At the 两性色午夜鈥檚 Eastern Synod on March 14, the General Secretary of the 两性色午夜, the Revd Dr John P Bradbury, preached at the induction service of the Revd Janet Sutton, who is now a Minister with the North Cambs Ecumenical Mission Partnership (Hunstanton, March, Chatteris and Newmarket) and the County Ecumenical Officer for Cambridgeshire.
The sermon, the text of which is below, contrasted self-focused happiness with God-given joy. Drawing on Jesus鈥� teaching in John gospel and Micah鈥檚 call to 鈥渄o justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God,鈥� it highlighted that joy emerges through covenant relationships, even when there is suffering and the realities of a broken world.
Are you happy? What are you doing to seek your happiness? Products are marketed to us, the latest model, the latest upgrade, will help make our life complete. We are advertised online therapy session, which will help us deal with those things standing in the way of our happiness and personal fulfilment. We think of it as a right, even. Anything that gets in the way of my personal happiness should be banished 鈥� even if that is other people.
When was the last time you experienced joy? Notice how I have to frame the question differently 鈥� when did you experience, not 鈥榓re you鈥�- for you are not 鈥榡oy鈥�, you might be 鈥榡oyful鈥�. Joy is not an inner quality. Joy is something that comes to us. Joyful 鈥� filled with joy. Something that we experience.
We take joy in things, and people, and relationships. A baby鈥檚 first smile, a toddler鈥檚 first steps, the twinkle in the eye of an aged parent or grandparent. Joy in old friends 鈥� I take joy today in Janet, a very old friend, today, as we come to induct her to a new ministry, which I know is already brining her joy.
Jesus speaks of Joy to his disciples in our reading from John. He says something quite remarkable. Jesus takes joy in his disciples. Jesus takes joy in us. And that our joy will be complete. Not our happiness will be complete. No. Our joy 鈥� a thing we receive from beyond, a thing that comes to us in relationship to other people and God鈥檚 creation.
This joy emerges not first and foremost through anything we do. It emerges from God. The one through whom the entire cosmos was created stands, in flesh and blood, before his disciples, in first century Israel-Palestine. God Godself, the son loved by the Father. Abiding in the father 鈥� abiding, dwelling with, walking with, enduring with 鈥� the closest form of family intimacy.
And this personification of God, 鈥楪odself鈥�, invites us to dwell with, walk with, endure with, have the closest form of family intimacy with, them, and through them God. From that context of relationship, we are invited to keep the commandments. Which turns out to be to extend out that love that we are receiving to one another. And in all of that, our joy will be complete.
As a mother draws her daughter into loving embrace. So, this person who is God-with-us, draws us into their embrace. And through this embrace of love, this abiding with, we become siblings with one another and lovers of the world.
It is easy, perhaps, to scoff, or perhaps further, to become genuinely uncomfortable with some of this imagery. For some, the image of being drawn into a family set of relationships feels like a picture of hell, not a picture of heaven. This image that Jesus uses gives us, is of a set of Godly relationships into which we are drawn, and which result in joy. Real, genuine, joy. We all know that human relationships, in contrast, do not always end in joy 鈥� but rather are destructive, and at times, simply evil.
But what John鈥檚 gospel gives us is not oblivious to the dark side of life. For these words come in the lead up to Jesus鈥檚 arrest, trial, torture and death. In fact, this is not fluffy at all. We are asked to abide with, dwell with, walk with, be one with, one who is quite literally about to go to hell and back. We are being invited into a community of love not that is some fantastical escape of the dark side of life in the world, but knows it deeply, and intimately, and dwells with it in love regardless, and through the most profound engagement with its dark side, even to death of a cross, seeks to redeem it and draw us into that journey of redemption.
The prophet Micah knows a thing or two about the harsh realities of life. This rural peasant prophet has a thing or two to say about the profiteering elites, hovering up anything the poor have from which to 鈥榚ek鈥� out their existence. He pours scorn, contempt and the very judgement of God on those who do not dwell in love, but abuse, profiteer, and seek their own wealth and fortune on the backs of others.
The nation, the world, has gone to hell in a handcart as Micah surveys the national and international scene. We might well think we know what he felt like, as we survey the national and international scene.
