It turns out that joy is a serious business. In 2015 the John Templeton Foundation awarded over $4M to Yale Divinity School for a project entitled “Theology of Joy and the Good Life”, the first aim of which was to develop “a new theological movement that places reflection on joy and the good life at the centre of Christian theology”. You can watch a series of YouTube videos in which serious theologians, philosophers and others seriously discuss joy. But never mind reflecting on it, where is it to be found? In a world in which several of the horses of apocalypse appear to be at least trotting towards the stable door, if not yet galloping into action, joy is at a premium.
You won’t be surprised to learn that my goto source for important subjects is not YouTube but the Bible. Even the words used in the Bible for joy have an interesting story to tell. Studying biblical words does not capture everything there is to say on a topic of course, just as studying the properties of the pigment used in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa cannot capture everything there is to say about his masterpiece. As an example, there’s an interesting story about when the translators of the Septuagint were translating Hebrew words for joy in the Old Testament into Greek. They hit a snag. Joy played a role in the religions of the ancient world; the Greeks knew how to have a good time, even in a religious setting. But this frequently involved copious amounts of alcohol and various sexual activities. The Jewish scholars translating the Old Testament wanted to emphasise that the joy experienced in the worship of Yahweh was of a different nature, and they didn’t want to import into their translation unwelcome cultural baggage. Their solution was to invent a new word in Greek which they used when referring to joy related to worship.
In the New Testament joy is mentioned 326 times including cognates and synonyms. On 141 of these occasions it is inward joy (chairein, chara) that is referenced. These words are noticeably similar to another Greek word - charis (grace). It has been suggested that there is a clear link between joy and grace; the idea is that true joy is experienced by those who are recipients of God’s grace. But the whole point about grace is that it is undeserved. Unpalatable as we tend to find the notion, underserving of God’s grace, and the joy that flows from it, is exactly where we all start off. We live under a curse in a cursed world. Hence the problem with joy.
The reason the world is cursed is laid out in the early chapters of the Bible, in Genesis. And it is no accident that the first human emotion recorded in Scripture is not joy but is Adam’s fear (Gen 3:10), followed by Cain’s anger (Gen 4:5). This does not mean there was no joy in Eden, presumably there was. But it looks like a point is being made, something is being highlighted. In fact, joy is hardly mentioned at all in the first five books of the Bible; references to it are scattered and sporadic until we reach book #5: Deuteronomy. Again, it is presumably not the case that between the events of Genesis 3 and the end of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness no human being was ever joyful. Perhaps joy (of a sort) accompanied Lamech’s hymn to violence (Gen 4:23,24), and presumably Abraham and Sarah experienced joy at the arrival of their promised son Isaac. Many in Israel were no doubt joyful at their deliverance from Egypt at the Red Sea (although their moaning and grumbling is a much larger feature of the record). However, if we treat the five books of Moses (the Pentateuch) as a single literary entity, it has to be significant that after a period of “literary” scarcity, joy does then start to consistently crop up in Deuteronomy. After a long time, and a lot of words, it is mentioned twice in Deuteronomy 12 in the context of Israel coming together to celebrate and worship in the presence of God. He is very clear that He is not to be worshiped in the manner of the peoples of the land Israel will enter but in the manner and in the place of His choosing. They were to feast and worship and rejoice. In Deuteronomy 14, Israel is instructed to “eat before the Lord your God and rejoice” (v26). In the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Booths Israel was to “..rejoice before the Lord..”.
To help things along, Israel had a hymnbook, the Psalms, and lots of these open with joy in the very first verse (e.g. Ps 21, 47, 66, 95, 81, 97, 100), many with the idea of shouting, singing or praising God with joy. And it is in God that the “fullness of joy” is experienced (Ps16:11). What was promised and commanded in Deuteronomy was experienced by the Psalmist, and by those who took up his words in the worship of the living God. But the Old Testament is, in part, a record of Israel’s sin and rebellion and this led to judgement and exile. However, even in the midst of judgment and suffering, one of the Old Testament prophets Habakkuk wrote: “… yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab 3:18). The lack of blossom on the fig trees and an absence of fruit on the vine (Hab 3:17), a big deal in Habakkuk’s day, meant his circumstances were hardly those conducive to joy. But the joy he is speaking about is not found in his circumstances; it’s found in God.
Israel eventually returned from exile of course, and in Ezra 6 joy resulted from the rededication of the temple, the proper place for the worship of God (Ezra 6:16). Once again Israel was able to celebrate their feasts, and once again this was marked by joy (Ezra 6v22). But throughout this part of the story one is left with a sense of unfinished business. And as the Old Testament closes we are left wondering where is the joy spoken of by prophets like Isaiah. In Isaiah 61, everlasting joy was promised (v7). In the day when God creates “new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17), Jerusalem will be a joy (65:18) and be rejoiced over by the Lord Himself (65:19; 62:4b). There was even a day promised when God Himself would rejoice over His people with “loud singing” (Zeph 3:17)! I don’t think that day was reached during the period covered by the Old Testament, and I don’t think that day is now. It is still to come.
Joy is possible in this world of pandemics and wars, of inequality and injustice, of suffering and famine. It’s possible in the teeth of these realities. It’s to be found in the same place ancient Israel was to find it – in the presence of a promise keeping, gracious God, with the community of God’s people. It is not grounded in circumstance, for how could it be? But even this is still only a shadow of a promised joy, a down-payment, a deposit with the balance still to be paid out. Joy is to be found partly in response to God (who He is and what He has done) and partly a resource to keep going in what is, still, a cursed world. But this lost world is not the last word, and in a day yet to come, our singing, and our joy, will be blended with His.
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