Be joyful always

 

From St Paul's instructions to the Thessalonians, which formed part of our first reading:
“Be joyful always;
pray continually;
give thanks in all circumstances,
for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.”

“Be joyful always;
pray continually;
give thanks in all circumstances,
for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Hmmm.
It rather jumps out and hits you in the face when you are reading the passages set for this Sunday, don't you think?
And I can't help but wonder what on earth St Paul was talking about.
How on earth are we supposed to be joyful always?
Does he mean we always have to be happy,
and it's wrong if we are miserable?
Surely not!
How can we pray continually?
We do have lives, after all –
we need to concentrate on other things
like cooking the dinner
or the work we're being paid to do!
And how about giving thanks in all circumstances?
Even in the middle of a disaster?

The Bible tells us, over and over again,
that we should rejoice and be glad –
I believe there are over 800 verses telling us to.
So it must be something we are meant to do.
But how?

We aren't always happy and rejoicing –
and indeed, it would be quite wrong if we were.
If someone is hurting very badly,
it doesn't help to go and be happy all over them!
There are times when we are all very unhappy –
personal tragedies,
dreadful things that happen to loved ones,
national tragedies....
how can we “be joyful always” when people have lost their homes in a hurricane or an earthquake?

Indeed, in the letter to the Romans St Paul tells us to “Weep with those who weep” as well as to “Rejoice with those who rejoice”.
And even our dear Lord wept when he arrived at Bethany and found his friend Lazarus dead and buried.

So it's obviously not wrong to be unhappy, to be sad.
And yet we are told to be joyful.

Well, for one thing, St Paul also reminds us, in the letter to the Galatians, that joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.
And this means that it isn't something we have to find within ourselves.
It is something that grows within us as we go on with God
and as we allow God the Holy Spirit to fill us more and more.
Joy grows, just as
love,
peace,
patience,
gentleness,
goodness,
kindness
and self-control do.
We become more and more the people we were created to be,
more and more the people God knows we can be.

That doesn't mean we'll never be unhappy, far from it.
But we know, as St Paul also tells us,
that God works all things together for good for those that love him.
Even the bad things,
even the dreadful things that break God's heart
even more than they break ours.
Even those.
We may be unhappy, we may be grieving, we may be depressed.
But we can still be joyful, we can still rejoice,
because God is still God, and God still loves us.
Okay, sometimes it doesn't feel like that,
but that's only what it feels like, not what has really happened.
God will never abandon us,
God will always love us.
God will weep with us when we weep.
And underneath there always is that joy,
the joy of our salvation.

Okay, maybe that is understandable.
We can be joyful always if joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.
But what about praying continually?
We have lives, don't we?
We have to do such basic things as eating and sleeping and going to the loo, never mind earning our living.
How can we pray continually?

I suppose it depends on what prayer is.
If it's all about a conversation with God,
or even worse, a monologue from us telling God about our world and our lives,
then it probably isn't possible.

But what if, what if it were more about an attitude of mind?
A way of living where we are continually conscious of God's presence with us, of God's love for us?
There is a plaque some people like to have in their homes that says
“Christ is the head of this house;
the unseen guest at every table,
the silent listener to every conversation.”
That can sound as though he's some kind of creepy stalker,
but it's also a reality, if you are God's person.
And one can practice being aware of this, of God's constant presence with us.

It does take practice, of course;
you can't just go from only thinking of God when you're in Church on Sunday or when you're praying or reading your Bible at home,
and forgetting about Him when you're watching East Enders or getting the supper.
Some people find it helpful to build reminders into their lives,
so that every time they put the kettle on, say,
or get up from their chair, or whatever, they remember to –
I was going to say grin at God,
but you know what I mean.
After all, you can be sitting very happily in the same room as someone else, both of you utterly absorbed in whatever it is you're doing –
even, it has to be said, watching different things on the Internet –
but you're still aware that the other person is there.
I think it must be a bit like that with God.
You can be getting on with your life
but aware, in the background, that God is there with you.
I wonder if it's that that St Paul meant by “Pray continually.”
I think it must be something like.

By the way, don't think I'm some sort of super-spiritual genius –
I can't do this, a lot of the time.
Sometimes I can, but more often than not it doesn't happen!

I'd like to be able to –
but then again, like all of us, there are times when I'd really rather forget.....

