Luke Knight

Listen to or watch this sermon here.

A few years ago, I became mildly obsessed with a reclusive, now dead, Welsh poet. And by obsessed, I mean I read just about everything he’d written and even joined a Facebook group set up in his honour, which is, debatably, the nerdiest thing about me. R.S. Thomas was not only a poet but a vicar, and over the course of his pastoral career he sought out increasingly remote parishes in wish to serve. He’s known for his sobering, sometimes harsh temperament and was not usually described as a people person. In fact, so bracing could his poetry and personality be, he was once coined “the ogre of Wales.” However, people are often oddly comforted by even his darker poems because Thomas gives voice to the uncomfortable, existential questions of life many of us tend to avoid. It’s one of the reasons I had been drawn to his work myself. Ogre or not, Thomas was one of the most incisive poetic voices of his generation and was even nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Around the time I was reading Thomas I was visiting friends in England who happened to live near the Welsh boarder. I hoped on that Facebook group and asked for tips for visiting any meaningful locations nearby. I got a response immediately, “I’m the vicar of one of Thomas’ old parishes and would be happy to show you around.” I was just about the only passenger to get off at the train station where Jane was waiting for me with a big smile and a sweater with little knitted sheep dotted all over it. Along with her dogs, we drove to the village, and she showed me around the church where Thomas had served in the 50s and she now served herself. We talked about Thomas and his poetry. We talked about her retirement in a few short weeks and how she’d miss her work, even if she was ready for a rest. We sat in the cold, stone church alone, enjoying a stained-glass window which had been the focus of one of Thomas’ most famous poems.

Now given Thomas’ glum reputation, I had made this little pilgrimage expecting melancholy, but the day was turning out to be quite pleasant. “Let’s swing by the airfield,” said Jane, “my husband Nick is a flight instructor, and we can have a cup of tea with him before you catch the train back.” Tea in hand, watching the planes take off and land against the green hills, I couldn’t believe my luck – a sunny winter day in Wales. Nick wandered over and was just as warm and interesting as Jane. “Want to go up?” he offered. I asked if he was joking. “No. I’ve got a gap between students, and we can wiz round the area if you like.” To my complete surprise within twenty minutes, Nick and I were high over the sun-dappled valley in a little two-seater. “There’s the church” Nick remarked over the headset, “Beautiful area. Beautiful day,” “Yes,” I replied, “I doubt Thomas ever saw things from this vantage point!”

Jane dropped me off again at the station later that afternoon. As I boarded the train back to England, the sunset fading to twilight, I couldn’t believe the day I’d just had – all because I’d joined a Facebook appreciation group for the “ogre of Wales”. I’d made my little pilgrimage expecting a sort of gloomy experience. To be honest I’d even gone looking for it. Everything I thought I knew about R.S. Thomas, his poetry, and the place in which he wrote, had me expecting at somber tone. Instead, I had one of the friendliest, sunniest, most fun days of my life. My expectations had not so much been exceeded, but rather completely upended.

When it comes to God, what do we expect? There’s an old Bible scholar who’s always put it well: Some talk about the gospel as if it’s bad news, which is strange since the word gospel literally means good news (Tom Wright). Does the gospel only make us reverent and sombre? When we meet the real God through Jesus, present to us now by his Holy Spirit, what might we expect? Can holiness smile? Can it laugh? Through the summer we’re in a series called A Full Orchard, in which we’re discussing life in the abundance of the Holy Spirit, and today we’re discussing joy.

Character, Mission, Results

The New Testament writers encourage us to “walk in the Spirit”. What does that mean? Now when it comes to life in the Holy Spirt discussion has sometimes been broken up into two broad categories: mission and character. The Holy Spirit empowers us for the mission of Jesus, that is, to embody and share his gospel with others, which we’ll talk about further another time. And the Holy Spirit develops in us the character of Jesus, cultivating in us holiness. Mission and character – these two categories are to some degree fair.

Let’s focus on that character category for a moment, however, as many times our Galatians “fruit of the Spirit” text has been slotted into it. Many speak about the fruit of the Spirit as character to be cultivated. And that’s not wrong. If we’re looking for the evidence of a life walking in the Holy Spirit, the first thing we should expect to find is good character, even before gifts. Notice that the top of the list of the “fruit of the Spirit” is love. The kind of love God has shown us, we are to show one another. And, as the Apostle Paul writes elsewhere, if you don’t have love as the foundation, all your gifts and passion about the Holy Spirit won’t add up to much. Put simply: if we claim to walk in Jesus’ Spirit, people around us should expect to experience Jesus-like character. Love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. All these signals of Jesus-like character are resourced by the power of the Holy Spirit in us. The Holy Spirit cultivates holy character.

