So how are you all feeling this morning? What sort of mood are we in? (Ask various members of the congregation how they feel). So we’re not exactly feeling joyful? Well who can blame you. There aren’t that many experiences these days that could be described as filling you with awe and wonder. A feeling of absolute euphoria. I suppose that sometimes we get that joyful feeling when we are in a truly beautiful place. On top of a mountain or gazing at a wonderful rural scene.

 

Sometimes we might get it when we achieve something that means a lot to us. Winning a race or scoring a hole in one. We’ve probably experienced it at those life changing moments like marriage or childbirth. Maybe we get close to it when listening to or playing music. Perhaps if you were a Ken Livingstone supporter you were over the moon in London this week. But how often do we get that feeling as we walk into church on a Sunday morning.

 

Some of you may recall that when I preached last month I referred to the wonderful wealth of church music that we have available to us to raise our spirits towards God, to praise his name and to bring us some of that sought after joy. We talked about some of the great hymn writers and their inspiration. We talked about John Newton, Graham Kendrick and Charles Wesley.

 

So come Easter Sunday morning I was really looking forward to celebrating the wonderful news of Christ’s resurrection by letting the vocal chords rip on some of the wealth of wonderful Easter hymns. We went to a small rural church in Bedfordshire that we know and love – in fact the church in which we were married and unfortunately the regular organist was indisposed and there a sub had been drafted in.

 

Now I am not sure if the choice of hymns was driven by the organsts limited repertoire or her taste but I can honestly say that you could not have trawled through Hymns Ancient and Modern and come up with 5 such dreary dirges if you spent from now to next Easter trying. I can’t tell you what they were because my mental defence mechanisms wiped them from my short term memory for my own protection.

 

I can tell you that I felt so disappointed that instead of being built up through music to a sense of true joy I was left to my own limited internal devices to try to instil it for myself. This got me thinking about the nature of worship and the role of the church. Maybe it’s a national trait but it still seems to be considered a bit unseemly to get too excited about the gospel, to jump up and down and make a fuss.

 

Well today’s the day to make a fuss you know. In some Christian churches this particular Sunday is actually called Joyful Sunday or Jubilate Sunday. So you should really be on top of the world. Has anyone got any idea why this is Jubilate Sunday? Because today, we are celebrating Jesus return to the faithful.

 

You heard in our reading that Jesus made himself known to his disciples. He came among them, risen from the dead into their crowded and fearful little group in Jerusalem. The disciples are described by Luke as being filled with disbelieving joy.

 

If we had read the Old Testament reading for this Sunday, the joy of Christ’s return would have been there for us to see in the prophetic words of Micah:-

 

The Lord shall judge between many peoples and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away. They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore….. we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.

 

If that’s not joyful enough for you then how about today’s allotted psalm – Psalm 98:-

 

Sing to the Lord a new song for he has done marvellous things
Shout with joy to the Lord all you lands, lift up your voice rejoice and sing.
Sing to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the voice of song.
Let the rivers clap their hands and let the hills ring out with joy before the
Lord.

 

So before we go any further, I think we should try and get a bit of joy going here. I’m in need because I missed out on Easter Sunday so you’ll all just have to indulge me. So let’s start by singing the hymn derived from today’s Psalm, Number 796 “You Shall Go Out with Joy” Oh and by the way, it’s OK if you want to clap your hands – no-one will send you to the asylum.

 

Hymn 796 – You Shall Go Out with Joy

 

So are we feeling any more joyful yet? No? I think we need to work a bit harder. Now what is it again that we’ve got to be so joyful about? Oh yes – Jesus coming back to us. Let’s just remind ourselves of the scene here. The disciples who had been with Jesus through his ministry had just suffered a huge blow. Just as they had come to realise that Jesus really was the Messiah, he had started behaving really strangely. He’d started telling them about the suffering that he would have to endure. That he would leave them.

 

They were still trying to reconcile this with their vision of what the all powerful Messiah should be like when bang – Jesus is arrested, tried and crucified. When Jesus died that awful death on that cruel cross, they sealed away all of their hopes and dreams with him in that tomb. Maybe somewhere deep in the back of their minds they still heard Jesus’ words about his death and resurrection but this seemed so incredulous as to be not worthy of thought.

