Man of Sorrow (Man of Joy)
I’m going to be very honest as I start this letter. Given the world we live in today, given the chaos of such division throughout the world, I sometimes feel guilty writing about joy. However, Jesus often expressed his thoughts about Joy. To me, I think the closest I get to expressing joy while looking around life today, is a deep feeling of gratefulness. Maybe another way to say it is- a deep thanksgiving to have the opportunity to experience a feeling of gratefulness. Jesus distinguished Joy and joy, separated his and ours. He encouraged us that his Joy be in us, be experienced by us for one specific purpose: so that our joy would be revealed in our lives: ‘…abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in His love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my Joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.’ (John 15:9-11) Let me paraphrase a bit: …abide (stay at home, dwell) in my Love. If you keep my commandments (live by my Wisdom about living), do that and just as I have kept my Father’s commandments (I’ve done nothing other than what I see the Father doing) (stay home in His Love)…do that so that you may experience my Joy, and your joy in turn, will be made full. I think he wasn’t talking about doing that only when things are going great, but doing that no matter what is going on in your life and you will find his Joy in you, and your joy will be manifested complete. (Literally, Christ’s Joy is a spiritual term not a human term. It’s best described as delight and gladness. It’s Christ’s delight and gladness imparted and added to us. Perhaps more akin to a smile than a belly laugh.)
I don’t know if this letter will be considered good news or not. I think it depends upon whether we are interpreting it with our heart or with our flesh. The reason I say that is that much of our daily experience doesn’t resemble joy as we logically and mentally hope and sometimes express it. Christian Joy, even Jesus’ Joy was, and is, mixed with daily stress and perhaps pain, even broken hearts. Christian Joy, Jesus’ Joy, is not simply experienced or defined by the simple word happy. Generally, happy is generated from our human brain and flesh. Today, due to physical and cultural pressures happy can be even more difficult to experience. By contrast, Jesus’ conversations about Joy sometimes can grow more precious with age as we discover the blessedness of life, both its harshness and the gladness. Experiencing Him in either is a powerful moment that can bring peace and praise.
Truly, in his 33 years of life, Jesus felt the pain of a fallen Creation and suffered from it himself. The Son of God stepped into that world and suffered the same experiences we experience, knows much of the same sadness, pain and suffering we suffer. God is love. Love by its very nature creates the environment for feelings of hurt and pain. Love being present contrasts with each of those. In some ways, love makes the hurt and pain even more powerful. God’s creature, man and women uniquely sense things in their heart and flesh no other part of that creation senses. Jesus, loving more than any other man that ever existed, loved to the full. That love also created a huge opportunity for rejection by those he loved, those he came to die for, that heartbreak, on top of the pain and humiliation of his crucifixion.
Jesus’ sufferings are fully described in Isaiah 53. David’s 22nd Psalm has often been quoted as another crucifixion picture of Jesus. It’s too long to quote in this letter but it’s worth the reading. Jesus actually quoted it in part while on the cross. ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ is the first line in the Psalm. On the cross, some have claimed that Jesus quoted it, not in fear, but quoted it because he wanted those present to remember what the end of the Psalm proclaimed. (Every Jew present there knew exactly what that Psalm prophesied.) The suffering described in those Scriptures and also the pain he held each day while he was on earth, obvious shame described in Hebrews 6-6. The shame of being called a child of an illegitimate birth, accused of being of the devil, being a fake, Herod’s public trial and the like. Obviously, Jesus was even aware of the pain his Father held in His heart since Creation’s fall. The writer of Hebrews told us that Jesus’ agony went beyond just the crucifixion but was laced throughout all his days. ‘During the days of Jesus’ life, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears…’ Suffering and pain was more than Gethsemane only; those seem to be regular undertones in his life and may well explain his weeping at the tomb of Lazarus as well as his anguish in Gethsemane. It certainly was not for the loss of his friend whom he knew would momentarily raise from the dead, but for the awareness of death and suffering in the cosmos he and his Father created.
We were created as creatures of The Son and His Father’s Wisdom and Love. Today, given what we see and feel each day, God’s Wisdom, working in creation, has to be remembered when we’re looking around, evaluating our daily life and earthly experience. We have to know that in His Wisdom and Grace we were placed in an environment that sometimes, perhaps most of the time, is hard on us, hurts and breaks our hearts. But that Wisdom, while knowing of the things unpleasant to live in, powerfully created something we will likewise cherish throughout our eternal/everlasting lives. Something about the creation/creature seems to confirm man/women cannot love and avoid some pain and heartbreak. But, Jesus gives us the ability to overpower the heartache by the experience of having the opportunity of loving.
We, as creatures of Love, experience the sufferings, either our own or someone else’s we passionately care about. That’s where I don’t know if this letter will be perceived as good news or not. This world is a world of contrast: darkness and light, day and night, good and evil and in our heart sometimes pain and joy. The end of the Gospel story is that the hoped for parts of those contrasts wins in the end. I remember Jane’s and my experience in 2012 when she was paralyzed from head to toe for months. I did not enjoy one minute of that experience. Never thought, boy this is nice. I pray no one experiences the pain and unpredictability of that moment in their lives. However, she and I did experience some things with God that we would never have experienced at any other moment. First, let me say what I am not saying. I am not saying God did that to Jane so that she or I could discover those things because He put that on her. Neither of us believe that. What I am saying is that life, life especially after the orchard incident in Genesis, hit us head on. And amazingly, and thank God, what we both experienced was He Was with Us as Counselor and Encourager. His presence was unmistakable. The way I expressed it back then was- ‘this is terrible but we experienced God in a real, tangible way that confirmed to Jane and me that everything we hoped He was, everything we thought He was and Who we believed He was is so very true.’ If in our daily sufferings you can embrace the reality of God-with-you, this life’s pain, physical or mental, will not consume you. It will allow you to see the way forward until Joy (gratefulness) triumphs over hurt.
As Easter approaches, we sometimes refer to Jesus as ‘The Man of Sorrows’; physically and fleshly, that pretty well covers it from our human/logical observation. However, we can also see that he never lost faith, was never uncertain of the value and future of what stepping into this creation would cost but also what would be the final experience for having gone through this: ‘looking unto Jesus the author and perfector of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.’ (Heb 12:2) (There is an essence in the original language there that implies a Joy that could be defined as ‘enjoying help.’ Akin to His Joy added to us so that our joy would be made full.)
One of Jane’s favorite biblical quotes during and after that GBS experience was this: ‘These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’ (John 16:33) The Greek word translated tribulation in our English Bibles literally refers to pressure from evils, compression, affliction, and distress. We and everyone we know, care about, and share this earthly globe with, all run smack dab into those in our lives. That’s the bad news, the good is that the Greek word translated overcome is literally expressed as: be victorious, come off as victor, and conquer. Simply, life (earthly) happens to us, add Jesus to that, and we overcome. In our experiences, the good ones and the bad ones, we find Joy is waiting to join us, companion us. Receiving his Joy is expressed in believer’s lives as a joy that’s made full, complete. Only Jesus can add that to our lives. Wisdom teaches us it can’t be bought or found in anything but Christ. In His and The Father’s Wisdom, they knew we would need that and they shared it in Jesus.