 |
| Saint Matthias Today's Readings (Audio) |
I have told you this so that my joy might be in you
and your joy might be complete.
There is a perniciously persistent Kantian reading of ethics which suggests that if we in enjoy or get anything out of our attempts at moral action then those actions are by that very fact spoiled and rendered not praiseworthy. In this reading, only duty for duty's sake fulfills the criteria of true virtue.
Happily, Jesus didn't take a Kantian view. The closest natural parallel was Aristotle's idea of eudaimonia, where virtue is ordered toward human flourishing and happiness. For Aristotle, the life of virtue was seen to be correct because it, unlike the pursuit of pleasure, power, or wealth, could actually result in making people happy and societies prosperous. But Jesus transcended Aristotle both in what he asked of his disciples and in what he promised them in return.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
It is easy to read a Kantian perspective on the call to embrace the cross. But this was not the perspective of Jesus. He endured his own cross "for the joy set before him" (see Hebrews 12:2) and encouraged his followers to keep even this most difficult of commandments because, in doing so, they would be open to receiving the fullness of his joy.
Keeping the commandments is sometimes unpleasant at the time. Discipline is not usually welcome when first received. But the difficulty involved is accepted, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the fruit it yields (see Hebrews 12:11). We keep the commandments not as dour stoics committed to the idea that religion should feel bad, but as those convinced the commandments are the pathway to joy. In fact, they are the only pathway to that destination. It is therefore the opposite of Puritanism according to this definition:
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.- H.L. Mencken
We are now in a position to see why Jesus said knowing what our master is doing makes the difference for us between slavery and friendship with God. When we don't realize that everything is ordered for our good, for human flourishing, we can only obey out of fear and obligation, and from a problematic sense that we are doing something that God needs rather than something we need. But now Jesus has told us the meaning of the cross, what the master is doing through this difficult to understand plan of his. Though we are his friends we are not thereby excused from carrying of our crosses. But the context in which we do so is now entirely changed. It becomes of privilege, an unearned favor granted to us by our friend, who first demonstrated and made possible the process of transformation to which all are now called.
I have called you friends,
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
Christians are called to carry the cross, not out of self-hatred, nor even primarily out of duty, but out of the hope for the joy that is set before us. We were not by nature free to choose this way on our own. Our hope was insufficient to the task, for the task was supernatural. But we were chosen for it by Jesus, empowered by him, and it is his own joy that awaits us. This is a joy that is not meant to be only in heaven. It is one which increases as we grow nearer to him and as the fruit he called us to bear becomes more of a reality in our lives.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law (see Galatians 5:22-23).
The hope that will actually empower humans to embrace the transformation from self-centered, pitiable, unhappy creatures into those who love as Jesus loved and have his joy within them is a hope that comes from the resurrection. It is deepened by many little deaths and resurrections in our daily lives. As we are transformed by this hope we too become witnesses to the power of the resurrection, witnesses to hope.
Therefore, it is necessary that one of the men
who accompanied us the whole time
the Lord Jesus came and went among us,
beginning from the baptism of John
until the day on which he was taken up from us,
become with us a witness to his resurrection.
Share your own favorite songs about joy in the comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment