outside (extra nos), since we cannot usually gin it up from within, we are given “means” of grace – means of the Lord’s joy (as we are told in Luther’s Smalcald Articles):  

1. Communion: Walt Bouman (rip) of Trinity seminary called the Eucharist an “artifact of the future” because in it we get a sneak preview of the promise that will once be fulfilled. 
2. Baptism: Washed by Christ and remembering it throughout our life, we splash away the lies that cling to us. 
3. Absolution: The word of forgiveness unwraps us from the tentacles of our past and places us on a trajectory toward God’s future.  
4. Preaching (hopefully) speaks a reminder of the promise to us, so that we can live in its giddy expectation. 
5. Church: the “mutual conversation and consolation of siblings” in Christ can often be the most powerful means of joy. How often has some kid’s question, or some friendly note, or some kind inquiry – often a brief, momentary encounter – RIPPED me out of my doldrums and plugged right back into the mercy seat of Christ! 

Yes, even so, the world is still spinning out in chaos. Wars rage, the climate burns, communities fracture, democracy falters, political and economic oppression grows, and our inner lives aren’t exactly beacons of serenity.  

But, get this: “the Lord is near.” Really close by. “Taste and see!” We rejoice even in this time with an alien joy sourced not from this fallen world but invading it through us. 

So, gaudete, dear ones, defiantly and with gospelly Vorfreude, to spite the devil, who’d love to have us circle around ourselves in misery – especially self-imposed religious misery! Let’s not wait for Christmas or Christ’s return to make merry. No false piety. Gaudete now! Let’s not wait. Let’s open the gifts now!

---

Thursday Theology: that the benefits of Christ be put to use
A publication of the Crossings Community