Matthew 13:44-46; Job 7:11-21

Introduction

The expression "the joy of faith" comes from the apostle Paul (Phil 1:25) but it characterises what was important to Jesus and to his understanding of God.

We had a glimpse of it last week when we spoke about the shepherd and the lost sheep. Remember. When the shepherd found the sheep, "he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.'"

Joy was a foundational dimension to Jesus' life. And we want to become more aware of that today.

Parables are not just stories nice to listen to. They are Jesus' way of relating to people. And at the same time they are Jesus' theology. That is very different to ours. We formulate statements, propositions, to which you must say "yes" or "no". Jesus tells stories. So if we want to understand Jesus' vision of life, we have to look to the parables.

Today we want to become aware of the joy of faith.

For the health of our faith we need to become aware of the joy of faith, because if you look into the history of faith and, indeed, if you look around you today, joy is not the first word that comes to mind when you think of most Christians. By turning the eyes of our lives upon Jesus we may be surprised again by joy.

Diminished faith

Faith is diminished if it is not fed by a soil that is permeated with joy.

You may know the famous picture by the American artist Grant Wood, called American Gothic. It shows a middle aged couple in front of a house with gothic windows. The first response is piety. Their faces are serious. The fork in the mans' hand suggests hard work. Serious. Honest. High morals. All values that are praiseworthy and that make up a good life. But no smile, no joy! That is the way Christian faith has been understood by many. As if celebrating has a tinge of not being serious about Jesus.

Social activism may also become stern and serious and intense - if it is not carried by a dimension of joy. You can see in the big demonstrations, be they in Seattle or in Genoa in recent years. There are the black hooded demonstrators, those who smash windows and incite violence; and then there ate those with colourful costumes, a song on their lips and a dancing step. Being serious about justice does not mean that you can't sing and dance.

Many Christians are run by fear. And when our fears become too dominant in our thinking about God then many things can go wrong. Consider the difference between Jesus and John the Baptist. John the Baptist preached the imminent judgement of God and he announced that the only way to escape God's judgment was to repent and be baptised. In contrast, Jesus speaks about the coming of God as the arrival of joy which one anticipates with open arms, rather than with a fearful heart. Not fear, but joy belongs to the ways of God.

Other Christians are determined by tradition and by rules. We know that many religious people had trouble with Jesus. Their relation to God was shaped in terms of morality and rules and laws. For them, to honour God, meant the obeying of rules. But Jesus does not fit into any rule. For legalistic people Jesus was a disturber and a spoil sport. Do you remember the brother of whom we hear in another parable, who did not want to join the celebration for the return of his brother, because it did not fit the rules and traditions. Rules and traditions are important, as long as they do not block the coming of God and deprive us of God's joy.

What do you do when you want to have a healthy faith? You remind yourself of the wellspring of faith and you ask the Holy Spirit to speak that living water into your lives.

The stories

Imagine the labourer. Poor. Earning low wages; working in the heat of the day - day after day. Condemned to a hard and monotonous sort of life. His children will never go to college. He will never have his own plot of land. He just works - day in and day out - to bring some food on the table and make ends meet.

Suddenly the possibility of change!

It was not unusual to bury treasures. I did it myself. It was 1945. We lived at the edge of a small town and the Russian army was coming. My mother and I took all the treasures we had - silver spoons and ear rings and arm bands - put them in a box and buried them. Then the Russians came, kicked us out and took over the house. To the present day I do not know what happened to the treasures. And so in the ancient world, treasures which may have been buried to protect them from thieves, and in times of war from enemies, have been found on a number of occasions.

The labourer ploughed. And suddenly the plough hit something. A treasure! With the treasure he could buy his own farm; he could send his children to college.

Here is the possibility of change! Time becomes thickened. The moment assumes quality.

Can he say "no" to his discovery? Must he make a decision to get it? Of course not! The overwhelming worth of the find makes the decision and action of the finder a foregone conclusion - important, but not worth mentioning! - "... in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field."

(Now for those of us who have remained outside the story and looked at it with critical eyes, we may have detected a moral flaw. Should he not have reported the finding of the treasure before he bought the field? Yes, he should have! But that is not the point of the story! The point of the story is, to remind us that God comes and that when God comes the time becomes thickened, the moment assumes quality, because when God comes he brings joy, such joy, that everything else in life assumes secondary importance).

And then there was the pearl of great value. Such pearls are rare, but they do exist. According to Pliny the elder, Cleopatra had a pearl worth millions of dollars; and in 1967 a Scottish pearl fisher, Bill Berneth, found a pearl of 1.27 cm width and 8.6 carat weight - priceless!

