Rooted in joy
Readings: Luke 9. 28-36
As we celebrate St David I want to, as most will today, focus on some of the words from his final sermon:
“Arglwyddi, brodyr, a ch-wio-rydd,
Bydd-wch lawen a chad-wch eich ffyd a’ch credd,
a gwnewch y petheu bychain a glyw-soch ac y wel-soch gennyf i.
A mwynhau a gerdaf y fford yd aeth an tadeu idi”,
which translates as, “Lords, brothers and sisters, Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed, and do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about. And as for me, I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us.”
The part of that most often focussed on is the last of those instructions ‘do the little things’, it’s a phrase that has captured the imaginations of generations, the vital importance of the small things. It’s a phrase which appeals too to an increasingly secular Wales, everyone can get on board with it. But I don’t want to focus on those words. Nor am I going to focus on his second instruction ‘keep the faith’ as that should be rather self-explanatory. Instead I’m going to focus on the first of those instructions ‘be joyful’.
In some ways it’s perhaps surprising that these words haven’t also become part of modern Wales, they’re encouraging, good news words. And yet if we think about it for more than a few seconds we realise why, there is often little to be joyful about when we look at the national or even global picture. There are good things happening yes, wonderful things, but to tell us to be joyful rather grates against all the things which aren’t so good.
And yet it’s the first of David’s instructions, and to my mind at least the one on which the other two depend. For it is joy that sustains us, joy that keeps us going, joy that means we will endure hardships if we know joy is beyond them. And it is joy that sustains our faith, joy which will bring us through Lent. That’s perhaps an odd thing to say, joy bringing us through Lent. Lent is about self-discipline and denying ourselves and taking up our cross. It sounds the opposite of joy. And yet it is only joy that will sustain our Lenten disciplines, not duty, or aspirations, or fear, only joy. And beyond that Lent is meant to be a training ground for our regular discipleship, a more intense version of our day to day walk with the Lord. If it’s not joy sustaining that, we have a real problem.
If we are approaching Lent with a sense of duty, it’s my duty to do these things, pray more, give something up, attend the extra things at church, if it’s duty driving that, if it’s our moral obligation, or our responsibility to do those things, we’ll end up bitter.
Duty is in many ways starting to slip from the public consciousness. As we become increasingly individualised, more about us and our own preferences and desires, duty is disappearing as an ideal. The fact that we might owe others something, or owe something to the nation or another group is seen as increasingly outdated. If duty says we should do something, but our own desires and feelings want something else, we’ll go with the latter, why should we go with the first.
But it’s not just that duty as an idea is becoming old fashioned that means it won’t sustain us through Lent, it’s that duty tells us what we should do, what we’re meant to do. But if we only ever do what we’re meant to do with no real sense of why or the purpose behind it, sooner or later we’ll wonder why we’re bothering. If we do the right thing because it’s the right thing, well, how do you know it’s the right thing? And if you stop doing it and nothing bad happens, why are we bothering?
We saw that post-pandemic, Sunday worship attendance across the nation was down, and down for a long time. And some of that was because people were now too frail to come or had died. But a fair chunk was that people who had been going to church for decades because it was the right thing to do, out of a sense of duty, were suddenly stopped by the lockdowns. And suddenly they wondered why they did, why they were bothering. And so, even when they could go again, they didn’t. What was the point?
Perhaps then its our aspirations we hope will bring us through Lent, sustain us in our discipleship. It sounds a bit vague, and deliberately so. We might be approaching Lent with the mindset of ‘I’ll do this for you God, and in return you’ll do this for me’, a sort of tit-for-tat approach. I’ll give up this thing for you, but I’m rather hoping for something in return. We might approach fasting and prayer in a similar way. I’m going to pray about this lots, and I’m going to fast too just to show how much this means to me Lord, and then you’ll do the things I’m asking.
