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Surprised by joy

In our culture, many people seek happiness. Advertisers con us into believing that the secret to happiness is to buy this product or holiday at that destination. Then our life will be happy, our family members will all get on marvellously with each other and life will be full of laughter. We know that advertising works, so many people buy into this shallow understanding of happiness.

The reality, though, learned through experience, is that true and lasting happiness can’t be bought so easily. Even if we do buy the advertised product, our family members won’t necessarily get on and there will still be stresses and anxieties aplenty, especially at this time of year. Happiness is fickle. It depends on how we are feeling on any day, how well we slept last night, what particular circumstances we are facing today and even our brain chemistry.

But joy is different to happiness. Joy is an emotion that comes from a different place to happiness. We can feel joy even if our circumstances are bleak. It’s an emotion that says we’re in the right place and doing the right thing. It often comes from God’s Spirit, which was the case for Mary, the mother of Jesus. Outwardly, her circumstances are not good … she is expecting a child but her husband-to-be, Joseph, is not the father. This will most likely cause her to become a social outcast and the subject of gossip.

Yet God’s promises to her about who this child will become and how God will transform the world through him fill her heart with joy as she sings the song we know as the Magnificat. God is acting to bring change and life and hope and Mary has a significant part to play. So she is filled with joy and sings her subversive song.

May we too find ourselves surprised by joy at what God is doing in our lives and in the world.

From the Minister

Blessing – and justice

After the year of 2020 that we’ve all experienced, who would like some good news, divine favour, comfort and joy? These are some of the blessings promised in the reading from Isaiah 61. However bleak the situation is facing God’s people on their return from exile in Babylon, God promises great blessing and hope for the future.

Similar claims are made in Mary’s song the Magnificat (so-called because this is the opening word of the song in its Latin translation) … God has done great things for those who fear him (like Mary), the lowly have been lifted up, the hungry fed. Blessings abound!

There’s just one small problem. Nobody seems to have told the leaders and rulers of the nations about these new arrangements. They still rule through military might and oppression, they still hoard most of the wealth, and they’re not about to give up these privileges, whether we’re speaking of the Romans in the time of Mary, the Persians in the time of Isaiah, or the wealthy elite in many countries of the world today. The vision we are offered in Isaiah and in Mary’s song doesn’t seem to match our world’s lived reality. So are these just idle promises? Or is our call to seek justice to turn the world right side up? When Jesus preached on the Isaiah passage (as recounted in Luke 4), his audience were quite happy to accept God’s blessings but far less keen to share them with others. They were also angry that Jesus didn’t stress God’s judgment on their enemies. It seems that our sense of and commitment to justice may not match that of Jesus. Will we accept both God’s blessing and God’s call to seek justice?

This week we again have face-to-face worship at Croydon North this Sunday. For Croydon North people who want to attend, the service will start at 10 am in the worship space as per the old pattern. For Croydon people, the service will be broadcast via Zoom at 10 am in the worship space.  For everyone else, this worship service will be streamed via Zoom in the usual way (fingers crossed that the technology all works as planned). So please come along to either venue or login to Zoom from 9.45 am.

We will be basing our worship on the attached worship@home resource for this week, so it would be handy for those on Zoom to have a copy present.

Click here for worship@home resources.



Church@home, From the Minister,

An alternative vision

This third Sunday in Advent is often called Joy Sunday, when we remember the song that is sung by Mary (called the Magnificat). Despite her challenging personal circumstances, Mary sings of God’s blessing and God’s alternative vision for the world that will come through her child, Jesus.

One of the interesting aspects of Mary’s song is that it is expressed in the past tense, as though God has already accomplished the overthrow of the rich and powerful and has already raised up the poor and fed the hungry. When we look at the world we realise that this alternative vision has not yet arrived. This may cause us to doubt and question like John the Baptist does in our second reading this week. Or we may rejoice with Mary and commit ourselves to help make this vision a reality.

In the words of an old Benedictine prayer, may God give us enough foolishness to believe that we really can make a difference in this world, so that we are able, with God’s grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

From the Minister, ,