Living By The Spirit - 10

10 - JOY

Anyone who has seen the feverish dancing by members of some of the most orthodox Jewish sects will readily recognize the enthusiastic joy with which they express themselves. Even political events that to others may seem tragic have been for them occasions for such dancing.

It may be no more than a stereotype, but do Jewish people have a cultural affinity for the comic arts? I got that impression first while attending a high school in Montreal in which 80% of my fellow students were Jewish. Could that be the result of their Jewish culture rooted in religious traditions which have endured through more than three millennia, much of it filled with tragedy? Is their joy and laughter an antidote for the pain they feel?

Can comedy be equated with joy? Dictionary definitions suggest otherwise. Comedy tends toward the merely amusing or farcical. It often brutal, making people the butt-end of the jokes. Mothers-in-law, dumb Newfies and miserly Scots are frequently abused in this manner. We may laugh at those jokes, but no one can get much joy from them.

Joy is a more intense sense of pleasure; "extreme gladness" says The Canadian Oxford Dictionary. And joy is one of the most elusive of the fruits of the Spirit. The scholars who wrote the commentaries on Galatians seem to have had trouble defining just what the word meant to Paul and his contemporaries. Or else they thought that it did not need further explanation.

Joy in Scripture.

Like a diamond artfully cut to reflect light from every direction, the Hebrew scriptures have some twenty-seven different words for joy derived from thirteen distinct roots. All of them describe some aspect of joy or joyful participation in life and worship. The most common Hebrew word is simchah (the ch is pronounced like a gutteral k).

Simchah is most frequently associated with the gracious gifts and actions of God toward faithful people. Joy seems to have come especially through the material blessings God gave to the people of Israel and in their worshipful response to blessings received. Such joyful response often took physical expression in singing, dancing, clapping hands, leaping or stamping the feet. Celebrations of feasting and worship through offering sacrifices marked the harvest, prosperity, good health, a wedding, the birth of a son, a personal triumph or a military victory.

To the psalmists even all of nature could be joyful and praise Israel’s God. As we read in Psalm 96: "Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the fields exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for he is coming." Again in Psalm 98, "Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy at the presence of the Lord." A great many psalms sing God’s praise with joy as does Psalm 47: "Clap your hand, all you peoples; shout to God loud songs of joy." Psalm 150 assembles a whole orchestra of musical instruments along with every human voice to praise the Lord.

The Greek word used most commonly in the New Testament, chara (pronounced as kara). It is closely related to charis, which means grace, the unmerited gift of divine love. The associated verb in chairo. Usually these words express joy of all kinds.

The major difference between the Old and New Testament attitudes to joy is that several New Testament writers make it clear that there can be joy in suffering. Not all suffering, of course; only when one suffers for one’s faith. In Matthew 5:11-12, Jesus is quoted as saying, "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets."

Paul said something similar in 2 Corinthians 11:22-12:10. First, he listed a long series of privations and sufferings he had endured as he went about his work as apostle to the Gentiles. Then he told of some special kind of illness or disability which tormented him constantly. He called it his "thorn in the flesh." Although he had asked God three times to remove it, the only answer he got was, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." While he never defined what his disability actually was, he felt that it had been given to him to keep him from being too proud. The suffering wasn’t the source of his joy. Rather, he rejoiced in depending on God rather than his own physical strength and moral courage to endure it.

Meditating on what the suffering of being crucified may have meant to Jesus, the unknown author of the Letter to the Hebrews says something totally beyond the range of our experience. After citing many of the heroes of the Hebrew tradition and what they suffered for their faith (Hebrews 11:4-40), he spoke of Jesus whom he called "the pioneer and perfecter of our faith." Then he added, "who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God." (Hebrews 12:2)

Joy in Suffering?

Joy in suffering a painful, horrible, torturous death? Joy in death, however it may happen? Isn’t that reaching a little too far?

Many people have had near death experiences to which they have witnessed after recovering. One story in my own family tells of my grandfather’s death when, it would seem he had such an experience, but did not live to tell of it. He was on his deathbed in a room adjoining the one where the family were eating supper. They heard him stir and rushed into the bedroom to see what was happening. He was sitting up, although he had been unable to do so for many days. He was staring into the corner of the room with a look of great beauty and joy on his face. He turned to tell what he was seeing, but fell back unable to speak and quietly passed away. To the day he died many years later, my father believed that this was the only evidence he needed for life beyond death.

One of my friends was in hospital with a serious heart condition. While there, he survived a series of cardiac arrests - more than twenty of them, he said. At one point as the hospital staff worked to revive him, he felt he had left his body and moved cautiously toward a bright light. As he approached it, he saw his hunting buddy on the other side of a deep chasm. He heard his friend say to him, "Come on across, Herb. It’s okay." But he turned back and wakened in his hospital room with the staff desperately trying to resuscitate him. Months later, when he told of his experience on a national radio program, he revealed how it had changed his attitude to life and death. His hunting partner had already been for dead ten years when this near death experience occurred. My friend spent the rest of his days with an abiding sense of joy for each day as it passed.