And, you know, I bet that, like the underlying joy that the Holy Spirit gives, being able to be aware of God's presence,
so that you can take up and put down conversations with Him,
must also be a gift of the Holy Spirit.

So, be joyful always, pray continually, and the third one was “Give thanks in all circumstances.”

Give thanks in all circumstances.

Now, I know there are some writers who have interpreted this to mean that we have to give thanks for everything.
I don't see how we can do that –
I mean, we know that God's heart breaks when a child is killed on the roads, or when an earthquake devastates a country,
or when one nation attacks another with incredible loss of life.
How are we supposed to give thanks for things that make God Himself weep?

I don't think it means that.
I think it's more about having a thankful heart.
About acknowledging God's good gifts to us.
About –
okay, if you like, about counting our blessings.
We can't, and I don't think we should, thank God for the dreadful things –
but we can be aware that God is there,
in the midst of the dreadful things,
and we can certainly thank him for that.
We can be aware that in all things God does work for good for those who love him.

“Be joyful always;
pray continually;
give thanks in all circumstances,
for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.”

“For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.”
That's important, too.
I don't think we can just do all this in a vacuum.
It is because God wants this for us, it is His best for us.

Yes, it will take some work on our part –
we know that God the Holy Spirit will most certainly do his part
by enabling us to develop a sense of joy in Christ that can and will be there even through the most heartbreaking of outward circumstance,
but of course we have to do our part by allowing Him to,
by practising, with His help,
being aware of his presence at all times
and developing, again with His help,
a thankful heart that sees and acknowledges what God is doing in our world.
And no, it won't be easy,
and no, we can't do it by ourselves but only with Christ's help.

We are in the season called Advent, and Christmas is rapidly approaching.
We've already started singing carols –
Tulse Hill is having their carol service this morning, and Clapham has theirs this evening.
And over the Christmas season, we will be singing words like,
“Yet what I can, I give him, give my heart” and
“Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today!”
The thing is, do we really mean it?
Are we just singing lyrics we've known for years and never really taken much notice of?
Even the ghastly “Away in a Manger” –
“No crying he makes?”
I don't think so!
Not if he was a real baby, not a wax doll!
Anyway, sorry, even when we sing “Away in a Manger”
we are asking God to “fit us for heaven, to live with thee there!”
At Tulse Hill they used to pray this prayer every week, when the children left for Sunday school. There's a brief introductory prayer, and then everybody says together:
“Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever, and love me I pray.
Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care,
And fit us for heaven, to live with Thee there.”

And that's what it's all about, isn't it?
St Paul's instructions are things we simply can't do on our own,
no matter how hard we try.
But if we do ask God to help us fulfil them,
if we do learn to
“Be joyful always,
pray continually
and give thanks in all circumstances”,
then when we do get to heaven, we'll fit right in!
Amen.

The Coming King

 

So, Advent.
It’s almost an anomaly nowadays, isn’t it?
Out in the world, people are starting to celebrate Christmas already –
the shops have had their decorations up since the beginning of last month, or even earlier,
and the round of office parties, works celebrations, school festivities will be starting any day now.
And the endless tapes of carols and Christmas songs that are played in the shops, I should think they’d drive the shop assistants mad!

But here in Church, Christmas hasn’t started yet, and won’t for another four weeks.
We are celebrating Advent,
and it seems to be another penitential time, like Lent.
Those churches that have different colours for the seasons have brought out the purple hangings,
and many will have no flowers except for an Advent wreath.

But Advent is really a season of hope.
We look forward to “the last day when Christ shall come again”
to establish the Kingdom on earth.
We also look back to those who’ve been part of God’s story, including John the Baptist and Jesus’ Mother, Mary.

Today, though, our readings are about the coming King.
Our first reading, from the prophet Isaiah, tells how the prophet,
and perhaps the people for whom he was speaking,
longed and longed to see God in action.
“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
and cause the nations to quake before you!”

Scholars think that this part of Isaiah was written very late,
after the people of Judah had returned from exile.
They would have remembered the stories of the wonderful things God had done in the olden days,
in the days of Abraham and Sarah,
of Isaac and Jacob,
of Moses,
and of David the King –
and then, they would have looked round and said
“But hey, why isn’t any of this happening today?”