However, where discussions around fruit of the Spirit in the context of character cultivation become problematic is when we take the emphasis off the Holy Spirit and put it on ourselves. The mistake is focusing more on the fruit part of the fruit of the Spirit (the result we hope to see cultivated), than the Spirit part of the fruit of the Spirit (the change agent and true source of power). We can read a list like the one in Galatians and easily miss the point, thinking “I should just be more gentle or peaceful or self-controlled” and so on, and that’s what walking in the Spirit must be. Basically, we put the cart before the horse. Character cultivation and walking in the Spirit can end up sounding more like a self-help strategy than a Holy Spirit-inspired experience.

 Joy

The one word, the one fruit listed in Galatians, that really throws a wrench in the works of this kind of self-help error to walking in the Spirit is the word joy. Even if ill advised, to some degree we can fool ourselves into thinking that we can knuckle down and see results in good character development under our own steam. I might not feel like being gentle, but I can show gentleness to another. I can express self-control, even if everything in me wants to let loose. But what do we do about joy? Joy is the bug in the system of that just try a little harder mentality when aiming to walk in the Spirit. What about joy?

Everyone knows you can’t grind out, force or fake joy. Joy is an experience, maybe a fruit which appears I have less power to produce on my own terms. If you sat down with a friend to listened to their problems, and then responded by telling them to simply be more joyful, you might not have a friend at the end of the conversation. Why? Because joy is a reaction more than it is a response. Joy is that irritating item in this list which feels distinctly beyond our control. When we make our faith about what we can do, rather than what God has done, joy becomes a problem. Sure, we can practice gratitude or positive mindsets, but we feel joy.

At this point it’s helpful to note some distinctions about joy. Christian joy, in Scripture, is not what our society might label happiness, there is a difference. Happiness is generally considered a feeling based on changeable circumstances, whether we’ve been able to control those circumstances or not. Joy, in the biblical sense of the word, is rooted in the truth of the gospel and the hope Jesus gives through his life, death, resurrection and promised return. Joy runs deeper, is Spirit-inspired, and can even be known through pain, suffering and disappointment. There’s an old song about joy which used to be taught to children, and light and bouncy as it feels, it puts squarely the placement and permanency of joy rooted in Jesus:

I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart.
Where? Down in my heart.
Where? Down in my heart.
I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart.
Down in my heart to stay.

Biblical joy is rooted in Jesus’ permeance and placement. Unlike happiness, joy is grounded in Jesus, not in temporary circumstance. So yes, joy is a deeper thing.

But it has been my experience that we often talk about the result of joy as a fruit of Holy Spirit, grounded in Jesus, as such a permanent, stable kind of state that, well, we suck all the joy out of it! Joy is not happiness, we are quick to remind one another, so don’t get too carried away, don’t get your hopes up. Sometimes we don’t talk about joy, or temper our talk about joy, because we’re worried that if we don’t feel elated all the time, we might be doing faith wrong. Great if you’ve got a sense of joy, but what if you don’t, or what about that person we care about who can’t taste joy at the moment because they’re in a rough spot. We become very good at managing our own expectations. There’s some wisdom in that, for sure, and consideration for one another too. But sometimes we can get so used to a lack of joy we almost lose the expectation altogether. Our experience of a life of faith has been underwhelming or disappointing or maybe we’ve not thought about joy as something you’re even meant to have as a Christian. And finally there are the examples of joy which might even annoy us. We’re suspicious or avoidant of joy because we worry it makes our faith seem cliché or cringy. As a student I lived in dorms, and I remember one girl who walked around singing all the time like she was staring in some kind of hyper-Christian musical. If joy is like that, we might think, I’m not sure I’m even interested. There are a lot of reasons we might manage, temper or dismiss an expectation of joy. And yet there it is, second in the list in our text: a fruit of the Holy Spirit is joy. Category-defying, inconvenient joy. Where did it come from?

