Many of you have no doubt seen the fish symbol common in
early Christianity; although on Bay Area bumper stickers, it is more likely to
have “Darwin” written in the middle of it!
Its use as a religious symbol predates the Church, which made it
particularly useful for Christians in hiding during periods of persecution. Its use would not have aroused suspicions;
but, for those in the know, the head of the fish pointed to the site of local
gatherings of the underground Jesus movement.
The Greek letters in the word “fish” form an acrostic signifying “Jesus
Christ, Son of God, Savior.” The fish
directed people searching for the good news of Jesus.
What was it about these early Christians, that people were
willing to go underground, risking arrest, torture, and death, to join their
movement? What did they see in them? Huston Smith, the great historian of
comparative religion, suggests that “They saw lives that had been transformed –
men and women who were ordinary in every way except for the fact that they
seemed to have found the secret of living.”[1] They
were enjoying life.
More specifically, their lives evidenced two qualities. The
first was mutual love demonstrated by concrete acts of care. Tertullian wrote that the Romans would
exclaim of Christians, “Look how they love one another . . .
and how they are even ready to die for one another.”[2] This mutual regard transcended all
social boundaries: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and
female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus,”[3]
St. Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia.
Justin Martyr described Christian love this way:
. . . we who valued
above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions, now bring what we
have into a common stock, and communicate to everyone in need; we who hated and
destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live
with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly
with them, and pray for our enemies, and endeavor to persuade those who hate us
unjustly to live conformably to the good precepts of Christ, to the end that
they may become partakers with us of the same joyful hope . . .[4]
Such love made for a discipleship of
equals.
The second quality evidenced by these
Christians was joy. They had obtained an
inner peace that radiated joy. Now, by
and large these early Christian communities weren’t numerous, wealthy, or
powerful. They didn’t reek of
success. In fact, they were marginalized
and frequently persecuted. In a cultural
climate marked by fatalism and pessimism, in which poverty and death loomed
large, Christians were notable simply for being happy.
St. Paul is a good example. He sacrificed the security and prestige of
his status as a learned Pharisee when he joined the Jesus movement, which he
had previously persecuted. During his
missionary journeys he suffered hunger, public stoning and whippings, and even
shipwreck. He was ridiculed and opposed
for sharing the good news of Jesus. Yet,
he considered the loss of privilege to be nothing, a pile of crap, compared to
the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ.[5]
Writing from prison – where torture and
deprivation were commonplace in the 1st Century – Paul encourages
the churches in Philippi, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say,
Rejoice . . . Do not worry about anything . . . and the peace of God, which
surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”[6] Paul and other disciples in the Jesus movement
where held in a peace that was impervious to external circumstances. Their joy was rooted in something deeper than
normal considerations of pleasure and pain, gain and loss. It was rooted in an unshakable sense of being
unconditionally loved.
People saw the mutual care exercised in
this discipleship of equals and the joy they shared and they said, “I want what
they have.” And they were willing to do
anything to get it. What was the secret
to living that these Jesus people seemed to know? They knew that God loved them, and this love
freed them from the barriers that keep us from being fully alive. I’m not talking about a formal, abstract idea
of love, but an intimate, personal experience of being loved by God communicated
by their encounter with Jesus. Jesus imparted
a love that transcended death: Resurrection love. It made everything new. They couldn’t help but re-joice: get their joy on again and again and again.
Huston Smith uses the analogy of the
atom. Within the atom is locked the
energy of the sun itself. For this
energy to be released it must be bombarded from without. So, too, locked in every human being is the
energy of God’s love, but it can only be unlocked by being bombarded by love
from without, breaking through the barriers that contain this energy so that we
can respond to love with love.[7] Jesus set off a chain reaction of love
breaking through the barriers to love that is still expanding even now.
We can be swept up in this great
unfolding of love, joining in God’s project of renewing the world, of getting
its joy on again. But the barriers to
love are real. In another analogy, St.
