The joy that is the choice of faith is a joy which does not arise spontaneously or accidently.
There is a delight, a human joy, as when we see the Malvern Hills in their many moods of beauty or a child laughing with pleasure when a puppy licks its face, or the joy we feel in a friend's recovery from illness. These are great things in life, but Paul is talking about something different, a joy that emerges from a landscape of meaning, a joy which has its focus in the actions of a transcendent person. He says, "Rejoice in the Lord." (Phil 4:4) Another version has, "Be glad because of the Lord." In any and all circumstances faith is asked to rise to a challenge: the challenge of faithful joy.
"A joyless Christianity is as clear a sign that something is wrong as is a dirty church." Leander Keck.
I want to explore with you why Paul, under rather difficult circumstances, is able to tell his readers to have joy without being sentimental or hypocritical. He speaks of joy a good deal in this letter. He is glad that the gospel is being preached - though he doesn't care much for the motivations of those doing it.
"But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. " (Phil 1:18) He tells them that even under the conflict with the Roman Empire they are stars, they are the evidence that his ministry has been owned by God.
"But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you." (Phil 2:17) He is delighted with their concern for him and their generosity.
"I rejoice greatly in the Lord that at last you have renewed your concern for me. " (Phil 4:10) This man is in chains, under guard, under threat of torture and death. He is powerless. Yet despite this there is an infectious delight and gladness and joy which bubbles out. Is this a crazy optimist? A naturally sanguine character? No - the evidence is that Paul had a rather sensitive, even morbid and perhaps depressive nature. Joy was his choice. Now there is a problem, of course, because you might say to me, "That doesn't work. The eyes always give it away - you can't fake joy, you can't make it up when you feel terrible and you're afraid." You're right. It has to be authentic to be convincing.
My argument is that this joy is the choice of faith and thus it is not tied to our circumstance. I want to argue that we greatly lack this joy in the Church of England at the moment. I want explain how faith may see a landscape that delights the heart when our reason tells us that glum and gloom is the choice of wisdom. To do this I shall want to roam around the Bible a good bit because the landscape that Paul is seen with the eyes of faith, and is rooted in the Old Testament story as well as the words of Jesus in the gospel.
The prisons of this man, his community, and the clergy.
When Paul is sitting in prison he is there as a Jew who has found the Messiah, the fulfilment of the narratives of the Old Testament. The people of Israel had been twice in prison and both times God had rescued them. First they were in prison in Egypt and God delivered them. The important thing for us as Christians is that this actually happened. It was not simply a spiritual experience, an internal experience in which they found an inner freedom to compensate for the outer imprisonment; rather, this deliverance took place in space and time and history. Thus that 'exodus,' that deliverance, becomes the model, the metaphor, the picture the New Testament writers use to talk about the work of Christ. And again, we must emphasise to each other that what makes Christianity controversial in the world of more mystical faiths is that this took place as an event in space and time and history. This tells us that the universe we live in is not a closed machine in which we are trapped so that the only experiences we can have are within the machine. The world does have a machine-like quality, but Christianity's claim is that the machine is open to interventions from its Creator, that there is a true supernatural.
If we go back to Isaiah 40 we find a situation of distress. The people of Israel are 'in prison' again, this time in exile in Babylon. They had been 38 years on the flat lands, the heat soaked, dusty lands around Baghdad, aching for the hills and streams and woods of Palestine, aching for the Temple, aching for their own homesteads and farms and lands; expatriates who had been moved there so they would stop being a political nuisance, put there as a punishment. In Isaiah 40 there are four voices which break the spell of imprisonment. This is the first, the voice of grace.
"Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed ..." (Isaiah 40: 1-2) It is a voice that speaks to the heart as grace always does. In fact the Hebrew for tenderly might be translated 'speak home to her heart.' Notice this is not a voice of wisdom that asks them, as a good therapist might, to reframe the situation, see it differently, be more sanguine. It is not cognitive behavioural therapy. It is not that kind of voice at all. It is an unsettling voice. The voice reaffirms a primary relationship that they were beginning to doubt.
This week I have been interviewing some senior clergy in preparation for them coming on a course which I shall be leading with other colleagues. The course is to prepare them for possible further seniority - they have been recommended by their diocesan bishops and will perhaps become new suffragan bishops, archdeacons and deans. All of them were in prison in some way. That is to say, they felt pessimistic about the next 5 years of Anglican experience. They saw ahead financial collapse, internal strife, public embarrassment, the CE collapsing under the weight of dead traditions and big buildings, and they were uncertain whether we had the leadership in post to lead us through to a better place. They were depressed. There is no doubt that the church is in terrible shape. Not every church in every place but generally speaking we are not finding the energy to go forward together. There is no joy, no optimism. One said, "We are managing decline." Another said, "Maybe God has removed our candlestick." (see Rev 2: 1-7)
A key factor in all this seems to me to be biblical illiteracy. I had dinner recently with a senior executive from the Bible Society. She said to me, "The Bible society surveys indicate that we have been losing touch with our own sacred scriptures." The clergy don't teach the Bible and so the laity don't read it. The general result of that is that when we teach leadership skills to clergy we now also have to teach theology and bible alongside. We are forgetting our defining story. And the casualty is joy.
The narrative changes our mental landscape.
The second voice in Isaiah 40 is a voice of providence, or divine control if you like. It says "A voice of one calling: `In the desert prepare the way for the LORD, make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.`" (Isaiah 40:3-4) This second voice is saying that God is the kind of God who acts and intervenes, and that history will, in the end, always serve His purpose and not the will of those who choose to live outside of the frame of His love and power. "Nevertheless," the voice says. The sad, low depressed place shall be raised. Nevertheless. The arrogance of mountains of pride and political power and insuperable odds shall be laid low. Nevertheless. The crooked road shall be straightened. Nevertheless. The rough ground shall be smoothed over. So this is where the joy comes from. The joy does not come from gritting our teeth, being sanguine, being wise - though all of those are good in their place.
The Christian's God is the God who enables us to say, as did the prophet Micah, also in sharing a prison in space and time and history:
"But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Saviour; my God will hear me. Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise. Though I sit in darkness, the LORD will be my light." (Micah 7: 7-8) Now do you see how this connects with our passage from Philippians? It's the same story. Paul says from his prison cell to their place of political vulnerability:
"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (Phil 4:4-7) Joy in the tough times happens because faith stakes its claim that when we when see the dark times without the presence of the Lord who is near to us, we misunderstand. We leave out the vital factor. 'The Lord is near,' says Paul. What Lord?
The Lord that in the fourth voice of Isaiah 40 proclaims the new exodus and the restored kingdom. The Lord that opens a landscape that is vast in its patience and timescale and its transcendence.
"See, the Sovereign LORD comes with power, and his arm rules for him. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. He tends his flock like a shepherd: he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young." (Isaiah 40:10-11)
He will bring them home with love and gentleness, not as they were dragged away, with chains and abuse and whips and weeping. He hears everything - the spoken prayer, the silent prayer, the ache, the longing, the doubt, the fear. He hears the prayers we pray when we have given up on prayer. He misses nothing. Love is never distant. The Lord is near. This Lord is near. Paul says, "Rejoice, be glad." He isn't being a Pollyanna and saying things are lovely when they're horrible. He's saying, "Nevertheless."
"The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (Phil 4: 5-7)
You can pray because there is a real God who cares for you. It is not a mental exercise in positive thinking. There is a real landscape of truth which only faith sees. The big story of the Bible enables us to know truly but not exhaustively this God to whom we can open our hearts and our vulnerabilities when life imprisons us.
So joy is something we choose, it is the 'Nevertheless' that faith speaks.
We can open our hearts because it is grace that it is speaking to us, it is love, it is compassion and grace which understands our prisons and darkness and loss of faith without any condemnation.
I was reading a 19th century commentary on Isaiah 40, George Adam Smith, and this is what he says about the voice that speaks tenderly to Jerusalem, home to her heart.
"God's target is the heart; grace comes to man by way of the heart, not at first by an argument addressed to the intellect, nor by an appeal to experience but by the sheer strength of a love laid on the heart."
We can open our hearts to Him because all that long story of the God who does not relinquish control, who stands with us in dark hours, who gives us strength when ours has run out and hope when we despair, finds its centre in the love of Christ who says in every dark hour,
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." (John 14: 1-3)
So Johann Sebastian Bach said, "God's gift to his sorrowing creatures is to give them a joy worthy of their destiny."
Faith is like another faculty, it has eyes and ears. It hears these words about a God who consistently acts for good in human history. A God who is not trapped in the machine of time and space but is beyond it and yet within it. To whom the whole universe is open. The ears of faith hear of this narrative through the words of scripture, and hearing, faith sees this vast, loving, compassionate and hope-filled landscape. And so faith in dark hours, confused and exhausted hours, chooses this landscape over the darkness and despair and chooses the defiant, 'Nevertheless' of joy.
For faith has a secret. Faith knows that joy will have the last word.
For, as someone who knew this building* well once said, "Joy is the serious business of heaven." (C. S. Lewis)
Tim Marks
*Malvern Priory"
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