If it’s our aspirations driving our faith, driving us through Lent, perhaps the admiration of others in how much we’ve given up, or a private deal with God for something, perhaps even something good and noble, we’ll fail. Because the moment we’re not getting something from it, it’s no longer bringing us praise and admiration, we feel God has let us down, or there are better opportunities elsewhere, of course we’ll give it up, abandon our Lent, even abandon our faith, it was just the next step to something we wanted more.
But perhaps it’s a sense of underlying fear driving our Lent, driving our faith. God might smite us, we need to keep him on side. We don’t so much trust him, or hope he’ll give us what we want, but we do worry about what he might take away. So we’ll give up our chocolate, pray a bit harder, to make sure he’s happy, keep him on side. Look how obedient I am. But that approach just makes us miserable, fearful of stepping out of line, always wondering if we’ve done enough.
None of those things will sustain our Lent, none of those things will sustain our faith. Only joy can do that. It was joy that meant David travelled great distances to preach the faith. It was joy that meant David disciplined his body and his desires, often standing up to his neck in the freezing sea to do so. It was joy that meant David brought so many to faith and changed the course of this nation’s history forever. Not duty, not ambition or aspirations, not fear, joy.
So what was David so joyful about? Christ crucified and raised to life, to ransom and redeem him. His joy was rooted in the reality that he was abundantly loved by God, that he had been created in joy by God. And that whilst he, David, and all humanity had turned from God, God has come to us in the person of Jesus, to restore us to that joy. In love for us Jesus has died for us, to save us from sin and death and judgement, and then he was raised to life victorious over sin and death and evil, raised to bring us with him into everlasting life.
His joy was that his God was not distant but near, beside him by the Spirit as he walked these hills and valleys. His joy was that he never needed to fear being good enough, because God had already made him good enough through the cross. His joy was that whilst in many ways it was his duty to do as God called, to live right, to share the hope and joy he had, duty never came into it because he was simply responding to all that God had already done for him, pouring his life out in praise to the one who had poured his life out for him.
Let us be a people sustained by joy. Not a surface happiness where we have to mask the pain and sorrow when hard times come, but a deep rooted joy that endures through the hard times. And to get this joy is to be rooted and soaked in the Scriptures, in the Bible, to soak in God and in his word. For our joy in Christ is one which bears thinking into and meditating on.
Tim Keller preaching on infallible joy said that the joy the world offers is one you shouldn’t think too hard about. Because the world’s version of joy is ‘don’t think too hard about the lack of meaning, don’t think too hard about the fact you’ll die one day and it’ll all be over, go to the beach, go shopping, just enjoy life, don’t think about it too hard’. But, Keller points out, the joy of the Christian is one we should think hard about, because the more we think about what we have in Jesus, the deeper we go, the deeper our joy. The immense love of God which meant he gave everything for us. Our freedom from sin and shame and death. The fact that Jesus is coming to make all things new and perfect and right. Our joy is a thinking joy, the more you think about it the deeper it goes.
David fixed his eyes on Jesus, went deep in his thinking on Jesus and all he had in him, and in him he saw perfect humanity, and the glory of God become flesh, just as those disciples do on the mount of transfiguration. The God who stoops to earth, stoops to death to give him eternal life, and there, in this God, David was caught up into joy.
My brothers and sisters I always think that patron Saints give us a vision for our identity as churches. So as the people of St David’s here in Hubberston let us be a people who are known not for our sense of duty, or our wonderful aspirations, or our sense of obligation and worry. But as a people of joy. A people who rejoice in the God who has saved them, who in Jesus has come to make us new, to heal us and make us whole. Who, even in hard times, even in the wilderness of Lent or the wilderness of life’s trials, are sustained by deep rooted joy, rooted in the knowledge of God’s love for us, God’s future for us, God’s victory for us. For joy is infectious, it spreads. For in joy we cannot help but want others to share in our joy, just like David. In joy others cannot help but want to know what sustains us through it all. Let us be a people sustained by, overflowing with, and driven by joy in Christ.
As the prophet Isaiah writes ‘With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. In that day you will say: ‘Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world’.
Amen.