Joy In Being Christian Today 4/11/48
Scripture: John 15: 1-11
Text: John 15: 11; “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”
“These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” Those are radiant words! You remember when they were spoken - and where - and by Whom. The gospel of John tells us of the long and beautiful discourse by Jesus as the little group lingered in the upper room where they had gathered to eat the Passover. Eleven of his faithful, trusted friends were there. Jesus had washed their feet that evening, etching forever into their minds the dignity of loving service. He reassured them with many of the words still beloved after 19 centuries by all Christians: “Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me.” “Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.” “Henceforth I call you not servants, but friends.” The setting was one of peace and loveliness ---- Or was it?
Remember that it was the time of Jesus’ last trip into Jerusalem. There had been some sharp words with people of prominence in the temple and a plot against his life was afoot. Jesus, right there at that table, had sorrowfully exposed one of the usual twelve as being a traitor and urged him to go out about his plans. That is why he had only eleven with him then - the twelfth was busy selling him out! Presently they would all go outside the city to the garden of Gethsemane --- and you know the story from then on.
The times were not particularly good either. The little nation writhed under the heavy hand of the Roman conqueror. There was corruption in high places. Formalism usurped the place of sincerity. The spiritual life of the people sagged badly and the moral sense of high obligation was little enough to be found. Jesus himself was personally in the very shadow of tragedy; and his friends on the brink of unbelievable catastrophe.
And yet, precisely at this point, and in the midst of these circumstances, Jesus was talking about Joy --- and I really believe that he meant ---- Joy!
Strange, that he could unerringly spot a known traitor, that he could be tenderly, though directly, warning his friends of impending tragedy, that he could tell Peter to his face of that impulsive man’s immanent denial, that he could feel the very shadow of his own cross --- and yet speak with utter assurance of joy. “In this world ye shall have tribulation” --- hadn’t they - and haven’t we all! --- “but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world!”
Before they left that place, he prayed with them, and for them, that prayer of unmatched beauty and strength, of intercession and trust. --- Read it again when you go home at the 117th chapter of John.
The one thing I want to point out to you this morning is the possibility and the reality of a present joy. It sounds like a paradox, but it is a living truth -- “your joy” may “be full.”
The times were evil when that assurance was given. They are evil now, in alarming ways. Tyranny had an upper hand in the world then, and it is an alarmingly successful challenger now. Patient people had know desolation than and were to know much worse in the years ahead of them. Our world has been laid waste in far too many places; our resources squandered in the holocaust of destruction; and worse may come if there be no change of policy and no change of heart in men -- in the hearts of many men! Personal tragedy and suffering hovered near those eleven men. It comes in indiscriminate starkness to us and to people we know now. A heavy cloud of forboding hangs over us, while nations, accustomed for several years to all-out war as a means of getting somewhere, now consider, deliberately, the possibility of further resort to the weapons of Mars. At the same time we consider how far off is the good world we believed was being born in battle. We have the earnest, frightened word of the very discoverers and perfectors of war’s latest weapons as to the utter devastation those weapons can cause. Still, we fondle the weapons with the crazy fascination of a mad man.
And yet there is joy for the followers of the Christ! And hope in the hearts of his believers. And the time to find it is right now in the middle of our real troubles.
We are prone to think that joy lies ahead of us when some particular difficulty, sorrow, burden or frustration is past. We look ahead to easier days. The little boy can scarcely wait to “be bigger” -- to grow up. And the youth thinks: “O, to be a man.” And the man oft times says, “O to be a care-free youth again,” conveniently forgetting the burdens his soul bore in youth before they were forgotten in his present troubles.
“But be of good cheer” now. We have an abiding demonstration by Christ that the world is overcome. The trusting, changed, converted soul can live on top of the world’s distresses. His joy can remain in you; your joy may be full --- now.
Look around you; it may be that you will see somebody living in the fullness of joy. One such soul leaps vividly to my mind. I hope he is still living in the flesh, but I know he is living in the spirit. He was trained as a physician and headed for a lucrative practice. A wealthy man took him on a tour around the world and he fell in love with the idea of becoming a missionary. He joined the missionary forces of his church and was sent to a field in the Orient. He became a widely-recognized authority on some of the obscure diseases that plague people in the Orient so that prominent physicians back in America recognized his name readily when it was mentioned.