Luke, Paul and Joy

Joy is all over the Scriptures. So let’s set aside the categories we create for the Holy Spirit for a moment and consider simply where we find joy in the Bible. We’ve already covered some of the differences between happiness and deep-rooted Christian joy. But what else should we know about it, especially in reference to the Holy Spirit?

When putting together a picture of the first Christian communities fanning out over the ancient world, we read a lot of names in the New Testament. Dozens and dozens of people are recorded between the Gospels, the book of Acts, and the letters. In reading these names we discover an intimate and intricate web of relationships within the first Jesus communities. One of those connections is between some of the writers of these documents themselves. For example, the Apostle Paul and a doctor named Luke. As traveling companions sharing the message of Jesus, Paul and Luke knew each other well, so it’s no surprise to find some commonalities between Luke’s New Testament writings (his gospel and the book of Acts) and in Paul’s New Testament writings (his thirteen or so letters). It’s also no stretch to say that these two voices have significantly shaped how we think and talk about our faith, as Paul’s and Luke’s writings combined make up roughly half of the entire New Testament. Imagine a Bible with no writings from Paul or from Luke. That would be a pretty thin New Testament.

Given the volume of those writings, and the historical connection between these two men, naturally we find regular commonalities within their writings. And one of the things they shared, one of the themes we find in both their writings is joy. Joy seems to be the natural reaction to meeting the real God through Jesus, and a result also of being filled with Jesus’ Spirit. Joy is one of the great themes in Luke’s gospel and it carries on into Acts. Wherever Jesus and his gospel are welcomed, joy seems to follow. Joy is an indicator that the truth of the gospel has truly sunk in, that people had received, as Luke put it himself this “good news of great joy for all people”. Joy is a regular reaction to welcoming Jesus and tasting the freedom and hope of the gospel. Joy is also a regular theme in Paul’s letters. He talks about knowing joy even in the worst of circumstances. And as we read here in Galatians, Paul identifies joy as a fruit, or a characteristic, of the Holy Spirit’s work in us. For Paul, if you’re a Christian you can expect to serve and love others as Jesus served and loved you. You can expect to suffer as you go against societal grains by following Jesus. And you can also expect joy.

At risk of Joy

So if there is a gap between the normative expectation of joy when we welcome Jesus and his Spirit, why is that, and what do we do about it? The question I want to nudge toward us today, is that of our expectations of Jesus and his Spirit, and therefore our experience. Because for the writers of the New Testament, Jesus was an unbelievably joyful and hopeful figure. Who, then, is Jesus and his Spirit to us?

We don’t read that the fruit of Jesus’ Spirit is cruelty, fear or discord, but love, joy and peace. And yet I’ve met all kinds of people over the years who relate to God with fear and suspicion. Somewhere along the way our picture of God has become distorted. Our understanding of God not been shaped by Jesus and his gospel, and that holds us back.

Let’s come back to those words we started with: Some people talk about the gospel as if it’s bad news, which is strange since the word gospel literally means good news (Tom Wright). When we get good news, any good news, especially good news about who God is and what he’s done in and through Jesus, then hope and joy just comes with the territory. I don’t think I’ve scratched the surface of how good the good news of Jesus really is, of how profound his love is for creation.  So we need a deeper revelation. We need the Holy Spirit to reveal to us, to pour into us the reality of God’s love personally. This is what Paul prays in one of his most famous prayers in Ephesians:

^“ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3)  

What do we expect of Jesus and his Spirit when we go to him? When I went to Wales to visit the church of that grumpy old poet, I expect a gloomy experience. But ended up having a totally opposite encounter. I expected to silently wander a grey graveyard and ended up soaring over the hills through the bright blue sky. My expectations were not met or exceeded, but they were upended.

What makes Jesus’ good news so good to you? Have you put your trust in things which only bring you happiness? Or are you waking up each day to look at the one who is beyond the choppy, fragile, overwhelming moments of life? “I have come,” says Jesus, “that you might have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10.10) A life in the Spirit is not so much about collecting and categorizing data, as it is a cultivating a relationship. Don’t focus on the byproduct of the relationship, but give your attention to the source. The source is the one who made you, knows you and loves you. I don’t have any joy hacks for us today, just one risky invitation: Take all this a step further this week and asked Jesus, through his Spirit, to reveal to you how wide, how high, how long and how deep his love really is. And pray the words of Psalm 51: Lord, restore to me the joy of my salvation.