Dearest family,

On the third Sunday in Advent, I did the first half of a presentation in which I was arguing that JOY is a community business, not just a private affair. Granted, joy is a fruit of the Spirit in our personal lives and without our intimacy and unity with the vine, Jesus Christ, we will not reproduce it. In a way, I was inserting my message into Bo’s series on the “one another’s” of the NT. You see, your private lack of any manifestation of this fruit has an effect – a bad one – on others, just as your manifestation of this fruit has a good effect. Yes, our fruitfulness comes from the Lord and is for the Lord. But it is clearly also for the benefit of others.

Briefly, I showed you how this fruit of joy is so vital to healthy and transformed community life. YOU have a role to play in another’s joy. The presentation of joy in the incarnation narratives is never just a private personal matter. Gabriel’s word to Zechariah that “He will be a joy to you” is not just private and personal because the angel goes on to say “many will rejoice.” When Elizabeth’s pregnant joy is learned we read of her neighbors that “they shared her joy.” And that joy of hers, quickened by the joy of a visiting Mary, sets off joy in her unborn son. Mary’s spirit that “rejoices” in God her Savior is not a solo performance, but is going to be expressed by all the generations who will be in the choir that call her blessed and share her joy. The “good news of great joy” that was announced to the shepherds was not for them alone in their splendid isolation but for “all the people.” Because the joy was for everyone, they went and became the first evangelists of the NT, and “spread the word concerning what they had been told.” If this joy had not been communal, had not been expressed, then Zechariah and Elizabeth would be closeted at home choosing baby clothes, the neighborhood would be going about their usual depressing and repetitive order of business, Mary would be a soloist whose song would be off the charts in a week, and the shepherds would still be telling depressing stories about their worst encounters with wolves. In the advent story, the spiritual joy of one is always the promotion of the joy of all.

In all the attention given to tongues of fire at the birth of the church community there are other descriptions of the community that pass under the radar. But the point I want to make is that at the end of chapter 2 there is another very significant and essential description of the young church’s DNA: “they ate their food with gladness…praising God.” One of the key verses that Peter quoted in his Pentecost sermon was from Psalm 16, explaining what had happened, what defined the character of that new day, what was going to be the mark of the church? “You will make me full of joy in your presence.” Joy is unabashedly Pentecostal, fundamental to our ecclesiology, and fundamental to our soteriology. It is the sign of a saved life. It is the calling card of a redeemed community. My main point is simply that at the beginning of the history of the church, joy is the description of an entire community. There is solidarity and unity in their expectation, experience and expression of joy. It is an evidence, it is an ethos, and because it is the fruit of imputed righteousness, it is an ethic. It was an indelible mark of the work of the Holy Spirit.

This description of joy marking an entire community is consistent with the rest of the scriptural record, where, as in the advent narrative, joy is never just presented as only a privatized and personalized affair: “You shall rejoice…you and your household…” (Dt. 14:26); “All the men of Israel rejoiced greatly” (1 Sam. 11:15); “You shall rejoice in your feasts… and all who are within your gates…” (Dt. 16); “All the people of the land rejoiced…” (2 Kgs.11:20); “Let all your saints rejoice…” (2 Chrons.6:41); “Rejoicing because God had given them great joy. The women and children also rejoiced (!)…” (Neh. 12:34); “When the morning stars sang together and all the angels sang for joy…” (Job 38:7); “Let the heavens rejoice…” (Ps. 96:11); “When things go well the city rejoices…” (Pvbs.11:10); “When the righteous triumph there is great joy…” (Pvbs.28:12); “All the Jews had joy…” (Est. 8:17); “Rejoice all you Gentiles…” (Roms.15:10); “All the members of COSC rejoiced always!” (Hezekiah 3:9) And just in case you think there is any reason or excuse not to be part of that community of joy, Romans 12:5 throws us in there whether we like it or not: “Rejoice with those who rejoice.” So you can’t stand on the sidelines even if you are a self-consumed, self-piteous miserable blighter. Here is a challenge to, and exposure of, our fleshly moodiness, and the dictatorship of our unsanctified emotions, with all their spats and little fits and tantrums. We realize that the lack of joy as a fruit normally points to a lack of many of the other fruits, like patience or self-control. Anyway, Romans 12 abolishes the bleachers when it comes to community joy. Joy is expected, experienced and expressed as a communal identity, which I believe is more than simply the sum of the joyful parts or a consensus joy. Joy actually marks the spirit and character of the corporate life, as well as the individual members. God’s presence can be visceral in our midst. There is joy in His presence, so if He is among us there will be joy. You cannot separate joy and presence. In His presence is fullness of joy! This is one of the powerful ways that God breaks out, breaks in and breaks through a community’s life, as its joy-infused identity engages the world, even the worst of battlefields. Joy in the Holy Spirit, the joy of Jesus, is a much unused defiant, demon-terrorizing weapon of our spiritual warfare that is so mighty to the pulling down of oppressed and depressed strongholds, whether in an individual life or a nation.) But that’s another message!

In our community life, we are simply reflecting what is true for the prior community of the God-head, this eternal interplay of joy and delight between them, each one seemingly outdoing the other in glorying and blessing and affirming and serving. Joy is Trinitarian, communal. Joy is for community. Even God himself expresses His joy in a necessary community context. You can be miserable alone but not joyful. Joy needs and finds a company, an audience: first heaven then earth. You’ve got to tell somebody. Joy seeks for agreement; its longing includes the longing for companions and thus we find that joy is a vital and necessary glue for community relationships, for binding and bonding fellowship, as it inspires and fuels and feeds and tutors and perpetuates our unity. And in His kindness, God gives us these communities, like our local church, as a laboratory for holy experimentation, not only for experiencing joy in this world, but for anticipating the joy that is always yet to come.

Let me quote two verses from the New Testament Church’s songbook, the psalms, that influenced the affective life of the early church.

“I was glad when they said to me... let us go to the house of the Lord… where the tribes go up…” (Ps. 122:1) We have here a call to the community members to gather for the enjoyment of God. The psalmist is reminded by others in the community about the need for him to be part of the tribal gathering. As a result of this invocation, he goes. He is immediately the recipient of spiritual joy before he even gets to the place of communion in community. Members of the community were used by God to stir his heart and he submitted to the aroused longings.
“Let the righteous be glad…rejoice before God.” (Ps. 68:3) Again we see joy being incited, stirred up. If the first psalm passage was an invocation to joy this is maybe a provocation. The point? We have a call and a role within the community in calling one another to expect corporate joy, to experience corporate joy, encouraging one another to express joy. This is a shared responsibility.

I love the description of Paul and Barnabas’ mission in Acts 15:3 as they went through Phoenicia and Samaria and “caused great joy to all the brethren.” The accounts they gave of God’s effective work through their mission, how they ministered, was actually causative when it came to joy in the community. To summarize this point about joy as a community business:

Whole communities can have a character of joy and can corporately express joy.
Within the communities, members can be causatively used by God to encourage and promote the spiritual God-directed, life-changing, world-changing joy of others.

Joy is a community business, a community fruit. So where am I taking you? To my next message to launch the new year when I will give you a top-ten of ways you can live out 2 Cor. 1:24 and become like Paul “ a helper” of another’s joy in the community. You could begin by showing up for the Christmas Service on Saturday at 6:00p.m. full of the joy of the Lord and brim-full of worship because that gospel of great joy has transformed your life.

Joyfully yours,

Stuart