THE JOY OF --- WHAT?

In the readings and general exhortations I encounter in my daily Prions en Eglise, there is constant mention of joy. “Shout and dance for joy, people of God!” “Quiver for joy!” For those of us living outside certain evangelical movements and outside Southern US black churches, this is a curious injunction. For Anglicans/Episcopalians, it is virtually unheard-of, the sort of thing to make us seriously uncomfortable. Why?

Well, we are not a culture given to loud displays of emotion, first of all. Secondly, when we assemble and meet together, we tend to do so either as a quiet, well-behaved group of friends and neighbours, with smiles and murmured greetings, or as individuals in search of reverence, silence, beauty in music and in ritual, and prayer. We may have joy in our hearts, but we remember Jesus’ injunction not to show off while performing our religious duties. 

There is another reason, I suspect. We do not glow with joy because we aren’t sure what we are supposed to feel so rapturous about. When we reach down inside us for the roots of our faith, we will probably come up with the Resurrection (cf 1 Cor. 15:14); but from there to quivering with joy on this Tuesday in June the way is not, for most of us, entirely clear. We are happy that Yeshua rose from the dead, for His sake; we know that it means something important for all Christians, and perhaps for others beyond; but let’s face it, the world seems in at least as big as mess as at any other time since, so shout and dance for joy? Is that a joke? Grim fortitude, in faith, hope and charity as among castaways on a large raft in mid-ocean might seem more appropriate.

The Psalmist, and St Paul, saw it differently. Yeshua Meshiach (“Jesus the Anointed”), in his sacrifice, death and resurrection, saved Israel and by (crucial) extension saved humanity. Saved from what? Saved from the consequences of our unbelief and our non-acceptance of God’s love for us. Not the proximate consequences, usually: shit keeps happening, the planet is in danger, and the bad guys often win. But from the ultimate consequences: from the destruction of our immortal souls, from the hell that awaits all those who have made themselves incapable of living eternally near the radiant source of all love. 

If that does not at least inwardly fill us with a certain trembling and incredulous happiness, it may be because we have trouble envisaging what we have been saved from. We need, perhaps, to pay more attention to Shaitan. Not just as an active shooter, drawing a bead on us at all times and in all places, but also as a terrifying example. He is what we will become like if we refuse the gift. Grim and greedy; eaten up with jealousy; racked with the rage and pain that contemplating beauty and love causes us. Incapable of any pleasure not guilty or corrupt. And yes, it lies in wait for all of us, not least because there is Someone always ready to convince us how much braver and more fun it is to walk the edge of the abyss, and even to dive in.

Nobody alive and breathing is beyond being saved from this, unless he refuses to. As a priest I heard the other day said, that is why the Sin against the Holy Spirit is the only one that cannot be forgiven: because it is the Spirit that saves us, that pulls us out of the deep well we fell into, that rescues us by the skin of our teeth. Refusing Him means you’ve left no chink open to be forgiven through, no pulley for the rope. So here we are, wobbling, doubting, lurching, ridiculous: but saved. Saved. SAVED.

In the light of that, a certain joy is in order. Pour the martinis. Light the candles. Sing a silly song. Dance a bit. Yup. Joy. Remember?

BY THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH

 Honoré Daumier, Le défenseur

Thinking, with joy, about the coming of the Holy Spirit, and particularly about Him as the Paraclete. Yeshua tells his disciples that the Father will, when he is gone, send them “another Paraclete” to help them. “Paraclete” comes from the verb para-kaleo, to call to one’s side. One called to one’s side, in usage, became one’s lawyer, one’s advocate, one’s defender. Two interesting points here. In the first place, they will receive  another advocate, which implies that Yeshua was already their advocate. Secondly, what they receive is what we receive also; and it is an advocate, a defender. I wonder how often we think of the Holy Spirit this way. What it means is that the Almighty, the Creator of the Universe, who is also, miraculously, our loving father, detaches a part of Himself to be our Defender. Not just “ours’ in the sense of the Christian community, the church, but even unto “ours’ in the sense of yours and mine. 

            Against whom is he our defender? In God’s universe, there is only one accuser, one adversary, one enemy: Shaitan, “the Adversary”. Whatever his disputed origin, he is there, always. He is against us, he accuses us, he disbelieves our arguments, he wants us dead, he is der Geist der stets verneint, the spirit who always denies. He has his servants: evil spirits for those who believe in those, wholly evil individuals, men who have given themselves over entirely to his way of being, men like Hitler and Stalin who cheerfully order thousands tortured and killed; men like the character Severidge in Charles Morgan’s The Judge’s Story, whose only purpose, whose only joy in life, is to rob others of what they hold most dear, of what symbolises their inmost self.

            Against such individuals, against such powers, we ordinary mortals are almost defenceless. Concentrated, pitiless and intelligent malignity is not something we often meet, which is why we tend not to recognise it when we do. There are some very rare souls who seem naturally armoured against it, but most of us are désemparé, lost and helpless in its presence. Which is why, on and after Whitsun, Pentecost, it is so important to remember that no, we are not helpless. We have a defender. We have a Defender, the Defender: the ruach,the creator spiritus who made the universe, has Himself chosen to be always at our side, our defender – the comrade who battles beside us, the defence counsel who crushes the lies of the prosecutor, the Lord who fights to defend his vassals, the father who fights to the death to save his children. The para-klètos. He is all those things because he is not only the Holy Spirit, he is also, and as such, one Person of the Triune God. 

And why? Why does he bother with little shits like us? Sometimes we think that even at our rare best we aren’t much. And yet. We have to take on board the mind-bending fact that it is for little shits like us that He created at the very least this planet and possibly the Universe. That he did so out of incomprehensible but absolute love. And that all we have to do is accept that love, accept that defence. To realise that however deep the horror or the gloom or the misery we are in, he is there with us, fighting it along with us, fighting for us, never, never abandoning us. We may feel that he is, sometimes: the Psalmist felt it and Yeshua Himself quoted it on the Cross. But that same Psalm ends in reassurance. He is with us because it was for us that he suffered crucifixion. He is with us because that was not the end. And He is with us now because “as at this time”, as the Prayer Book says, He came among us like a mighty rushing wind, and remained with us like a still, small voice – deep in our hearts, speaking words of comfort that each of us understands in our own most private language.   

A LESSON IN JEWELRY . . .

Breguet chronometer movement

.... and in humility. I thought I would try translating a French Collect back into Latin to see how close I could come to the original (which I hadn’t seen). Oh dear. Humbling for yours truly; but what a joy to see the original’s elegance!

The French: Dieu qui veux habiter les cœurs droits et sincères,donne-nous de vivre selon ta grâce,alors tu pourras venir en nous pour y faire ta demeure. Par.

My Latin: Deus qui vis habitare in cordis sinceris rectisque, da nobis vivere secundum gratiam tuam, ut poteris venire nos colere. Per. 

The real thing : Deus qui te rectis ac sinceris manere pectoribus adseris, da nobis tua gratia tales existere, in quos habitare digneris. Per.

The Collect is from the Gregorian  Sacramentary, and may date from between the seventh and eleventh centuries. It seems not to have clear quantitative clausulae in the Ciceronian tradition.  But it is still an exquisite example of miniature intricacy creating beauty to the glory of God.