Theological Journal – February 22 What’s Joy Got To Do With It?
Here are some of the thoughts of Orthodox theologian John Behr:
In this interview
at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, Father John Behr discusses the
implications of a theology of joy for our living today. Indeed, joy, for Behr,
is ultimately joy of life, the joy of being alive, a comprehensive
intellectual, physical, psychical, and spiritual mode of being. As such, joy is
much more than a matter of acquisition; it requires a work of cultivation, a
work eminently figured in the life of Christ. God is the giver of life, and
Jesus claims that he is life. Life is, therefore, not something we possess or
try to grasp, but something to receive in joyous thankfulness, something in
which we can dwell, the highest expression of which is to give life in return.
We enjoy life by giving life, in living for others.
For
Behr, this sacrificial way of living was instituted in Jesus’s crucifixion and
resurrection. The feast of Easter celebrates Jesus’s radical inversion of life,
wherein true life, true human living, comes through death. All humans are
thrown into life; all humans die. We have no choice. But in Christ, we are
shown a different way of living in which we take up death and reclaim it, and in
so doing become truly human. Only in voluntary and joyous self-sacrifice can
Jesus finally respond to the Father’s creation project—“Let us make man”—and
say, “It is finished.” By following Jesus in his work of sacrificial love we in
turn take up our end and let it be so that God’s redemptive work might be
fulfilled.
Comments
Post a Comment