The anticipating joy, probably together with some rational calculation about the worth of the desired object, makes the merchant gladly sell all he has, in order to gain what to him was the dream of his life.

(Again, this story could also feature well in the board rooms of a corporation. But that is not its intention. Its intention is to tease into our hearts that God is either all or nothing. If we face the hour of knowing God, then all other hours pale into insignificance.)

Joy of faith

Let us do what is really against the intention of a parable and dissect a little what Jesus may have meant by the "joy of faith". I would like to commend to you three observations.

1. Surprised by joy!

First of all, there is the surprise element to joy. Neither the farm hand nor the pearl merchant had any inclination, any expectation of their discovery. They were confronted with a kairos, a unique opportunity, a moment when time thickens, and the danger existed then and exists now that an important opportunity might be missed and therefore lost.

Some Christians slowly grow into faith. Others experience moments of grace when God gently impinges upon their life and they sense it and they tune in. It is a glories moment when "God" become more than a word to us.

2. The importance of community

The second thing that I would like to suggest is the importance of community. Joy longs to be shared. Celebration is called for. We see it in other parables. When the shepherd found his lost sheep he calls his friend and throws a party. The father who is reunited with his lost son does the same.

We are created to be ecstatic beings. Thanksgiving to God and love for each other belong to a healthy life. Let us celebrate life together in the community of faith.

3. Joy in suffering

The third element to joy that I want to suggest is more difficult and more sensitive. How is joy related to suffering? What about joy and suffering? How is Jesus and faith related to suffering?

We all know that suffering was a real part of Jesus' tradition and Jesus' own experience. Therefore if for Jesus joy is a basic element of his life we must ask how that is related to his experience of suffering.

Tradition. Jesus was a Jew. The people of God in the Hebrew Bible never seemed to be far from oppression and suffering. The great prophets of Israel are suffering prophets. Think of Jeremiah. Think of the servant songs in Isaiah: "... despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account." (Isaiah 53:3) And just before Jesus' time there were the so-called Maccabean martyrs who chose suffering and cruel death rather than compromising their faith in God (e.g. 2 Maccabees 7). Suffering was a part of Jesus' tradition.

Experience. And suffering was part of Jesus' experience. We don't quite know whether Jesus expected to die so quickly and we don't quite know how Jesus understood and interpreted his own death. But we do know that Jesus was given a hard time by the establishment of his day, both political and religious. Jesus also witnessed the fate of John the Baptist who was murdered. He was opposed and in the end he was tortured, sentenced and publicly crucified. Suffering was part of Jesus' life.

So when Jesus makes joy the basic melody of his life, he does not ignore suffering but he integrates it.

This is now a very sensitive area. Remember we are speaking about faith, not law or morality. We don't want to fall into the trap of trying to explain suffering. And we certainly don't want to tell people how they should interpret and deal with their suffering. But what we can do, is to listen how people of faith have related suffering to their faith in Christ.

Here is a word from the last Sermon that Pastor Niemöller preached in 1937 before he was imprisoned by Adolf Hitler:

"There is indeed no hope except to hold firm to the Crucified One and learn to say in simple and therefore certain faith: 'In the bottom of my heart Thy name and Cross alone shine forth at all times and in all hours, and therefore I can be glad'. It may be a long road until we are truly glad, like those who, like the Apostles, were counted worthy to suffer harm for Jesus' name."¹

Niemöller's reference is to the Book of Acts (5:41) where the apostles were dragged before the Council, were beaten and imprisoned and then responded:

As they left the council, they rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name (of Jesus).

These stories don't give us a prescription as to how to deal with suffering. What they do do, however, is that people who have their faith filled by Jesus can find meaning to life even when suffering invades them. Suffering does not drive out joy because suffering does not drive out the Crucified and Risen Christ.

Invitation

My friends, it is good that Jesus, in whom God has come to us and has offered us a treasure and a pearl, was the Messiah of the poor, the comforter of the tortured, and the bringer of hope to the oppressed. That is not a "black armband" view of history. That is good news of divine reality. That is not "poverty thinking", that is echoing the great Christian conviction about "the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich", as the apostle Paul so fittingly says (2 Cor 8:9).

My friends in the hour of God, when we begin to realise that God is impinging on our life, it is not our bank accounts or our insurance policies or our degrees or our achievements, it is not our treasures on earth, but it is God's grace that has touched our human poverty which makes all the difference. Not to miss that touch, not to ignore that touch, not to let that touch go, but to ever again welcome that touch of joy, for that it is worth to surrender all.

The early Christians took up the melody and confessed:

"... since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1f.)