Some serious scientific research has shown that near death experiences happen to people of faith and people without faith. A survey carried out in the cardiac emergency ward of a British hospital has shown that of the patients treated for cardiac arrest over a period of one year, six per cent reported having near death experiences. Similar results have been obtained from surveys in the Netherlands and the United States. This has led the chief researcher on the project to conclude that consciousness is a fundamental entity in its own right and continues beyond death when no longer dependent on brain cells and their molecules.

Pam Barrett, former leader of the New Democratic Party in the provincial legislature in Alberta, Canada, had a near death experience as a result of a reaction to a dentist’s anesthetic. When she recovered, she resigned her political office and began to research various religious traditions. She finally came to a deep spiritual experience outside of institutional religion. She found herself "comfortable with the universe in a unity of consciousness, which is God,"she said in a television interview. She joyfully related her experience as a brush with eternity. "There are no wasted minutes," she claims. "Time doesn’t exist; only eternity."

The 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, (1342- 1416?) may well have also experienced what we now call a near death experience. Julian lived many years secluded as an anchorite in contemplation and prayer in a cell adjoining a church in Norwich, England. She lived during one of the most disruptive periods of the late Middle Ages. A recurrent pandemic of bubonic plague known as the Black Death wiped out as many as one third of Europe’s population. The subsequent shortage of labor and failed crops led to the Peasants Revolt of 1381. Followers of John Wycliff, the first to translate the scriptures into English, suffered death by burning in the Lollards’ Pit a short distance from Julian’s cell. The Catholic Church engaged in open warfare between two factions, each with its own pope, one in Rome and the other in Avignon, France. Historian Barbara Tuchman called this "the calamitous 14th century."

Despite all that, Julian once said that the fullness of joy is to see God in all things. Again and again she described her deep spiritual experiences of the loving presence of God with the simple words, "All shall be well and all shall be well; and all manner of things shall be well." This came from a joyful dependence on the love of God which she had experienced in a brief period of what she called "Showings." These had come to her within a few hours as she recovered from a nearly mortal illness in 1373. Her later recollection of her Showings or revelations became the first book written in English by a woman. As Canadian author Ralph Milton described her message in his paraphrase of Julian’s Showings, "above all she wanted to convey what it means "to move through our lives with a sense of joy and holy presence."

Joy Is for Others.

The 20th century contemplative, Thomas Merton, believed that God does not give us joy for ourselves alone, but only so that we may let it overflow from us to help other people rejoice in God too. But we may never know whom we have helped, he added, until we get to the life beyond death.

One of the most celebrated joyful Christians of recent decades was the late Mother Teresa. Her great joy was to see Jesus in the faces of abandoned children and dying indigents she picked up off the streets of Calcutta. In begging from the rich to help the poor, she determined that both rich and poor could meet her Lord by sharing her utterly optimistic joy. "Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls," she once said.

In his book, Pathways to Serenity, Philip St. Romain, a contemporary contemplative and spiritual director, has some very simple advice for those who would be joyful in their faith. He suggests that we need always to focus our consciousness on the present moment, on what is happening in us, to us and around us at this present time; to be aware of it always with love for ourselves as for those with whom we may happen to be. "Be here now in love and all will be well," is his favorite aphorism. "Take on a gentle, loving presence, now. Do not project past or present joys and sorrows into the future. Leave the future open in hope, and you will remain in reality."

Reality? "Are these people really real?" the skeptic may ask. People who show constantly enthusiastic good humor may be suspected of being in the manic phase of a bi-polar disorder.
"Happiness," said Ingrid Bergman, the Swedish movie star, "is good health and a bad memory." Despite her fame, she died from breast cancer at 67 after a life of repeated tragedies. In all of human experience is there such a thing as joy unalloyed?

Still, successful American politician but unsuccessful presidential candidate, Hubert H. Humphrey, could advocate what he called "the politics of joy." During his tenure as party whip in the US Senate and later as vice-president to Lyndon Johnson, he consistently used his political skill to advance the welfare of the less privileged. His legacy to American society includes some of the most advanced legislation for social justice which he had initiated or helped guide through the Congress. Civil rights, medicare, the Peace Corps, the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty all came from his prolific socially conscious mind or were enacted by his strategic use of power.