And we get this extraordinary courtroom drama. In the courtroom God stands and prosecutes the people for the woeful state of affairs they have brought the nation and the world to. God who reached out to them in covenant love, who invited them to abide in God in a community that would be a light to the nations.
And God finds them profoundly wanting. And in this courtroom scene, having been found judged, the people then seek to name what they must do to put things right with God. Shall they bow and scrape? Shall they bring burnt offerings? Does God want vast amounts of commodities 鈥� material things to make God feel better 鈥� thousands of rams, vast rivers of oil? Ye gods these morally deranged people even wonder if what God wants is the sacrifice of their firstborn children 鈥� such is the state of their depravity.
But no. That is not what God, the prosecutor and judge in this courtroom seeks. They already know 鈥� but have turned their backs on it. They are to do justice. Love kindness. And walk humbly with their God. They are to live well and fairly with one another. They are to love kindness – a word in the Hebrew we struggle to translate with just one word.
A word which captures covenant relationship, faithful love, loving kindness. A word rich in the fullness of life lived well in relationship and the fruits born from that. And to walk with God. To go, humbly, abiding with, at the side of, the God who has reached out and called them, freed them from slavery, walked with them through their history.
Jesus calls us to abide in him, and through doing so to abide in God the creator and sustainer of all things. Micah calls us to walk with the God who is the creator and sustainer of all things, and who calls us into covenant relationship.
Jesus invites us into a community of love 鈥� not a broken human family or community, but one genuinely Godly, heavenly. A community which gifts us joy. Micah invites us into covenant community, a community of kindness, mutual flourishing with one another. A community of justice.
In both our texts, the initiative comes from God. God reaches out to us. It is not the other way around. We are not called to do these things and earn God鈥檚 favour and love as a reward. No. God reaches out to us, calls us, loves us, abides with us, and invites us to abide with God, and then to be lovers of one another. Lovers of the world. Lovers of kindness. Lovers of peace. Lovers of justice.
To walk with the God who may take us, like Micah, to the place where we are called to proclaim truth to power, justice to those who seek onto to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. To abide with the person who is about to take us to the cross.
Happiness, of course, cannot cope with this. Our own, personal, inner sense of happiness cannot possibly survive walking with the God who might call us to difficult, risky, prophetic action. Our inner sense of personal fulfilment and happiness cannot possible survive being asked to abide with the one who may well hand us a cross to carry. But we鈥檙e not promised happiness.
We鈥檝e promised that we will be part of a community of love, love that endures the realities of pain and suffering within life in the world. Love which reaches out into the midst of our brokenness and the brokenness of the world. And we are promised joy. Joy that breaks in from outside. Joy that finds its origin in the one who created and sustains the whole world in love. Joy that meets us in the most unexpected places.
Joy which genuinely brings light in dark times, new life amidst death, hope amidst despair.
This Synod marks two things which bring the hope of a richer walking with God, a richer abiding in Jesus, and a richer abiding in one another, and. The decision of most churches within the Synod to walk, not alone, but with one another in Mission Partnerships.
To reach out beyond what it is possible for any congregation to be alone, and to dwell together, as Jesus disciples, as the covenant people of God. To be communities of love together, for the sake of the communities in which your congregations are all set. And also today Janet responding to the call to walk in covenant relationship, to abide with, the congregations she has come to serve. To walk with, for the next step of the journey, ecumenical partners.
To abide with the congregations and people she will be in covenant relationship with, as together, they discern how God is calling them to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.
So let us not seek after a self-manufactured happiness, that will always find itself broken by reality.
Let us not imagine we can order our lives, or our possessions, or our experiences in ways that bring happiness and supposed self-realisation. Rather, let us walk with God. Let us abide in Christ. Let us abide in one another. Let us covenant ourselves to abide in love with others, seeking justice, loving kindness, walking humbly with God.
For that way lies the promise of the inbreaking of joy. Joy that comes to us from God. Joy that hits us unawares from outside. Joy that transforms. Joy that is complete. Joy in which we find good news.
Amen.
Voting at the meeting of the Eastern Synod on March 14, which took place at Christ Church, Braintree.
The Revd Janet Sutton, left, with the Moderator of the Eastern Synod, the Revd Lythan Nevard.