Genesis 24:58-67
Romans 7:15-25
St. Matthew 11:16-19; 25-30
In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis talks about one of three particular experiences in his life that gives him joy. It is, he says, “the memory of a memory.”
As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House [in which I grew up,] when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation of desire; but desire for what?… Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse… withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased.
He continues: “In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else [but] that unsatisfied desire, which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy…”
This joy, this sense of “unsatisfied desire that is more desirable than any other satisfaction,” is part of Lewis’ deep experience of faith in Jesus Christ—and of ours. It is a memory of something you has never quite experienced, a longing for something that is just out of reach, but which is so good and so worthwhile that it is better to long for this thing you cannot yet grasp than to have everything that it’s within your power to hold.
That is what Jesus means when He preaches the Gospel message that “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” It’s nearby, it’s real, we can catch a glimpse of its incredible delights… but it’s still just out of reach. It’s still just beyond our grasp. But to delight in its promised joys is more fulfilling than to have all the concrete joys that this world offers.
In our gospel lesson, Jesus says that sometimes people are “like children in a marketplace and calling out to one another, ‘we piped for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you didn’t mourn.’” In other words, He says, we don’t know what want. Do we want a God who points out the problems of the world and warns of judgment? If so, then why did we arrest John the Baptist? John is precursor of everyone who dares to point out that world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. When people point those things out, Jesus says, sometimes others cover their ears and say, but everything is fine with us, why do we need to worry about anybody else?
But then Jesus comes and preaches the Good News of celebration, of the wedding feast of God and humanity, of the inclusive, welcoming Kingdom of God. It was a message that was new and exciting and hopeful, and lots of people loved it, but some people didn’t like that either.
Both Jesus and John expressed the joy of the Kingdom as they’d understood it. For John, it was a kingdom of justice and the end of oppression. For Jesus it was the promise that “They will come from east and west and north and south, and sit at table in the Kingdom of the Lord,” that all nations and peoples and especially the least of these are welcomed into the loving arms of their God. Both John and Jesus had glimpsed the world as God intends it to be—and once you have a glimpse of such a Kingdom, it’s impossible to go back.
This is the Christian experience, according to Lewis, and according to Jesus. We’ve had a glimpse of the Kingdom, and it’s filled us with hope for the future and longing for a better world, a world that is, yet, sadly, beyond our grasp. And once we’ve had that glimpse, we can’t go back. We can only go forward, no matter how much it costs us.
But Jesus knows it’s tiring to strive for something you can’t grasp, something against which the odds are stacked so high.
And that’s why Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavily burdened, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light, and in me you will find rest for your souls.” He knows that the greatest temptation we face is the temptation of false peace—to be satisfied with what we have, or to make our goals human rather than heavenly.
In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls this building on a wish-dream. God does not let us live in a wish dream, he says:
By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. … Only that fellowship which faces… disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both.
True Christian community is built on the truth, Bonhoeffer says, not on imagined hopes and dreams. His main complaint is how easily we substitute earthly goals for heavenly ones. Earthly goals, like huge crowds filling our pews, everyone getting along and living perfect happy lives, the church as having such a strong moral voice that everyone immediately respects it and bows to its authority. That’s not the truth, Bonhoeffer reminds us—those are earthly dreams that don’t reflect who the church really is—a community of flawed, saved sinners. “The person who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself,” Bonhoeffer warns. “He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges sisters and brothers and God in Person accordingly.”
It is essentially salvation by works, and it is a burden—what Jesus calls a yoke. And He assures us that the glimpse we’ve had of the Kingdom is not meant to be a burden, but a joy, not the yoke of legalism and high demands of perfection, but a yoke that provides rest for our souls. Bonhoeffer assures us that at the core of Christian community, and of Christian self-awareness, should be the knowledge that we are saved sinners. That should keep us humble, keep us from judging others, ourselves, and God, but most of all, it should keep us grateful.
We enter into our common life (as the church) not as demanders but as grateful recipients. …We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what He does give us daily. …We thank God for what God has done for us. We thank God for giving us brothers and sisters who live by God’s call, God’s forgiveness, and God’s promise.
Christian life is in many ways about nothing but unsatisfied desire. We’ve caught a glimpse of the Kingdom of God. We have a glimpse of a better world… a better community… a better church… a better self. We long for it, we strive for it, but we won’t ever achieve it. So we don’t put our hope in ourselves, in our strategic plans, in worldly goals and measures of success, in our ability. We don’t judge ourselves or others or God by an impossible yoke of perfection. We know that God graciously doesn’t judge us by our flaws, but despite our flaws has included us in God’s great and gracious cosmic plan to heal the world through Jesus Christ. We know we don’t deserve to be part of it, but we are. And we’re grateful.
And that is our joy.