 

The disciples were now without hope and filled with grief. The man who had changed their lives, who had taken them from their safe and comfortable lives as fishermen or tax collectors had now left them all alone. Not only that he had left them all alone in a hostile place - in Jerusalem with crowds baying for their blood.

 

So here we find them closeted away frightened, depressed, worried and hiding for their own protection. They had heard from Mary and the other women that the tomb was empty and that they had seen Jesus but this seemed too incredible to be believed. The two disciples who had met Jesus on the road to Emmaus had probably just returned breathless with their tale of having walked and talked with the risen Christ but that too seemed nonsense and then suddenly without fanfare, Jesus was with them.

 

Luke describes their reaction perfectly when he says they disbelieved for joy. As Jesus stood in their midst, the fear and denial that the disciples experienced with Mary’s tale and the message from the Emmaus road started to be tinged with that growing feeling of hope and excitement in the pit of their stomachs that maybe, just maybe it was true - that Jesus was alive and that he was now with them. As Jesus spoke to them that tiny flicker of faith erupts into a feeling of absolute joy as they realised that this was their Lord and Master risen from the dead.

 

Jesus firstly confirms their faith. He shows them his hands and his feet – the scars that speak of sacrifice. He asks for some food to prove that he is there as man and not ghost. He then goes on to remind them of what he told them before his death. He reminds them about the prophets and how their messages have been fulfilled through his death and resurrection.

He tells them that repentance and the forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations and that they are witnesses of these things.

 

Unfortunately our lectionary reading stops there and does not give us the next key verse – the herald of Pentecost when Jesus goes on to tell the disciples “I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.

 

These messages from Jesus are key to the work that the disciples would go on to do, to the early life of the church, to the life of the church today and to all of us as practising Christians within the church. They explain the purpose of our faith and the outcome of the joy that we should experience at Easter.

 

The disciples are asked by Christ to be his witnesses and we are equally asked to be witnesses to Christ’s love today. You could argue that it was a bit easier for them – they were there. They saw Jesus. They saw his miracles and his resurrection. Equally, we have the benefit of 2000 years of history and Christian witness to support our witnessing mission.

 

But the other thing that they are told by Christ is to wait. To wait until the day of Pentecost when God would send his Holy Spirit down upon them and this is just as critical. Jesus does not ask his disciples to go out in his name and in their own weak human power. He tells them to wait until they are empowered by God’s grace and the same is true for us. Our witnessing ministry here in Bunbury must equally be undertaken through the power of the Holy Spirit – only then can we be sure that we are guided by God’s will and not our own.

 

I’m sure we all have tales of well intentioned evangelism gone wrong and I read one amusing one about an American theologian Dr Stuart Currie who was a well respected professor of theology at the University of Texas in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s – the flower power era. Dr Currie was strolling across the university campus one day on his way to a bookstore. Somewhere near the main administration building he was stopped by a particularly zealous young man who, with spiritual fire in his belly, was a little more than passionate about anyone who could be detained long enough to listen to what he had to say.

 

With the fury of new-found truth burning in his eyes, he stared into the face of Dr Currie and proclaimed “I want you to know something. Jesus loves you man, and so do I” Dr Currie tilted his hat back to a more comfortable position and replied, “Well sir, half of that is good news”

 

The temptation for us is often, as with that young man to shout the good news from the rooftops to anyone who will listen without giving time to prayer so that we go out in the true Spirit of God.

 

Tomorrow, we have the first full meeting of a new PCC for St Boniface and, I’m pleased to say that there are a fair number of the members of that august body here this morning. As we set out to develop this church in the new Millennium, the first thing we must ask is whether we are guided by God’s hand through his Spirit.

 

Rick is already asking us some pretty tough questions as to what we are here for. Should our actions be guided by what we think is right? Or should they be guided by what the congregation thinks is right – after all we are a democratic institution. Or, should we be guided by what is right in God’s eyes. If it is this last, then the Spirit will have to guide us - so pray for that spiritual guidance or who knows where we’ll end up.

 

Finally, let’s remember that message of joy. If you think coming to church on a Sunday morning can be a dull affair then you ought to try a PCC meeting! A real challenge for us as a new PCC will be to see if something of God’s joy can permeate all that we do. So to get us in the mood, and to continue to make up for my joyful song deficit let’s sing again. Remembering that this is Jubilate Sunday it seems appropriate to sing 394.

 

Hymn 394 – Jubilate

 

Tom Crotty