Teresa of Avila describes the soul as an interior castle “made entirely out of
a diamond or of a very clear crystal . . . a paradise where the Lord says He
finds His delight.”[8] This is almost unimaginable to us. At the center of our being God makes Her home
in us because She delights in us. This
is the deepest truth about us! We are
loved. God delights in us. Teresa goes on to lament that we don’t
understand ourselves or know who we are.[9]
What prevents us from knowing ourselves
to be so beautiful and beloved?
We are diamonds encased in thick walls of
fear, guilt, and self-centeredness. Only
God’s love can shatter those walls and reveal us to ourselves as reflections of
God’s own glory. Only love can break
through our fear of loss, of failure, and finally, of death. Fear looms large in us these days: fear of the loss of basic civility; loss of democratic
government; loss of a sustainable planet to bequeath to our children and
grandchildren. And beneath it all, the fear that we are not
loved or loveable. Only love can break
through our fear and release our compassion – our passion with – ourselves and
others.
In the face of so many threats, our
guilt looms even larger: guilt that we
haven’t done enough to solve our world’s problems; guilt about our privilege in
the face of so much suffering; guilt about our complicity in the systems that cause
this suffering and preserves our privilege.
Only love can break through our guilt and unleash our creativity so that
we can do our part to mend the world.
Overwhelmed by the enormity of it all
and our uncertainty about the future, the retreat into self-centeredness is an
ever-present temptation; the preoccupation with me and mine; the frantic
scramble to secure my piece of the pie; the sacrifice of integrity before the
false idols of fantasy, illusion, and compulsive escapism in all its forms in
our culture. Only love can break through
our self-centeredness and restore our connection with reality so that we can
reclaim our place as part of a larger whole with awareness and humility.
God’s love doesn’t solve all our
problems. It doesn’t protect us from
suffering. What it does provide is an
inner peace and joy that sustains us amid life’s problems and inevitable
suffering. Leaning back into that love,
we can re-joice, get our groove back,
get our joy on again.
We are experiencing dark times in our
world, but, as Andy Crouch points out,
There was violence
and disintegration in the day of Jesus, too.
Jesus was hardly shy about confronting the patterns of sin in his culture
– though he was consistently harder on the pious than he was on the pagans. But everywhere Jesus went, life
blossomed. The sick were healed, lepers
were touched, daughters and sons were plucked from the mouth of the grave. Jesus left behind him a trail of leaps and
laughter, reunited families, and terrific wine, as well as dumb-founded
synagogue leaders, uneasy monarchs, and sleepless procurators. His witness against violence, amidst a
culture in rebellion against the good, was neither withdrawal or war. It was simply life: abundant, just, generous life. And, ultimately, a willingness to let the
enemies of life do their worst, confident that even death could not extinguish
the abundant life of God.[10]
Jesus was like the man in the Parable
of the Wedding Banquet: he didn’t fit in
at the party, refused to conform to the oppressive violence celebrated there,
and so was thrown into outer darkness.[11] But I suspect he enjoyed the open bar while
he was there, and never refused anyone who asked him to dance. He got his joy on and it was contagious. And that was what really pissed off the evil
powers of this world.
Even as we go down to the grave, we
make our song: Alleluia, alleluia,
alleluia![12] Nothing can steal our joy, for we are held in
a deathless love. You are loved. You are loved. You are loved. This is the first and last word, and it will
carry you through everything in between.
It is greater than your fear, your guilt, and your
self-preoccupation. You are a diamond
reflecting the glory of God and nothing ultimately can dim this light: So get your joy on and let it shine!
[1]
Huston Smith, “Reasons for Joy,” Christian
Century (October 4, 2005), p. 10.
[2]
Tertullian, Apology, Chapter 39 in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, p. 46.
[3]
Galatians 3:28.
[4]
Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter
14, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I,
p. 167.
[5]
Philippians 3:7-10.
[6]
Philippians 4:4a, 6a, 7.
[7]
Smith, p. 11.
[8]
St. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle 1:1,
p. 283 in The Collected Works of St.
Teresa of Avila, Volume 2.
[9]
St. Teresa, p. 284.
[10]
Andy Crouch, “Furrowed Brows Inc.,” Christianity
Today (April 2006), p. 100.
[11]
Matthew 22:1-14.
[12]
See “The Commendation” in the Burial Office, The Book of Common Prayer, p. 499.
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