Joy

The last sentence of the reading from 1 John today might make up stop and think. “We are,” say the writers, writing these things so that our joy may be complete.” This joy is something which is a Biblical idea and especially in the New Testament the word charis turns up again and again in the Greek.

So what is joy and how do we aspire to it. My guess is that most of us at some time have made a comment about some task which we have had to get done and said, “Oh I am so happy that is finished, I am glad I got that done.” This feeling of elation is a response to the circumstance of having completed something – but it says nothing about joy. Joy and happiness are not necessarily the same thing.

Happiness has become an idol of our age. From numerous self-help books, to therapists, to advertising it seems that the be all and end all of life should be happiness. The flip side of this is that if we are not happy on any given day that there must be something wrong with us. I do not say this to say that we should be unhappy all the time – or to underestimate the toll taken by illnesses like depression which remove the possibility of happiness from people – simply to remind us that the New Testament does not hold up happiness as a virtue – but rather joy.

The Greek word joy is linked with the word Charisma – which in the Bible has nothing to do with force of personality but rather grace from God. The idea, then, of finding joy in bringing other people to Christ through the grace of God looks rather different from our modern idea of finding happiness in self-fulfilment.

Joy comes from community – community with God and with other people. It is not something which comes and goes hour by hour – yes it may be more or less apparent – but joy comes from a deep sense of being with God – of living in the Word which was from the beginning to use the language of John.

The last sentence of todays reading from 1 John might take us back to where we should be

This idea of joy, of something which comes through fellowship, is so much bigger than happiness. This idea that we find joy by letting go of self – that we indeed fulfil ourselves by handing ourselves over to Christ, may sound like a nonsense – after all is not fulfilment about being in control of our own paths and owning our own lives.

This self-fulfilment may sound attractive, may seem attainable but, in fact, will always fall short of who we are created to be.

The other translation for chara is delight and perhaps this should be our challenge – to delight in God and the world around us. The word delight seems to have been hi-jacked by people selling products which contain chocolate these days. Whilst the idea of a food which delights us is perhaps a little parallel the delight which we are called to foster is so much bigger and longer lasting because it is a mirror of the delight which God finds in us. Our joy is a humble reflection of the joy of the creator of life, the Word which has been from before time.

So, I would urge us today to consider whether we should settle at happiness or whether we should look further and work on joy and delight. Joy allows for sadnesses and bad days because it sinks so deep into us, it roots us so deeply in the Divine that we can allow ourselves times of sadness as normal without feeling like we are failing on the happiness scale. The joy will always be there – even if sometimes it feels distant – it is our basic language of being.