When I knew him, certain troubles had dogged his footsteps. He and his wife, though lovers of children, had never been blessed with parenthood. But they were loved by a host of kids in the community who swarmed about them and affectionately dubbed the doctor “Uncle Pin.” He had developed cancer of the throat and the necessary surgery had deprived him of all but a whisper of his voice. So he could no longer lecture to his medical students in surgery, nor address them at chapel. His hand became so palsied that he couldn’t drink a cup of coffee without spilling some of it in the saucer; so he had to give up surgery and retire from the mission. His splendid fun-loving wife died just at the time when they could have devised all sorts of fun in their retirement. The people he had trained and served in the foreign land had suffered greatly and were to suffer much more.
Yet I never knew a more exuberant man than Dr. Ludlow! If little children invited him to their birthday party, he not only went but he had a grand time with the kids! If a naval officer invited him to visit a new ship recently added to the fleet, he was all eagerness to go aboard. When portable radio first appeared, didn’t he just squander the price of one, carry it all over the county in his friends’ automobiles to see how it would work and then give it to the nearest nurses’ home when he traveled on! And as for baseball -- hadn’t he played the game as a youth! -- hadn’t he introduced and coached it in his part of the Orient -- just try and keep him away from a game wwhen he was in Cleveland! You couldn’t have tied him home with the Navy’s biggest anchor! You wouldn’t have believed there could be so much fun, so much joy, so much exuberant hope as Uncle Pin found all the time in spite of his childlessness, the end of his practice, and the loss of his wife; in spite of his bum throat and his shaking hand; in spite of his sympathetic concern over dangers for the splendid doctors and nurses he and his wife had joyfully trained in the Orient and of whom they were so proud! He had a positively exuberant soul! Suppose the days were hard for him. He just loved life anyway!
Look around and see the preeminent place Jesus has in our world stricken though it is. He is acclaimed and revered even by those who, like the great Mahatma Gandhi, do not accept some of our theological doctrines about him.
Old hands in China tell us that, in that land, ignorance of Christ during earlier years of contact with the West, together with prejudice against Christianity as a “foreign religion,” have given way to a hearty recognition of Christ’s preeminence. The older Chinese scholars tend to place Jesus freely among the revered sages of their own great ethical tradition. The younger Chinese tend either to be irreligious or to identify religion with the Christian faith. In China, as in many other countries, it is generally agreed that it is high praise to one, if it may be said of him that he is truly Christian or, better still, that he has the spirit of Christ.
It is one of the joys of being a Christian to observe and remember that the spiritual life seen in Jesus Christ was not an isolated phenomenon, but has consistently reappeared in his followers ever since.
There have been many definitions of religion. One good definition of it is that “Religion is the life of God in the soul of man.” It sounds almost arrogant - even irreverent - for us to make such a claim. We know ourselves to be pitifully unworthy of some of its implications. And yet this is a really vital message of Christianity for mankind.
We don’t have to feel defeated at the distinction between our Lord and his followers. To think of the most famous saints in all history is to see Jesus still on beyond them with a preeminence all his own. We can take our joy in the assurance that the spiritual life which made Jesus what he was is still being reproduced, however faintly and feebly, in us his followers. We can take joy in the humble hope that this life can be fanned to a greater flame in us.
It is a joyful observation that we Americans can become new people. There is so much of goodness and generosity among American folk. We are portrayed abroad as madly seeking for dollars. That is a caricature. But there is much that needs to be changed in our hearts.
It is a change of heart that makes us unable to tolerate the thought of heedless speculation in grain while children starve abroad. It is a change of heart that will not postpone decent housing for a nation whose veterans are crowding, with their young families, into unsanitary rooms. It is a change of heart that makes one beat aside those temptations that would destroy one’s family happiness and in winning the conquest make one deserving of his decent home.
It is a change of heart which enables a man to stand in the presence of God unafraid, with his sins forgiven, a new creature in Christ Jesus. It is a change of heart that does not seek escape in religion, but finds responsibility in religion and courage to take up one’s burden and follow Christ.
Christ’s way is a way that moves from confession through consecration to spiritual conquest. “I have overcome the world.” In that kind of triumph there is joy which outshines the crosses and erases the despairs of the world.
There is something permanent, everlasting about it. The joy of being Christian is the same today as it was when Jesus first talked about it.
Lay hold upon it. That joy is yours; your Christ promised it to you. No world can wrest it from you.
Indeed, in His joy, you can transform the world today, just as eleven men in that room where Jesus talked were to transform their world. Be of good courage. Christ, in you, has overcome your world!
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 11, 1948