John 15:11
These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
Every Christmas and Easter, American media pause from their clamor (“Coming up: Shocking Live Videos of Gruesome Mayhem, Fornication, Naked Worship of Power, and Opulent Wealth! Right after these messages!”) to ask, yet again, “Who Was the Real Jesus and What Was He Up To?” Of course, the people who report this stuff never go to their local parish or their Bible and ask the people who know Jesus. Instead, they invariably go to “scholars” who tell us Jesus scarcely existed and hardly did anything at all. He was one huge enigma (which of course explains why people who knew him were willing to endure crucifixion, flaying, beheading and other tortures in bearing witness to him). Not coincidentally, this portrait of Jesus is a great comfort for people who are in the business of selling hedonism, materialism, and the worship of power. However, today’s reading (written by a man who insists that he does remember the Man that bought-and-paid-for scholars say he can’t remember) gives us a much more reasonable explanation of Jesus’ allegedly mysterious motives: Jesus desired to have joy in us and for us to have joy in him. It’s an explanation so simple, direct and refreshing that only an over-caffeinated media culture of bread and circuses could overlook it. So if you seek life, forget the “new Jesus” that Time, Newsweek, Hollywood and PBS mint for us every six months or so and come home to the only Jesus there ever was. He is real joy.