Political analyst Michael Barone was asked by an interviewer to name a couple of politicians who had been particularly influential during the decades that separated the presidencies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1932-1945) and Ronald Reagan (1980-1988). He immediately named Hubert Humphrey. Asked to elaborate what it was about Hubert Humphrey that was so special to him, Barone replied, "Well, here is a man who is an incredible optimist, bubbling over with ideas.... He contributed to the tone and a character to the positive achievements of American liberalism. A sort of ‘Everybody is welcome, let's all move ahead’ kind of tone, which is one of the good, positive contributions American liberalism has made over the last 50 or 60 years.... And, when Hubert Humphrey, bless him, made the statement about the politics of joy in 1968, which was not a joyful year, it fell flat because it was the wrong time."

Joy Can Be Different.

Joy is almost always expressed differently in different cultures. Even within the same community this may be so. Even men and women have different ways of expressing joy.
Two American pastors, one male, the other female, were discussing personal mountain-top experiences on an Internet forum. The man told of having totally unexpected open heart surgery. During his recovery he had listened to his fellow cardiac ward patients react to what had happened to them.

"I saw a lot of angry people.... People who saw this surgery as interfering with their busy lives ... who were angry with God ... who didn't see this as opportunity for new life as I did. It was interesting and unbelievable to me. I felt my life had been spared and was filled with joy. Every moment was a gift from God. But they didn't see it that way in terms of their own lives at all."

The woman wrote of a quieter joy which can only be felt in a reflective mood long after the event: "One friend talks about what passes for contemporary worship at his church. He calls it bubble gum for the soul. People are delighted because they ‘feel good’ when they leave. Is that what's it's all about? Or should our worship leave us with different emotions each week-- sometimes wonder, sometimes joy, sometimes "pondering", evaluating, musing?"

Haroon Siddhiqui, a columnist with the Toronto Star, told of visiting a cultural festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Abdullah, de facto ruler of Arabia for the past several years, was in attendance. About a hundred other princes and commoners formed a sort of chorus line for an ardhah, often mistranslated as a sword dance. In fact, it is an exhibition of swordsmanship, but with a difference. With left hand resting on the shoulder of the man in front and the right hand grasping a highly decorated sword that shimmered in the light, the line shuffled forward waving their swords. When the line reached the place where the crown prince sat, they invited him to join them. He did so; and for twenty minutes, they all danced about the arena lost in their joyful mood, oblivious to the foreigners who stood watching them.

An elder of one of the churches where I served in the 1970s went to South Carolina for a brief midwinter break. On Sunday, he and his wife wanted to visit a local church and were directed to one just down the street from their hotel. As soon as they entered, they realized that it was very different from the one they attended back home. They were the only whites present. But they stayed and participated in a worship service such as they had never shared in before. "We were totally astonished. It was such a joyful noise," he told me after they returned.

One of my favorite pictures of Jesus is of a long-haired, bearded man, his mouth wide open in a hilarious laugh as if thoroughly enjoying some wisecrack uttered by one of his close friends. I knew the artist of that drawing, the late Willis Wheatley. I shared his friendship in a congregation where my family worshiped for a few years in the 1960s. Willis’ day-job was as art director in our denominational publishing house. He drew this picture as one of four for our church school curriculum to illustrate the various moods in which we may see Jesus portrayed in the gospels.

Willis also illustrated a poem of mine published twice in one of our church papers. My poem described an ecstatic experience at a curriculum training seminar. His picture showed a monarch butterfly with the hole in its wing resting on a late summer flower. The poem speaks for itself:

IN FLUX

I worshipped as a butterfly
Hovered on wings that flashed bright red
And orange in the setting sun;
The wings were still,
And in that moment, brief as an infant's breath,
I saw that one was pierced through, imperfect,
So that light shone through without reflecting
Back to me the glorious colours of the dying day.
"All is imperfect!" then I cried;
"And nothing in this life can be complete,
In nature, man, or things that man can make;
A hole there is for ever found in everything!
Perfection lies in change,
In time becoming what we are not now,
A constant growing, body, mind and soul
Reaching for a goal that lies beyond
And, never will be reached;
For once a change has taken place and that
Which once was far away is near
Another greater goal still lies ahead,
Still beckons to the restless soul of man,
And he is anxious till he moves once more
In search of what he seeks and never finds."
The moment flew; the butterfly flew away
Taking with it worship's passing peace;
The storm within my soul surged forth once more
To rage and tear at consciousness and sleep,
Disturbing both till seams of sanity were
Stretched beyond the breaking point.
In sickness I found health, and God became
The one who loves me as I always am,
In flux.

Not all experiences of joy are ecstatic, although many are. Perhaps more common are those moments of quiet joy when we become conscious of a spiritual presence that lifts us beyond our currently chaotic life into a meaningful oneness with the universe and with God. I believe that this is the joy of which Jesus spoke when he is quoted in John 15:10-11, "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full."

But in the end, with so much violence, tragedy, and suffering in the world around, could it be that what the New Testament refers to as the joy that Jesus offers us is an eschatological joy. Is it really a gift of grace that comes and goes on infrequent occasions in this life, and will be experienced only as the fulfillment of faith in life beyond death?