They reckoned the answer must be because they were so sinful.
“You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember your ways.
But when we continued to sin against them,
you were angry.
How then can we be saved?
All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
No-one calls on your name
or strives to lay hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and made us waste away because of our sins.”

It does sound very much as though the prophet were longing for God,
but somehow couldn’t find him, in the mists of human sinfulness and this world’s total abandonment of God.
You know, there’s nothing new –
we complain that people don’t want to seek God today,
and our churches stand empty,
but there was the prophet saying that thousands of years ago!

And, of course, as it turned out,
God hadn’t abandoned his people at all!
Jesus came to this earth, lived among us, and died for us,
and Isaiah’s people now knew the remedy for their sin.

But Jesus himself tells us, in our second reading,
that his coming to live in Palestine as a human being isn’t the end of the story, either.
Somehow, someday, he will come back again.
He obviously doesn’t know all that much about it while he is on earth,
and rather discourages us from speculation as to when or how.
But he draws pictures for us:
“The sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.
“At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.”

It is a scary thought, isn't it, with the world as unstable now as at any time in the past century.
What’s more today, as at no other time in history,
communications are such that if Jesus were to come back,
we’d know about it almost as soon as it happened –
look how quickly news spreads around the world these days.
Half the time you hear about it on Facebook or Twitter before the BBC has even picked up on it.
And Jesus' return would be something totally unmistakable.
But lots of generations before ours have thought that Jesus might come back any minute now,
and Christians throughout history have lived their lives expecting him to come home.
We have remembered Jesus’ warnings about being prepared for him to come, but He hasn’t come.
And we get to the stage where we, too, cry with Isaiah:
“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!”

Like Isaiah, we long and long to see God come and intervene in this world, and wish that He would hurry up. And that’s perfectly natural, of course.
Some folk have even got to the stage of believing it won’t happen, and have given up on God completely.
But Jesus said it will happen,
and one has to assume He knew what he was talking about.

But that doesn’t mean that we can blame God –
if You had come back before now, this wouldn’t have happened.
Every generation has been able to say that to God,
and it’s not made a blind bit of difference.
So maybe there’s something else.

You see, in one way, Jesus has come back.
Do you remember what happened on the Day of Pentecost,
in that upper room?
God’s Holy Spirit descended on those gathered there,
looking like tongues of fire,
and with a noise like a rushing mighty wind,
and the disciples were empowered to talk about Jesus.
And we know from history,
and from our own experience,
that God the Holy Spirit still comes to us,
still fills us,
still empowers us.

One of the purposes of these so-called penitential seasons is to give us space to examine ourselves
and see if we have drifted away from God,
to come back
and to ask to be filled anew with the Holy Spirit.
Then we are empowered to live our lives
as Jesus would wish.
We don't have to struggle and strain and strive to “get it right” by our own efforts.
God himself is within us, enabling us from the inside.
Jesus doesn’t just provide us with an example to follow, but actually enables us to do it, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

I do two tai chi classes a week, these days, but it’s really difficult to get it all the way it should be.
Back in my ice dancing days, we only had to memorise a routine that lasted two minutes, with musical cues to tell us what move to do when.
In tai chi, it’s a 25 minute routine with no musical cues!
I get very muddled at times.
But supposing somehow the spirit of a tai chi master could get inside me,
and actually make my body move in the right way,
and show me how it's done from the inside.
That would be so much better than anything my coach could say, or anything I can learn from watching videos.
I really would be able to do the routine, even at home!

And that’s what God does –
by indwelling us with his Holy Spirit,
He not only shows us what to do, but enables us to do it.

All of us will face the end of the world one day.
It might be the global end of the world, that Jesus talks about, or it might just be the end of our personal world.
We expect, here in the West, to live out our life span to the end, and many of us, I am sure, will do just that.
But we can’t rely on that.
You never know when terrorists will attack –
or even muggers, or just a plain accident.
We can’t see round corners;
we don’t know what will happen tomorrow.

But whether it is tomorrow,
or twenty, thirty, forty or fifty years from now,
one day we will die, and then, at last, we will meet Jesus face to face.
And we need to be ready.
We need to know that we have lived as God wants us to live –
and when we’ve screwed up,
as we always do and always will,
we’ve come back to God and asked forgiveness, and asked God to renew us and refill us with his Holy Spirit.

We can only live one day at a time, but each day should, I hope, be bringing us nearer to the coming of the King.
Amen.